The Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, which partners with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on issues including immigration, invited those attending a webinar last week to reimagine Independence Day with help from four panelists, many of them immigrants. Read more »
July 4, 2023
Webinar hosted by a PC(USA) partner explores reimagining Independence Day
The Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, which partners with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on issues including immigration, invited those attending a webinar last week to reimagine Independence Day with help from four panelists, many of them immigrants. Read more »
The General Synod of the United Church of Christ made history on Monday when it elected the Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson as the first woman, and the first Black woman, to lead the denomination as General Minister and President. 
J. Herbert Nelson, II, then known as Herbie, was nominated as a deacon at age 15.
“I had no idea what a deacon did,” he recalled, laughing.
What he did was begin a new season of serving others and fighting for justice, all of it underscored by faith. 
Growing up in northern New Jersey, a younger version of the Rev. Dr. Alonzo Johnson watched in awe as Fred Rogers welcomed a break-dancer onto the groundbreaking television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” in the 1980s.
Breakdancing was considered scary or threatening to some in mainstream culture at the time, but Rogers warmly greeted the dancer, a Black youth with a boombox and a cardboard mat, and encouraged him to show off his skills to viewers. The cardigan-clad host even tried a few of the moves himself.
“This was really revelatory for me because it was about appreciating the art” but also about “accepting young, Black children” as a part of the neighborhood, said Johnson, who serves as convener of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Educate a Child, Transform the World roundtable. “There’s something really theologically powerful, something socially powerful about this episode for me.” 
Measuring congregational and mid council work to end systemic poverty was the topic of Thursday’s second in a series of Matthew 25 online workshops being offered to help local communities create empowerment, health and wholeness. About 70 people attended. 
I still can see clearly in my mind’s eye the writing printed on the spine of a book that was on the shelf of my family’s bookcase in our humble rented house in Los Angeles. In Korean script, it read: “Why We Can’t Wait,” written by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 
During the Presbyterian Association of Musicians’ Worship & Music Conference held over the past two weeks, Dr. Jason Max Ferdinand has taken 400 already polished singers each week and worked them — worked them hard, at times — to put forth a glorious sound pleasing to the 700 or so people who gathered each week, and pleasing to God, too. 
Dr. Yolanda W. Page will begin her tenure as Stillman College’s eight president on July 1, the college’s Board of Trustees announced earlier this month. 
Since 2013, the Presbyterian Mission Agency has funded 1,155 grants for a total of $14,938,581 through seed, investment, growth and health insurance grants to new worshiping communities. 
The first of a two-part New Way conversation with the Rev. Elizabeth Edman, an Episcopal priest and the author of the 2016 book “Queer Virtue,” explores what being part of the queer community has taught Edman and can teach listeners about being faithful Christians.