Seeing the “diamond ring” is the holy grail of amateur astronomers: that moment in a total solar eclipse when the edge of the sun’s corona bursts forth with a sparkling burst of light at one point while the rest of the rim is illuminated like a ring. I had no chance of seeing that where I was, located many miles away from the path of totality. All I saw was a solar “croissant.” But I did consider the experience holy. Read more »
April 10, 2024
The psalmist and the solar eclipse
Seeing the “diamond ring” is the holy grail of amateur astronomers: that moment in a total solar eclipse when the edge of the sun’s corona bursts forth with a sparkling burst of light at one point while the rest of the rim is illuminated like a ring. I had no chance of seeing that where I was, located many miles away from the path of totality. All I saw was a solar “croissant.” But I did consider the experience holy. Read more »
“This annual lecture continues Dr. Cone’s dynamic legacy of prophetic Black theological and religious thought that pushes hard against the conscience of America,” said the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, who held a moment of reverent pause as she asked the audience to consider the legacy of the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone, who had been a professor at Union for 50 years. Cone died in 2018. The event on April 3, held at the seminary’s James Chapel and streamed online, was the fourth annual lecture to be held in his honor. 
The fourth episode of the “Around the Table” podcast series features Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastors talking about how parents can have faith conversations with their children throughout different stages of the child’s life. Listen to the 32-minute edition here. 
From April 6-9, Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in partnership with the Office of Christian Formation of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, hosted an intergenerational Creation care event culminating in three and a half minutes of the total solar eclipse on Monday. 
The Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong, the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” opened their most recent installment with the voices of youth who’d attended a conference at Massanetta Springs Camp and Conference Center in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Catoe asked youth about what they want to see happening in the church today. 
Communications staff in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) garnered six victories during the 2024 DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Awards announced Friday by the Religion Communicators Council for work they completed during 2023. 
As they did Thursday, members of the Commission on the Unification of Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency spent almost all their time Friday meeting in closed session as a committee of the whole. Commissioners emerged Friday afternoon from their gathering at the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky, for a 20-minute public session before praying and adjourning. 
It is the season when volunteer work trips kick into high gear as groups from churches and other partners of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance show their love and compassion by helping with rebuilding projects in communities affected by disasters.
For groups that have one of these trips in their future, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has put together a free, downloadable how-to guide to assist with planning. 
What gives someone the will to do what is right in the face of possible death threats, intimidation or loss of comfort?
One could offer it’s the power of the Holy Spirit, and yet following the nudge of the Spirit is still a choice.
In the postbellum South, a Presbyterian minister recognized an opportunity to educate Black men and prepare them for ministry. This conviction took him all the way to the 1875 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, which voted to authorize the inception of the Tuscaloosa Institute. The Rev. Dr. Charles Allen Stillman’s legacy is deeply rooted and connected to the history of what is now known as Stillman College. 
The pictures of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza being forced by the Israeli military to evacuate the northern part of the Gaza Strip heading south evoked old memories of the 1948 Nakba. In 1948, Jewish Israeli terror groups destroyed and erased over 500 Palestinian villages and displaced nearly 800,000 Palestinians,¹ including more than 50,000 Palestinian Christians who had to flee, thus becoming refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon.