The heads of Christian Churches in Zimbabwe issued a pastoral message to the nation on Wednesday, November 15, urging calm, prayer and national dialogue. The ecumenical statement was released just hours after four armored personnel carriers rolled into Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, and military officers reportedly seized control of the state broadcaster and placed 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe under effective house arrest.
The humanitarian conditions in the conflict-ridden Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are rapidly deteriorating. There is a now a deepening hunger crisis and an estimated 3.2 million people are without reliable access to enough nutritious food.
War lives on in the pain of its survivors and their families long after the violence ends. Members of a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) peace delegation saw the pain in the eyes of more than a dozen South Koreans who were forever changed by the impact of the massacre at No Gun Ri.
Marie ‘Breezy’ Lusted, a Presbyterian mission co-worker and long-term volunteer, served as a nurse and Bible translator in Ethiopia for 56 years. She passed away in North Carolina on October 29 at the age 85. Her sisters, Ruth and Anita, a niece, Cindy, and a close friend were at her bedside.
A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) peace delegation will travel to South Korea in November in response to Overture 12-01 and Committee Referral 12-13 that focus on the reunification of the Korean Peninsula and the need to build upon the increasing momentum toward peace. They were adopted at General Assembly 222 (2016) in Portland.
At a critical juncture in the dialogue around immigration policies, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is working to shift the narrative from a legal perspective to a human one.
The Rt. Rev. Fonki Samuel Forba, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, issued a statement yesterday urging peace and dialog in response to ongoing persecution and marginalization of the country’s Anglophone population.
At the end of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, 16 Presbyterian pastors had been killed, many had been wounded and some had fled the country. The churches that remained were empty.
Reconciliation is a sacred space where weary bodies are refreshed and troubled souls are soothed, where the roar of oppression is silenced and the calm of compassion resounds.
