“I believe the church extends far beyond the congregation or building,” said the Rev. Mary Sellers Shaw. “I am called to build community both inside and outside the church.”
I still visualize the words etched into a granite slab on a wall of Elmina, a stately castle on the coast of Ghana, constructed in 1482 by the Portuguese:
IN EVERLASTING MEMORY OF THE ANGUISH OF OUR ANCESTORS. MAY THOSE WHO DIED REST IN PEACE. MAY THOSE WHO RETURN FIND THEIR ROOTS. MAY HUMANITY NEVER AGAIN PERPETUATE SUCH INJUSTICE AGAINST HUMANITY. WE, THE LIVING, VOW TO UPHOLD THIS.
Around this time last year, we met with a representative from Faith in Community Scotland (FiCS), an organization giving refugees and asylum seekers a platform to speak about their challenges and the treatment they had received from the United Kingdom’s Home Office. As newcomers representing the Young Adult Volunteer program in Scotland, we were excited to learn more about migration in Glasgow and the United Kingdom. The representative began our meeting with this sobering truth: All of the invited migrants refused the invitation because of their vulnerable status. In the parishes where we were accompanying the Church of Scotland, we were privileged to work with organizations attempting to bridge race, class and citizenship status.
Today’s my favorite day of the year. The start of a new year always gives me a peaceful feeling and reminds me of a new box of crayons or a blank canvas, full of possibilities and hope.
Down the street and around the globe, Presbyterians are committed to addressing the scourge of gender-based violence.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) states that “violence against women and girls is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world.” Noting that an estimated 1 in 3 women worldwide will experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime, UNFPA observes that gender-based violence “knows no social, economic or national boundaries.” For this reason, every year the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations facilitates the involvement of a PC(USA) delegation at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. This group shapes global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women and is supported in part by gifts to the Peace & Global Witness Offering.
Life in a Palestinian refugee camp is a combination of desperate conditions and also a hopeful disposition by many of the refugees who live there.
Conditions in the camp reflect a high unemployment rate, particularly among youth. In the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, the unemployment rate reaches over 50%. Most young people, particularly women, do not find the opportunity to work. Likewise, in Jordan and Lebanon, unemployment among youth in the refugee camps there reaches nearly 40%, making life in these camps quite difficult for young people.
Fifteen years after being sent to Iraq as a U.S. soldier, the Rev. Matthew Fricker felt compelled to return in response to a higher calling.
“I felt affection for the country, and I could feel God calling me back to this place because of the needs of the churches over there and the needs of all the Iraqi people,” Fricker said. That calling, he added, extended to his personal need for healing and reconciliation.
As the new year begins, McGregor Presbyterian Church its pastor, the Rev. Julie Walkup Bird, are looking ahead with renewed energy and excitement as the result of a two-year program to enhance congregational vitality.
McGregor Presbyterian Church in Columbia is one of the churches in South Carolina’s Trinity Presbytery that participated in the two-year Vital Congregations initiative.
A Catholic priest, a charismatic layperson and a Presbyterian pastor met with the patrol officer in charge of the Douglas border patrol station to discuss possible responses to the increased number of people dying while migrating in Sulphur Springs Valley, the valley in which Douglas, Arizona, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, sit. The “prevention through deterrence” border policy instituted by the Clinton administration, the economic boom of the 1990s and the devastation of the Mexican economy had turned our sleepy and isolated valley into the primary crossing point for unauthorized migration into the U.S. As a nation, we chose deserts and mountains as deadly deterrents to migration. Our policy is intentionally lethal.
On World Communion Sunday (Oct. 6), individual members of Temple Terrace Presbyterian Church (TTPC) in Florida lifted a loaf of bread from a country where they had lived and recited the words of institution in the language of that country — Arabic, German, Spanish, Greek, Tamil and others.
