6,172 cases of sexual assault were reported in the Department of Defense in 2016, a slight increase over 2015 and a sharp jump from 2012, when 3,604 cases were reported. This sharp increase likely stems as much from an increased willingness to report as it does from an increase in assaults. Six out of 10 survivors reported retaliation for having reported.
Norman Fong grew up in a housing project. Coming from a low-income family he learned early in life what it was like to be evicted and to not know where to go.
As a young boy, the Rev. Ken Fuquay felt a call to preach, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or just a shadow cast by his father. The son of a Pentecostal Holiness minister, Fuquay is still referred to as “Tommy’s son” in some circles.
“When the church is awake, justice is done,” says the Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble.
Gamble serves as mission catalyst for Pacific Presbytery, which worked in conjunction with a Southern California church movement called Matthew 25/Mateo 25 to secure the recent release of a Guatemalan immigrant pastor who had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Presbyterians met in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, in November to consider the future of Presbyterian Border Region Outreach (PBRO). The relationship between the Mexico and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denominations ended, major financial support had been dwindling for years, and communications between the six border ministry sites had become slack. On the surface, it was remarkable that so many still active in the border ministry were determined to travel as much as a thousand miles to meet on behalf of an organization that appeared to be in its final days.
In an open letter to the church dated Dec. 6, General Assembly Co-Moderators Denise Anderson and Jan Edmiston said a “deeper cultural shift” is needed to overcome sexual harassment and other forms of sexual discrimination, and they urged Presbyterians to use “specific resources to help achieve that goal.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is inviting ecumenical youth to be stewards at the 2018 Central Committee in Geneva, Switzerland. With an application deadline of Jan. 31, the Stewards Program aims to bring together a
dynamic and diverse group of 20 young people, between the ages of 18 and 30, from all over the world. The program will take place June 5–23. The invitation is open to people from a variety of backgrounds, churches and regions.
Despite the Trump administration’s anti-environmental policies, delegates to a recent climate convention in Bonn, Germany, are prepared to continue their fight for environmental protection, says a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) delegate to that convention.
The Rev. T. Denise Anderson, co-moderator of the 222nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), added her voice to the many faith leaders present for the recent launch of The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival in Washington, D.C. Owing its name to the Poor People’s Campaign instituted in 1967 by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the call seeks to unite “tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality.”
Between 1880 and 1940, nearly 5,000 black men and women were lynched in the United States. In response, African-American Christians turned to their religion and to the cross of Jesus as a symbol of suffering but also of profound hope. Despite these violent killings and the centrality of the cross in Christian communities, the lynching tree did not occupy any space in the American theological imagination.
