Near the end of a recent Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) webinar, Tracie Campbell made an impassioned plea for people of faith to “do something” to curtail gun violence in this country.
Before the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins took to the stage at Schaller Memorial Chapel to deliver the final convocation for Synod School this year, the Rev. Dr. Matt Sauer of Manitowoc (Wisconsin) Cooperative Ministry, as he’d done all week, donned a red zip-up cardigan just like another Presbyterian, Fred Rogers, used to. It was Sauer’s duty to remind those attending the 69th annual gathering that not all the world is like the Synod of Lakes and Prairies’ Synod School, which concluded on the campus of Buena Vista University.
Concluding her weeklong journey through biblical accounts starting with the letter “c” — Creation, crisis, covenant and Christ came before — the Rev. DeEtte Decker, the preacher during Synod School and the communications director for the Presbyterian Mission Agency, concluded worship on the with more alliteration: the church as co-creator.
When Pastor Erika Irizarry Rodriguez received a technology grant from the Presbyterian Foundation, she breathed both a sigh of relief and exclaimed a shout of joy.
“Y’all responded a little better than I thought you would yesterday,” the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins told Synod School attendees, referring to a talk he delivered on whether some symbols belong in church. “So today I thought I’d talk about Christianity and capitalism.”
“God, you are with me.” What a powerful statement of faith that is!
The psalmist says that even though we walk through “the darkest valley,” we fear no evil, or, as the King James Version of the Bible reminds us, “the valley of the shadow of death.”
Rola Al Ashkar is a Presbyterian Christian from Lebanon. She grew up in a nonreligious family, in a culture drenched in religion. Her parents took her and her brothers to church and Sunday school on occasions. When she had her confirmation class, she received her first Bible, and even as a teenager, she read the Bible with critical eyes, questioning parts of it and searching for answers. Her curiosity led her to regularly attend Sunday services, youth meetings and church summer camps, and through those experiences her faith grew, and she found a community in the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon.
In the past several months, Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations has been leading peacemaking efforts in Israel-Palestine, the Korean Peninsula, and Sudan and South Sudan at the U.N. Some of these conflicts have been around as long as the United Nations has been in existence and appear intractable. Others are new, such as the war in Ukraine, as we note with concern the rising levels of political instability around the world. Peace is fragile, and justice is hard-won.
Jesus was asked, “… And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)
America’s history with Indigenous peoples hasn’t always been neighborly. In the past five years, the General Assembly has taken actions to change that legacy, and to be neighbors, not conquerors.
William Tennent probably never dreamed we would get to this point. The same could be said for John Witherspoon.
Tennent, some may recall, is considered by many to be the father of Presbyterian higher education in the United States. It’s been almost 300 years since this forward-thinking Presbyterian pastor established his ministerial Log College in Pennsylvania to educate and prepare commoners for ministry. The college was his response to the first “Great Awakening,” a revivalist movement in the early 18th century that aligned with the Presbyterian goal of “always being reformed.”
