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Racial Justice
Enthusiastic energy filled the Compass Ballroom at the Marriott Hotel in North Charleston, South Carolina Thursday morning as the 2023 conference of the National Black Presbyterian Caucus (NBPC) commenced. While the national conference takes place biennially, this year’s event, called “A Gathering of Black Presbyterians,” is the first to be held in person since the pandemic began. A virtual gathering was held in 2021.
During Wednesday’s online Chapel Service, the Rev. Carlton Johnson helped the PC(USA)’s national staff to celebrate Juneteenth a few days early with a thoughtful and provocative take on Matthew 20:1-16, the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.
With a hand in so many realms of kin-dom building — consulting, speaking, preaching, doing antiracism work, leading a seminary institute — it’s a wonder Dr. Chris Burton found a spare 30 minutes on Thursday to appear on the podcast “Leading Theologically.”
When the Rev. Shanea D. Leonard was named the director of Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries at the Presbyterian Mission Agency last October, they were well aware that big changes were on the horizon for the ministry area.
In the most recent edition of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast,” Dr. Jonathan Tran pushes against racial capitalism, a task begun in his 2021 book, “Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism.”
Declaring himself to be “a small product of a great tradition who believes we should never be surprised by evil or paralyzed by fear,” Dr. Cornel West joined Ifeoma Ike, an advocate, writer and policy advisor, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis Saturday for Westminster Town Hall Forum’s Arc Toward Justice series.
Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries has organized a Juneteenth conversation between pastors and denominational leaders about the status and stability of Black Presbyterian churches in the wake of Covid. The conversation will be pre-recorded and then shown online beginning at noon Eastern Time on June 19, Juneteenth, on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Facebook page.
When a Korean-American church celebrates its 70th year anniversary by opening with a Native American (Elona Street-Stewart, the Co-Moderator of the 224th General Assembly) telling the story of her people in Turtle Island thousands of year before it became United States, the destruction that came with Christian mission in Turtle Island, and the impossible gospel-bloom from the dust (the storyteller is a Christian Native American!), at first it’s difficult for your brain to adjust. It all seems darker, but it’s not.
A panel of New Testament scholars convened by Union Presbyterian Seminary late last month took on the uncomfortable reality that “contrary to popular opinion, the Bible has not always been an ally in the struggle for antiracist work. Though replete with Scriptures that convey God’s vision for a world of equality and justice where every human being is created in the common image of God and viewed as equally valuable, the Bible has also been used for more nefarious ends,” including, as a webinar promotion put it, “theologically justified supremacist thought.”
Each year as May 5 approaches, which is the National Day of Awareness & Action for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls & Two-Spirit People, Madison McKinney feels what she called on Wednesday “a heavy burden in my heart.”
