Racial Equity and Women’s Intercultural Ministries is launching a new virtual Bible study to celebrate Black History Month. The series is called “Models of Black Resistance Past and Present” and will stream on the RE&WIM Facebook page at 5 p.m. Eastern Time each Wednesday from February 1 through March 15.
“Jesus came to give us life to the full. Is life to the full having a secure job and taking care of our families well, or could it be life to the full is that I feel true internal freedom?” said Dr. Jessica ChenFeng, quoting John 10:10 in the opening keynote for the “Pursuit of Asian American Happiness” virtual conference hosted by the Center for Asian American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary on Thursday.
“A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” turned its attention last week to the repair of historic harms, including reparations. The guest of the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong was the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, named last year to direct the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Center for the Repair of Historic Harms. Listen to their conversation, which is about 50 minutes, by going here. Ross-Allam comes in during the 20th minute.
The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II noted that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebrated his final birthday on Jan. 15, 1968, helping to plan the Poor People’s March that he would not live to see. Meeting in the basement of the historic Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King’s staff presented the civil rights leader with a birthday cake and a few gag gifts. “They cut his birthday cake and they laughed for a while,” said Nelson, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), “and then he said, ‘Let’s get back to work.’ On his last birthday he reminded us there is still work to be done.”
As one who wrote the book on the role the Black church has played working to bring about social justice in the United States, the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins was the logical choice Tuesday to complete Union Presbyterian Seminary’s Just Preach/Just Act series. The series began Monday with a sermon by the Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler.
Johnson C. Smith Theological Seminary is relying on the calling of Isaiah 58:12 — “… you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” — as it begins convening a national conversation on what the seminary calls in a news release “the interest and capacity of diverse organizations in developing sustainable approaches to reparations” and repair.
White Christians who do the hard work of educating themselves and empathizing with the centuries of racial trauma their African American siblings have endured can produce hope and healing that’s badly needed, members of an online panel convened by Union Presbyterian Seminary said Tuesday.
The Thanksgiving narrative many Americans learned in school and celebrate each year is a destructive myth, said the Rev. Irv Porter in a webinar offered on Monday. Porter is the Associate for Native American Intercultural Congregational Support in the Presbyterian Mission Agency. The webinar was offered as a part of Native American Heritage Month, which occurs each November.
It was Billy Taing’s candor that made for a memorable and moving webinar hosted last week by Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center for Asian American Christianity. Taing joined his fellow co-director with the organization API Rise, the Rev. Diane Ujiiye, for a discussion titled “Freedom? A Conversation About Incarceration and Being Asian in the U.S.” Dr. David Chao, director of the Center for Asian American Christianity, was the host.
The Presbytery of the Inland Northwest has launched a new capital campaign seeking to raise $50,000 for repairs and renovations of its Native American churches.
