Fourth-year medical student Akilah Hyrams isn’t a doctor quite yet. Once she does start practicing, she’ll no doubt have a long line of willing patients following her recent appearance on “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast.” Listen here. Hyrams, a former Young Adult Volunteer and the daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, enters the conversation with hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe at 27:25.
One of the best-loved people at Nassau Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey, is Danny Miller, who’s now in his mid-30s and has been attending the church with his mother, Nancy Wilson, since he was 5 — three years after being diagnosed with autism.
Dr. Carolyn Chen, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, said during a recent “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” that for many workers — her recent book “Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley” focuses on the highly skilled ones toiling in the knowledge economy — workplaces are “the new faith communities in the new economy.”
“Pride is in its essence this uncontrolled joy, a light and a reflection of how the Holy Spirit works,” Ophelia Hu Kinney recently told “A Matter of Faith” podcast hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong. “I think of Pride as a way that light shines on things that didn’t have a light shone on them before and blows on things where the wind hasn’t gone before.”
A Young Adult Volunteer working this year with a youth group at a church in Dundee, Scotland, sees parallels between an aging Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — with both churches having an opportunity to pivot in order to appeal more broadly to people of all ages.
Thanks to the pandemic, tens of thousands of worship services are now posted online each week. For at least some stressed preachers who may be pressed for time, the temptation can be overwhelming to hear a well-crafted online sermon somewhere and pass all or part of it off as one’s own.
As part of the celebration of Pride Month, Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice has launched a series called “Queering the Bible,” which will start with a 16-part study of the Gospel of Mark written by LGBTQIA+ leaders in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and beyond. The series launched June 1 and continues through July 22.
