covid-19 Archives

‘COVID-19 has not brought many blessings, but this is one’

Posted March 23rd, 2022

COVID-19 has exposed many discrepancies as well as learning opportunities for society and for the church. One of the greatest lessons for the church is the need for and use of technology.

Global partner works to eradicate systemic poverty by stabilizing families

Posted March 23rd, 2022

Like many global partners of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Compassion Protestant Society (CPS), the diaconal arm of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL), is working to cultivate thriving lives for vulnerable families. In 2021 alone, CPS assisted nearly 2,000 families.

A nation of shut-ins

Posted March 17th, 2022

Until the pandemic, the Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor spent a lot of her time meeting deadlines, paying careful attention to a full calendar and making sure to get to the airport two hours before her flight departed. In those days she flew a lot.

‘We are not victims of the crisis, but resilient communities’

Posted March 14th, 2022

The 66th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is centering the role of women and girls in combatting climate change. But the event opens, the world and women and girls in particular are facing numerous issues that intersect with the climate crisis, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a war in Europe that threatens to become a global conflict.

With a foot in each of two worlds, international human rights attorney has a unique perspective

Posted March 11th, 2022

Jonathan Kuttab is a well-known international human rights attorney who splits his time between Israel-Palestine and the United States.

A YAV reunion across the miles

Posted March 10th, 2022

It was a bit of an old home week Thursday for A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast, which dropped its most recent edition on Thursday. Listen to the podcast, hosted each week by the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong, by clicking here. The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program and Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice put on the weekly podcast.

Cultivating hope and resiliency in South Sudan

Posted March 3rd, 2022

Nyapan Gai no longer goes to sleep hungry. The widowed mother of six children, whom prevailing customs and societal traditions prevented from inheriting her late husband’s cattle, had no choice but to work whatever jobs she could find to feed her family.

Using a blacklight to point out and clean up our messes

Posted March 2nd, 2022

Multiple pandemics over the last two years, including COVID-19 and efforts to bring about racial justice in U.S. communities — even among communities of faith — have benefitted from a blacklight that highlights and helps clean up the messes that justice-seeking activists are asking the church to work on.

Massachusetts pastor to speak March 9 during Celebrate the Gifts of Women worship service

Posted February 28th, 2022

The theme for the 2022 Celebrate the Gifts of Women Sunday is “And a Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul.” The theme reflects on the circumstances of Jesus’ birth and childhood, focusing especially on young Mary, who heard Simeon’s prophetic words about the opposition Jesus would endure and that Mary would also feel.

Keeping the mission top of mind

Posted February 25th, 2022

In Deuteronomy, the people are urged never to forget God’s laws. Remember them. Teach them to future generations. “Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:8–9).