Fifty years ago, at the 1974 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), David Sindt rose from his seat and bravely and hopefully held up a sign with a single question: “Is Anyone Else Out There Gay?”
During the pandemic, the Rev. Bethany Peerbolte was making phone calls to members of the youth group she led as a way of checking in while remaining socially distant. The youth started using terms like “lukewarm Christian,” which struck Peerbolte as “not very Presbyterian,” so she started searching online for their source.
The Presbyterian Mission Agency has released new resources to help promote LGBTQIA+ inclusion and understanding within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as well as anywhere that individuals or families may be seeking answers about issues related to inclusion and diversity.
This summer, together with his partner Troy, the Rev. Brian Ellison, executive director of Covenant Network of Presbyterians, crossed three countries off his bucket list with a visit to the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In Latvia’s capital, Riga, they visited the new Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which “tells the story of a healthy functioning democracy” in a country that was occupied from 1939-89 by first the Soviets, then the Germans and then the Soviets again.