COVID-19 has ravaged the Navajo Nation, killing Native Americans at a faster rate than any other community in the country. According to a report published in early 2021, Native Americans have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic — especially on reservations, where access to basic resources, including food and water, can be limited.
As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world in 2020, a few countries in Asia, including Taiwan, had controlled the virus extremely well and life remained relatively normal.
Every Thursday, I try to wear black to stand in solidarity with my siblings who are experiencing violence. Some days I forget, but working from home gives me the opportunity to correct it. But those who experience violence can’t forget, because they live with the trauma of it every day. What if we, in our daily lives, loved others like God in Christ loves them? Would we turn a blind eye to the violence and injustice we know is happening around us? What if we lived in a world that did not tolerate violence? What if the church stood as a voice against violence?
Bethel Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia is an African American congregation of about 45 members that’s doing the work of a congregation 10 times its size. Bethel is described as a little church with a big heart for mission. The congregation accepted the Matthew 25 invitation in 2019, but it was already doing the work the gospel requires.
If ever a year was appropriate to be deemed tohubohu it was 2020. It is hard to believe after all that has happened, that it could even possibly be time to turn our attentions toward planning for Palm Sunday. But even in such a state, with so many things looking different, including how we worship together, life continues.
An undercurrent of fear ran through the celebration for graduates of English as a Second Language classes conducted by the refugee resettlement agency World Relief at Carmichael Presbyterian Church in Carmichael, California, a city 11 miles northeast of Sacramento.
The Four Chaplains stood on the deck of the USAT Dorchester on Feb. 3, 1943. Linked arm in arm, chaplains George Fox (Methodist), Alexander Goode (Jewish), Clark Poling (Reformed) and John Washington (Roman Catholic) sang hymns and offered prayers as the ship sank beneath the turbulent waves of the North Atlantic. Perhaps these courageous servants of God were comforted, even as we read in our Psalm, by knowing the faithful love of our Lord endures forever.
Creativity is one of the things I love best about being a children’s minister at Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church in Lafayette, California. And few are as creative as my colleague, Lori Robinson, associate director of children’s ministry, who says, “The image of God is like a mosaic where each of us has within us a single piece: The more people we get to know, the better we understand the image of God.”
Who are the “nones,” the more than 50% of the U.S. population who told Gallup pollsters in 2020 they no longer belong to a church, synagogue or mosque?
Contrary to the prayer for the “Reaffirmation of Baptismal Covenant for a Congregation” in the 1993 Book of Common Worship, which begins with “Eternal and gracious God, we remember before you the promises made to your people from the foundation of the world and sealed in the living waters of your grace,” when I think about the meaning of baptism, I scan the biblical narrative not for stories about water, but for stories about God’s promise.
