More than 160 people tuning into Monday’s third online installment studying Matthew Desmond’s best-selling book, “Poverty, by America,” discussed together the heart of Desmond’s argument for doing away with poverty: how we rely on welfare, how we buy opportunity and a chapter on how to invest in ending poverty.
Matthew Desmond, the author of the 2023 book “Poverty, by America,” made a 15-minute online appearance Monday to help launch a four-week PC(USA)-wide study of his best-seller. More than 260 people were present to hear from Desmond, the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, whose 2017 book, “Evicted,” won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. They also discussed the first two chapters in small groups.
When a crowd was gathered on the hill to hear Jesus preach and the crowd was hungry, the disciples wanted to send them away. Instead, Jesus instructs them in Mark’s gospel, “you give them something to eat.”
Congregations, presbyteries and synods have a new opportunity to help the planet by participating in an effort to reduce the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s carbon footprint.
A draft of the new commitments out of COP28 climate summit will not be enough on their own to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as the UN climate conference in Dubai headed into the final phase this week.
A recent Matthew 25 workshop on eradicating systemic poverty focused viewers’ attention on the importance of being willing to dig in “for the long haul” to help address deeply rooted problems in international communities.
“If we get killed, tell your communities that Palestinians are peaceful humans struggling only for peace …”
These are the words of Presbyterian Hunger Program partner Rajeh Abbas, founder and director of the Palestinian nonprofit Improvement and Development for Communities Center (IDCO) based in Gaza.
On Nov. 4, about 150 people gathered in prayer at Chi’chil Biłdagoteel (Oak Flat) in the Tonto National Forest of Arizona, sacred land of the San Carlos Apache and other Indigenous nations.
The Presbyterian Hunger Program’s Jennifer Evans and Eileen Schuhmann helped young adults learn more about both spheres during a workshop held as part of “Jesus and Justice,” the Young Adult Advocacy Conference. Young adults came to the Presbyterian Center and gathered online for the first-ever conference, sponsored by PC(USA) advocacy ministries in Washington, D.C., and at the United Nations.
