white supremacy

In too many ways, we Christians ‘look more like the world today than the world looks like us’

Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner regularly prays for and with congressional leaders from both political parties and sends daily Scripture passages to many lawmakers. The co-founder and CEO of the Skinner Leadership Institute delivered the first plenary talk Monday during Ecumenical Advocacy Days, an online event that concludes Wednesday and includes attendees and leaders from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

‘I believe the divine embrace is wide indeed’

The Rev. Dr. Anna Case-Winters, who has taught theology at McCormick Theological Seminary for 35 years, wasn’t all gloom and doom Wednesday during the Leading Theologically podcast hosted twice each month by the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty of the Presbyterian Foundation.

‘These are people doing real work together’

After 17 three-hour sessions which included homework assignments, the 36-member Leadership Innovation Team tasked with re-aligning the Presbyterian Mission Agency in the coming months to make it more able to carry out the ministry Jesus describes in his Matthew 25 parable has completed its work.

Minute for Mission: Juneteenth Reflection

Every year since 1865, there has been one day that most Black people have held as a celebratory occurrence. On June 19, 1865, the last of the Black Americans who were in the condition of chattel servitude were freed. Texas, the last state to hold out on the edict of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln more than two years prior, had finally been forced into compliance. And so, it is this date in June that many Black Americans consider to be Independence Day and thus a cause for annual jubilation that we have titled Juneteenth.

Until words become flesh

The year was 1903. The crowd was gathered on a street in Wilmington, Delaware. A Black man named George White had been arrested on charges of assaulting and killing a white girl. The man orating was a Presbyterian pastor named Robert Elwood. The mob broke into George White’s holding cell, dragged him out, then beat, hacked and burned him to death [a documentary about the lynching of George White, “In the Dead Fire’s Ashes,” directed by Stephen Labovsky, debuted at the Wilmington Film Festival in spring 2005]. 

No such thing as neutral

This is it. The hard conversation. You’re prepared to lead your church group in the difficult work of antiracism. You’ve researched the perfect book. You’ve got the webinar cued up. You have your difficult but necessary questions prepared. But have you done your own work?

Engaging Matthew 25 through video

Engaging with Matthew 25 and the three areas of focus that make up the vision — building congregational vitality, dismantling structural racism and eradicating systemic poverty — is being addressed in a variety of ways by the 765 congregations and 72 mid councils who have signed on since its launch in April 2019. Now there is another way to start those conversations and actively engage in the world around us.