On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. The first was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. The second bomb would be dropped a few days later, on Aug. 9, on the city of Nagasaki. It’s estimated that 70,000 to 135,000 people died from the first bomb and 60,000 to 80,000 people died from the second.
Does being non-white and non-Christian make one less American?
Dr. Duncan Ryūken Williams answered that question in a book it took him 17 years to complete, “American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War,” his 2019 work that won him the 2022 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Williams delivered his Grawemeyer lecture Tuesday in Caldwell Chapel at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which along with the University of Louisville awarded Williams this year’s prize.
The theme for this year’s World Community Day is “New Places, New Faces at the Table.” As Christians, we are called to nurture and cultivate life-giving community — within our families, our churches and throughout God’s world. So let us extend welcome in love and mutual respect.
Bridging the division in Korea through reunification is a dream of many. Another dream has been to compile the history of mission workers of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and partner churches in Korea from 1884 to the present. This connection of past and present mission workers in Korea by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and partner churches in Korea has become reality in the publication of the first “Korean-English Dictionary of Presbyterian Missionaries in Korea 1884-2020,” published March 27 in Korean.
As Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-workers based in Japan over the past several years, my wife, Ann, and I have made numerous mission trips to Myanmar to further our partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Myanmar (PCM).
As the world struggled to recover from the ravages of a global war, churches across America bore witness to their faith in a united act of generosity that helped relieve human suffering.
We remember the Holocaust more than 70 years after that horror. International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates the Warsaw ghetto uprising, when Jewish people put up the single largest resistance of World War II as German troops entered the ghetto to deport the last of the inhabitants.
War has a human face. Every shadow, every line, every wrinkle is part of the story.
A PC(USA) peace delegation visited the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum during the group’s recent visit to South Korea. They watched video interviews with “comfort women,” who spoke no English. Although there were English subtitles, they weren’t necessary. The women’s faces said everything.
When the 110,000 American citizens and immigrants of Japanese descent living on the West Coast were taken without due process into ten “Relocation Camps” by the federal government in the first year of the US’ involvement in World War II, they set about immediately organizing places of worship through which to seek solace and strength.
