This digest is a compilation of the social witness-related items that came before the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 220th General Assembly in 2012.
Keep ReadingIntroduction The Presbyterian Church (USA) has been engaged in a decade-long struggle to divest from companies that are profiting from the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. After an extensive corporate engagement process, the Committee
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A Response to the Foothills Presbytery Overtures I try to avoid getting bogged down in the details of church polity. Generally, this is because I think it leads us to spend too much time looking inward and debating minutia when that time and effort would be better spent looking outward,
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This article was originally published as an Op-ed in the Presbyterian Outlook on January 10, 2010. It is reprinted in this issue of Unbound with permission, with an invitation for the reader to reflect on how we have and have not lived into visions from the past. Look for further
MoreA letter from a Presbyterian Teaching Elder, baptized and raised in the PC(USA), to all my Friends in Christ: I write out of a concern that the word ‘missional’ does not help us learn from the errors so evident in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s general approach, which has been to
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Ark of Escape or Community of Reconciliation? When I teach the Reformed Confessions to students at Union Presbyterian Seminary, I like to point out that one of the benefits of belonging to our communion is belonging to a tradition with a dynamic understanding of confessionalism. Unlike the Lutheran tradition, which
MoreAn Opening Editorial There is crystal meth, and there is a crystal against meth and all its intoxicating cousins: the amethyst. In Greek and Roman mythology, the god Dionysus or Bacchus repents of an act of intemperate anger that killed and then transformed a young woman to white stone by
MoreAn Introduction from the PC(USA)’s Drug Policy Task Force We begin with some disturbing data: The United States has less than 5% of world’s population and 25% of the world’s incarcerated people. Even though whites outnumber blacks five to one and both groups use and sell drugs at similar rates,
MoreA longer version of this article originally appeared in Doing Justice, Loving Kindness, and Walking Humbly: The Witness of Some Southern Presbyterian Pastors for the Cause of Racial Harmony in the 1950s and 1960s, compiled by James S. Currie. All rights remain with the original publisher. In 1953, the Little
MoreUnbound: Where did the idea for the “Educate a Child, Transform the World” Campaign come from? Frank: The campaign theme came from the choice of quality education as the initial focus of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) World Mission’s critical global issue concerning global poverty. It was clear early on that
More“Children should be seen and not heard.” I imagine most readers have heard the adage. I can remember hearing that phrase more than once as a child. As I came to understand it, children were some sort of interesting conversation piece – enjoyable to have around as long as they
MoreA church-wide study of the status of women on all levels of the PC(USA) is now underway. This will be good news to many advocates who invested time and energy in advancing the idea of the study or served on the task force that created the original design which was
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