Visual Parables’ Top Ten Film list is usually different from most lists because ethical and spiritual values in the films carry more weight than aesthetics. That the latter is important, however, is shown each year by the fact that faith-based films seldom show up on the list, most of these being dramatized sermons rather than open-ended works of art.
As we enter the 2020s, the United States finds itself frequently looking back to the early 1970s — a similar time of harsh political polarization, with issues of race and poverty a prominent part of our conversations and a church wondering how to address them.
The Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations is sending out a letter today to let the UN Security Council know the church’s view on recent tensions between the United States and Iran.
Representatives from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and its partners have returned from an international climate conference that left some observers disappointed about a lack of aggressive action to protect the Earth.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness in Washington D.C. is urging members to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to oppose further military action against Iran without congressional approval.
Important protections for retirement and health benefits plans operated by churches, religious institutions, and affiliated organizations were included in the federal spending packages signed into law Dec. 20, 2019.
At Caldwell Presbyterian, the walls of our sanctuary talk. The voices are those of enslaved African Americans owned by the Caldwell family on a plantation north of our city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Before emancipation, their forced labor, blood, sweat and tears created the fortune that was later given to this church to build its sanctuary in 1922.
First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta wanted to reshape its ministries. Standing in the heart of the city since 1848, becoming the first Presbyterian church to lay roots in Atlanta, the congregation has had a long history of community involvement, from serving breakfasts to the homeless every Sunday to providing safe housing to women, to name a few. Still, it was time to think differently, go further and create ministries that would empower people, ministries that would “walk alongside the community,” says the Rev. Rebekah LeMon, executive pastor.
How long, O Lord? This anguished cry flows from the mouths of millions of beleaguered folks in this, the richest nation in the world. We hear reports of the wealth of our richest citizens and see on our streets those who have no place to sleep. We pass beggars at intersections with their cardboard signs asking for a pittance. Our star athletes are offered monumental amounts of money to play the sports we so avidly watch, and even those among them who grossly misbehave can afford fines in the millions of dollars.
