For a long time, American Christians have been hearing a story about Islam. It’s a story about conflict and hostility, about foreigners and strangers. At the heart of this story is a fundamental incompatibility between the two religions going all the way back to their original encounters. According to that story, the only valid Christian response to Islam is resistance.
“When I left there, I was ashamed — and I consider myself a convinced European — to be a member of this European Union,“ said Martin Dutzmann, the authorized representative of the Protestant Churches in Germany (EKD) at the German government and the EU after returning from his recent visit to the overcrowded and chaotic refugee camp Moria on Lesvos Island. And, he adds, “the EU has kept the situation in the camps on the Greek islands at bay for years.”
Representatives from Presbyterian World Mission and the Office of Public Witness in Washington, D.C., along with the National Council of Churches (NCC) and officials from other denominations welcomed a delegation of the Egyptian-U.S. Dialogue Initiative.
Representatives from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and The Episcopal Church met this week at the Transfiguration Spirituality Center in Glendale, Ohio, to discuss mandates affirmed by both churches last year to talk about such issues as what would be needed to lead both denominations toward full reconciliation of ordered ministry.
Anastasiia Rozykova, a Russian journalist who grew up in an agnostic family, is among 14 Presbyterian Peacemaking Program’s International Peacemakers. She came to faith during her university studies, after taking a course in world religions and reading about Martin Luther and his 95 Theses.
Pioneering Presbyterian the Rev. Patricia McClurg, who once shared candy bars with actress Whoopi Goldberg and shared a stage with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Coretta Scott King, died Aug. 25 at age 80.
Her memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Sept. 21 at Montreat Presbyterian Church in Montreat, N.C.
From the Iranian Revolution to the attacks on September 11, 2001, questions and fears about Islam have proliferated American Christian life for decades. Yet more recently, the tangle of Christian-Muslim relations has become more complicated, with those in power mainstreaming Islamophobia as a path to political and societal power.
