Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) makes business sense for companies and organizations including the Presbyterian Mission Agency, which has been training employees on the three values monthly during 2021 as the response to a General Assembly mandate.
Presbyterians want abundance of life for all. We want to help those living in poverty. We like to get our hands dirty to make a difference. We run food programs and build houses on mission trips. We partner with other agencies working to address poverty and hunger in our communities and around the world. The Matthew 25 vision embraces all these ways — and many more — in which we use our time, talents and treasure to feed the hungry and walk alongside the vulnerable.
When Dr. Seuss’s iconic Grinch famously declared that he must stop Christmas from coming, Sue Powers would hear nothing of it.
Pandemic or not, Oak Grove Presbyterian Church’s annual Alternative Christmas Marketplace would go on last year as usual.
Just not in the usual way.
I looked at my Amazon orders last week to gauge the depth of my complicity with economic injustice: 90 orders since January 2020. Do I struggle with this? Yes. Has that struggle led me to disentangle myself from the economic system that allows me to have what I want when I want it, and the cheapest price? No. I do always choose Amazon day — meaning that I choose to wait longer and group my orders to minimize the impact my comfort has on the workers, drivers and the planet. Do I struggle with this? Yes. How about you?
These days she’s the Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Davis, who teaches seminarians about education at Union Presbyterian Seminary’s Charlotte, North Carolina, campus. When she was 9 and growing up in West Virginia, that role would have been difficult to fathom.
In 2020, the price of bread doubled in Syria and the price of imported goods such as rice and sugar increased by 400%. The Jinishian Memorial Program provided coupons to 871 families to make food more affordable.
“If the Jinishian Memorial Program weren’t here with us, what would we do?” a desperate mother in Syria recently asked a JMP staff member.
To end systemic poverty, we first must understand its root causes by asking good questions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, two good questions to ask are, “How is the land used?” and “How are the people who live on that land treated?”
