Paola Tognarelli’s [Tog-na-rē-le] connection to Mother Earth is sacred.
Just like the bond she now shares with the other significant women in her life.
“On Sunday, March 10, 1822, four men and six women swore an oath together in district school #1 on the corner of Concord and Adams Street in the village of Brooklyn,” reads Collette Foster, a member of First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, New York, in a video series celebrating the congregation’s bicentennial. “Their idea,” Foster continues, “was to organize a house of worship and to found the only Presbyterian church in their settlement of 7,000 people.”
From helping women to start businesses in Panama to amplifying the voices of unhoused people in California, partners of the Presbyterian Committee on the Self-Development of People are making an impact worth celebrating.
While the economic and social status of women may be improving marginally worldwide, the lives of many women in India — like Smitha Krishnan — have remained virtually unchanged.
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will hold a seminar at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday called “Antisemitism, Israel-Palestine and the Church: A Conversation,” featuring the Rev. Denise Anderson of Compassion, Peace and Justice ministries and Rabbi Alana Suskin of the Pomegranate Initiative.
Late last month dozens of white clergy from churches and mid councils, elected officials and other leaders in Lansing, Michigan, gathered at the Reachout Christian Center Church to apologize to the African American community for slavery and its aftermath. Among the participants was the Rev. Jermaine Ross-Allam, director of the PC(USA)’s Center for the Repair of Historic Harms.
By way of photo submission, Presbyterians are invited to tell the world the ways their church, worshiping community, mid council or organization is carrying out the Matthew 25 invitation.
A congregation-based community organizing group in the Annapolis, Maryland area is helping churches and other groups to champion local causes through working together as a united force.
Calling herself a sometimes “reluctant pursuer of hearing God’s voice,” the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace nonetheless picked up the phone one day early in 2022 and “made a blind call to this dear sister and now friend,” the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, to discuss standing for the office of Co-Moderators. The rest is history, of course: in June 2022, commissioners to the 225th General Assembly elected the two as Co-Moderators, offices they hold right up until the 226th General Assembly, set to be held online and in-person in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2024.
