On Thursday, Nov. 23, as most Americans were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, the people of Sudan were experiencing an intensification of the long-running conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and a paramilitary insurgency known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The Presbyterian Mission Agency’s World Mission ministry, in collaboration with the Office of Public Witness and the Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations, is launching a webinar series dedicated to the current crisis unfolding in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. The first webinar, scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, Dec. 12, is titled “Jewish and Christian Voices for Peace.”
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a new online landing page that will allow users to engage with the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict more easily using digital resources.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, in collaboration with World Mission and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, has awarded nearly $100,000 in grant funding to support relief efforts in Israel-Palestine. The now month-long conflict continues to escalate and exact a heavy toll on civilian casualties along with crippling home and property loss in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
In the midst of ongoing demonstrations of support for Guatemala’s recently elected leader, the former college professor Bernardo Arévalo, CEDEPCA, World Mission’s partner in Central America’s most populous country, held an informative webinar Thursday to discuss the support being offered to the demonstrators, who are under the leadership of indigenous Guatemalans.
Along with a group of ecumenical partners, a delegation of PC(USA) associates met with a Cuban delegation at the United Nations 78th General Assembly High Level Week to discuss topics that included economic sanctions, climate change, and how to deepen the partnership between PC(USA) and its sister church the Iglesia Presbiteriana — Reformada en Cuba — the Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba (IPRC). The Cuban delegation included President Miguel Díaz-Canel, the foreign minister, and the Cuban ambassadors to the United States and the UN.
Up to 100,000 people have fled their homeland of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic) in fear of persecution and ethnic cleansing by the hands of Azerbaijan military and government rulers. Already starving from a 10-month blockade, those fleeing are forced to escape through rough, unsafe territory and attacks from Azerbaijan military personnel before arriving in Armenia.
The Al Amana Centre (AAC) in Oman was founded in 1987, but its roots date back to the country’s first Christian mission in the late 19th century. Its initial iteration was evangelistic ministry, but quickly grew into medical care to serve the common good and live out a Christian witness among non-Christian people and education. It was the only modern hospital in the middle eastern country at the time and remained the only modern medical provider in Oman for nearly 80 years.
Red-tagging and other human rights violations are done systematically in the Philippines, according to Filipino human rights advocate Jimarie Snap Mabanta.
During “Inward and Outward,” her final Bible study Saturday for the Presbyterians for Earth Care conference, the Rev. Dr. Patricia Tull offered this caveat: “A journey that is self-renewing and self-focused does no earthly good.”
