For her talk last week at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, author and journalist Michele Norris gathered prominent Minnesotans — including the state’s lieutenant governor — to take turns sharing various people’s six words on race.
As womanist theologians, the pastors of Liberty Community Church in Minneapolis are seeking the healing of their Northside neighborhood through co-creating spaces of rest and resistance with individuals victimized by the sex trafficking trade and within a community suffering from the effects of systemic poverty and structural racism.
The Rev. Dr. Terrlyn L. Curry Avery and the congregation of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Massachusetts, look forward to a March 2 gala designed to “raise money and celebrate — and raise spirits as well,” the church’s pastor said.
On a crisp winter day on December 29, 1986, Jewel McRae began her first day as a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national staff, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history.
Last September, just about the time of his 88th birthday, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., had a transformative experience. It was so life-changing that he wasn’t sure the people present at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. as well as many more online would want him to deliver his planned talk, “How Can We Heal Our Nation?” as part of the McClendon Scholar Program.
Last week as part of the lead-up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presbyterian Peace Fellowship offered an informative webinar featuring author and scholar Dr. Michael Long, who most recently edited “Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics” about the man most responsible for organizing the landmark March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
The online weekly Chapel Service held most Wednesdays by and for the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had three observances to mark: Monday’s birthday celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Matthew 25: Dismantle Structural Racism Sunday as well as Racial & Intercultural Justice/Presbyterians Affirm Black Lives Matter Sunday.
On Tuesday, Columbia University’s Dr. Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. , one of the nation’s foremost commentators on religion and the political economy, warned an online crowd the nation is “at such a dangerous point” that “if we don’t push back against those who weaponize the Bible very soon, they might just get the upper hand, and we and our descendants will suffer.”
“We have to be about the business of taking care of young people. It can’t be all about just us here within the church confines. It’s got to be about other people,” said the Rev. Dr. Ralph Galloway, co-pastor of Liberty Community Church.
