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The Gun Violence Prevention Working Group of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF) has been hard at work. The team of 15 Working Group members has completely retooled its primary resource, the Gun Violence Prevention Congregational Toolkit. One of the few comprehensive resources for congregations on this issue, the prior toolkit editions have been accessed by more than 2,500 Presbyterians and others from all 50 states. It was time for an update!
For Shawn Duncan, it’s the little things — like getting a birthday card — that mean a lot.
Perhaps it’s because Duncan, a military veteran living in Las Vegas, hadn’t had a mailbox in years.
Or a home.
The Presbyterian Hunger Program has been supporting its partner Improvement and Development for Communities Center (IDCO) in Gaza since 2014 in IDCO’s efforts to improve the food security situation for Gazans.
The Reimagining America Project (RAP), a grassroots effort of clergy, activists and local leaders in and around Charlotte, North Carolina, who are working to reduce the unjust impacts race has on the systems of our society, was the subject of an illuminating webinar recently offered by Union Presbyterian Seminary and two of its institutions, the Center for Social Justice and Reconciliation (CSJR) and the Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership.
On this day, communities around the world observe Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Together, we stand in solidarity with the Jewish people and pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. An estimated 6 million European Jews and at least 5 million prisoners of war, Romany, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and other victims were murdered by the Nazis in one of the most horrendous campaigns in human history. On this day, as we pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, we also come together knowing that this act of remembrance is a commitment to a shared responsibility for humankind to ensure such crimes never happen again.
Indigenous communities have been struck by the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit people (MMIW) for decades. This epidemic is a systemic failure where Indigenous women are going missing and being murdered at alarmingly high rates with minimal justice. Within the past several years, the MMIW movement has brought awareness of this violence to the public’s attention. Still, there is much work to be done.
Three pastors serving churches in Mission Presbytery featured in this Presbyterians Today story recently took to the airwaves for an honest and illuminating conversation about clergy loneliness and isolation. Watch the 48-minute conversation that pastors Monica Thompson Smith, Jasiel Hernandez Garcia and Maria Vargas-Torres have with the author of the piece, Fred Tangeman of the communications staff in the Office of the General Assembly, and the managing editor of Presbyterians Today, the Rev. Layton Williams Berkes, who hosted the event, by going here or here.
May Friendship Day, a Church Women United initiative, is most often celebrated on the first Friday of the month of May around a theme of shared concern for Christian women and their communities. The predecessor to May Friendship Day, May Fellowship Day, began in 1933 after two Christian women’s groups planned gatherings based on similar concerns: child health and children of migrant families. These groups united and, over the years, eventually became what we now know as Church Women United. The May celebration has been continually observed since 1933; in 1999, Church Women United changed the name from May Fellowship Day to May Friendship Day.
Wisdom. That’s one of the things the Rev. Jacob Duché prayed for at the first Continental Congress in 1774 — wisdom in forming a nation.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This month, we can all be mental health advocates, joining others to come together as one unified voice to decrease the stigma surrounding mental health and illness, increase visibility of treatment options and support those who deal with mental health concerns.
