Clarkston has been synonymous with refugee resettlement for decades. Described as the Ellis Island of the South, and the most diverse square-mile in North America, the small city includes a number of faith and non-profit groups assisting and accompanying refugees. According to a CBS News report, more than 60 languages are spoken in Clarkston. Fifty-three percent of its residents were born outside the United States.
Last Thursday night, the Presbyterian Historical Society celebrated the completion of the Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon Digital Collection, a collaborative effort among PHS, The Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership at Union Presbyterian Seminary and The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary (Columbia University Libraries).
Coinciding with the fall PHS board meeting, the event saw friends of the society mixing with PHS staff, seminary leaders from Richmond and New York City and members of the Cannon family. After outdoor food and refreshments, attendees gathered inside for a speaker’s program.
The nearly 300 Presbyterians gathered Tuesday for the start of the first Polity, Benefits and Mission Conference since the pandemic did what they enjoy doing the most: worshiping the God who has not forsaken them and continues to delight in hearing about their faith journeys.
No one can quite tell that story like the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly (2022), whose sermon, “In the Margins and Footnotes,” highlighted opening worship held in a hotel conference center just a few hundred feet from the Gateway Arch.
When the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis talks about her first year as Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly—leading plenaries in Louisville alongside the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, traveling the nation and world as a denominational ambassador, talking with Presbyterians at congregations, mid councils and seminaries—she is generous with her reflections and quick to connect big ideas with the many people she has met.
She answers questions over Zoom with pastoral care even for the interviewer, asking questions back, floating possible directions for conversation: “What would you like to talk about next?” “I have some more time…Can you keep talking?”
On Saturday morning, the Revs. Shavon Starling-Louis and Ruth Faith Santana-Grace, Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly, discussed their first year in that call. Having stood for election with the theme “Unbounded we thrive,” the two continue to preach a message of abundance, accountability and possibility to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
After three flights and 13 hours, the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis (Co-Moderator of the 225th General Assembly) and I arrived in Juba, South Sudan on Feb. 1. We were traveling as part of an ecumenical Journey Toward Peace, a follow-up to Pope Francis’s spiritual retreat with political leaders of South Sudan in 2019. The journey was delayed from 2020 because of Covid-19 and again in 2022 to allow the pope to heal from a knee injury and recover his strength.
A team of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders is traveling to South Sudan the first week in February, joining an ecumenical delegation that includes the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
The Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have appointed 10 individuals to serve on the Special Committee on the Standing Rules of the General Assembly. An additional appointment is pending. The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis and the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace announced the appointments in a letter late last week.
The Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have announced the names of individuals who will serve on the new Commission to Unify the Office of the General Assembly and the Presbyterian Mission Agency. The Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis and the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace made the appointments in recent days after reviewing the names of more than 115 individuals from across the denomination.
During the evening hours on Friday, the first day of the Moderators’ Conference, the Co-Moderators of the 225th General Assembly (2022), the Rev. Ruth Faith Santana-Grace and the Rev. Shavon Starling-Louis, answered questions from the 145 or so mid council moderators gathered in person and online and exchanged some of the wisdom that’s helped make them beloved in Presbyterian circles.