With every act of violence in the U.S., whether at a church, a military recruiting station, or a movie theatre, we revisit the possibility of yet another incident, carried out by armed, sometimes unstable or radicalized individuals, whose goal is to murder large numbers of people in public places. That fear is exacerbated by daily news of murderous acts by Islamic State, al Qaeda, and other groups that are trying to recruit followers across the globe, including from our own communities.
Thousands of women and children are making the perilous trek from Central America to seek asylum from brutal violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The federal government is locking these families up in privately run detention centers. Our government is re-traumatizing families who have fled domestic violence and gang violence by confining them in prisons.
Monday night Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson, Richard Rocha, gave a statement regarding family detention. In this statement he said, “ ... ICE will generally not detain mothers with children, absent a threat to public safety or national security, if they have received a positive finding for credible or reasonable fear. ...”
On Friday, the Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, joined with 33 other leaders of faith denominations and organizations to urge Congress duly to enact a budget that will keep our government running into the new fiscal year.
President Obama and his likely GOP challenger Mitt Romney called for prayers and reflection Friday (July 20) after a deadly shooting at a Colorado movie theater, while liberal religious leaders called for stricter gun control laws.
Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have written a letter to all congregations of the PC(USA) in anticipation of the observance of Reformation Day on October 31st.
In their letter, Cindy Bolbach and Landon Whitsitt, Moderator and Vice Moderator of the 219th General Assembly (2010), Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, and Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the General Assembly Mission Council, liken the present time of the church to that of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.
Top leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have called on the Iranian government to release the Rev. Yousef Nadarkhani, a 33 year-old minister of the Church of Iran and pastor of a 400-member congregation in the city of Rasht, who was sentenced to death in November 2010 by a state court for apostasy (abandonment of a religion) and evangelizing Muslims.
As the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks approaches, church leaders reflect on the past and look forward to the future.
In a letter to “all who minister in the name of Jesus Christ in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” elder Cindy Bolbach, Moderator of the 219th General Assembly (2010), Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, and Linda Valentine, Executive Director of the General Assembly Mission Council, equate the attacks with those “that define a generation.”
The Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), issued a statement today (Wednesday) in response to the bill signed by President Obama yesterday that will increase the debt-ceiling by more than $2 trillion and cut a roughly equivalent amount of spending from the U.S. budget.
In the statement, Parsons writes, “While I am pleased that the nation no longer faces the impending financial peril of default on our national debt, I am deeply troubled by the deficit-reduction package that Congress passed to get us to this place.”
To congregations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
May grace, mercy, and peace be yours in abundance (Jude 1:2).
The debate about ordination standards has been a Presbyterian family struggle for much of the last three decades. We have sought to find that place where every congregation and every member, deacon, elder, and minister of the Word and Sacrament can share their gifts in ministry while, at the same time, the integrity of every congregation, member, deacon, elder, and minister is respected.
The Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), issued the following statement in response to the bombing in Jerusalem today.