By Toya Richards, Office of the General Assembly. Appointments have been made for two General Assembly created bodies charged with helping the Presbyterian Church (USA) chart a way forward as a denomination. Twelve people have been named to the Way Forward Commission and fifteen individuals have been named to the 2020 Vision Team, both of which were actions…
By Mateen Elass, on his personal blog. Due to ongoing reverberations from the June 2016 PCUSA General Assembly where a “Muslim partner” led the gathered Presbyterians in a prayer to Allah seeking their conversion to Islam, newly appointed Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson, Jr. has published a defense of the denomination’s position on interfaith relations,…
Presbyterian Church (USA) presbyteries will be voting to ratify 16 amendments to the denomination’s constitution which were approved by the 222nd General Assembly that met this past June in Portland, Ore. The most controversial issue is the General Assembly’s decision to decouple baptism from the Lord’s Supper by removing the requirement of baptism for admission to the…
By Alan F.H. Wisdom, The Layman Perhaps the most significant action of the 2016 Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly was final approval of the Belhar Confession for inclusion in the denomination’s Book of Confessions. The 1980s liberation theology manifesto exercised an influence that was already apparent in the Portland assembly’s other business—especially its discussions of…
Institutional Anti-Semitism becomes to apparent to ignore. By Joseph Puder, FrontPage Magazine. The Presbyterian Church (USA) assembled in Portland, Oregon for its 222 General Assembly, lasting from June 18-25. Once again, latent anti-Semitism in the form of controversial resolutions on divestment from Israel became a major issue in the proceedings. Delegates from 171 PCUSA presbyteries,…
By Eva Stimson, Office of the General Assembly. One of the most closely watched debates at the last two Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assemblies concerned whether or not the church should stop investing in fossil fuel companies. In June the 222nd General Assembly (2016) rejected an overture calling for immediate divestment, voting instead to continue…
By Viola Larson, Naming His Grace. Presbyterian Church (USA) Co-Moderator, T. Denise Anderson, in her article, “Confession time: How white supremacy hurts white people,” on the Presbyterian Outlook web-site, calls on individual white people to personally confess their individual racism. Anderson insists that all white people in the United States are involved in racism and…
By T. Denise Anderson, The Presbyterian Outlook. Last week after we’d learned about a second extrajudicial killing of an African-American man, I put the following plea on social media to white friends who were in lament and wanted to know how much longer we’d have to hear these stories: “White people, you have heard it…
It was the last day of the 222nd General Assembly meeting of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and for the first time the word “evangelism” came up. It was quickly shot down. Commissioners argued that “evangelism is hard for us,” and “evangelism means something different in every community and you can’t teach that.” Emily Williams, a…
Shall the Presbyterian Church (USA) continue its membership in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice? That was the question and it came to the 222nd General Assembly meeting in Portland, Ore., in the form of a Commissioner’s Resolution (CR). The CR on the proposed withdrawal of the PCUSA from the RCRC came to committee #10…