Debate over the funding of faith based schools is growing in Ontario. Noam Goodman, a Toronto lawyer writing in the National Post, calls the exclusive funding of Catholic schools "explicit religious discrimination." He reports that seven per cent of 750,000 Ontario students who attend faith-based schools (which include Protestant, Muslim and Jewish) do so in schools that are not publicly funded. The other 93 per cent are in the Roman Catholic system.
Knox, Stratford, hosted a photo exhibit in August and September to raise awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Towards a World without AIDS: The Beauty and the Tragedy showcased the work of Carl Hiebert, who travelled to Malawi on behalf of Presbyterian World Service & Development. His pictures chronicle the lives of people living with the disease.
The Presbyterian Church USA is responding to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, one of the United States' worst-ever disasters. Through its relief arm, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, the church is coordinating volunteer efforts, donating money and supplies, reuniting displaced parishioners and pastors and helping congregations get back on their feet.
Twenty-five years is a long time for a minister to stay at one church, especially when he didn't actually receive the call to serve there. This was the case with Rev. Dr. Alan McPherson, who recently retired as minister of Central Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, Ontario. The courier service somehow lost the pertinent documents in transit to his home in Scotland. Alan likes to quip that he came anyway.
Comprised mostly of small churches in rural areas or small towns, the Presbytery of Grey-Bruce-Maitland's outreach projects epitomize small-town living and the closeness, cooperation and interdependency found among the residents there. "It took me a while to sort of find my way here," said Rev. Jeremy Sanderson, presbytery clerk and minister at Knox, Walkerton. "Since then, they've been the greatest bunch of people in the way they relate to each other and support one another. It's a really great place to be."
This summer NDP MPs Charlie Angus and Joe Comartin claimed to have been deeply hurt by the Roman Catholic Church. The first was told that he could not receive communion. The latter has been prevented from teaching marriage classes in his local church.
The Montreal Chinese Presbyterian Church has a very special organist. She is over 90 years of age and although she does not speak or understand Chinese, Sunday by Sunday, she plays for the services — unpaid!
How do we love others? That's the question we at Knox, Wallaceburg, Ont., asked ourselves. Motivated by our church's mission statement of Here We Grow In Christ, we were challenged by our minister's recent proclamation that church is "all about relationships — relationship with God, His Son, the Holy Spirit and other people." We informally adopted this new commandment, reflecting Jesus' thoughts on the most important call for Christians. Through this call to serve others, Christ opened our understanding to the truth that loving God and others is what gives life its purpose.
The old girl came out onto the power line about a thousand metres down wind from me. She just sort of popped out of the brush and was suddenly there in my binoculars. She was not alone. Her young cub of six months was comically gamboling along beside her as she ambled determinedly, in typical black bear fashion, down the edge of the power line towards me.
Azucena Zelaya Antunez doesn't think of nutrition as only a health issue, but also a political force. In developing countries, like her native Nicaragua, good nutrition can give women the energy to take charge and assume a leadership role in their communities. "We're already seeing changes!" she said during a visit to church offices in May. "Many women are making their own decisions and growing new foods, giving them an income."
Nigerian churches, amongst them the Presbyterian, urged the country's government to immediately suspend its membership of the Islamic Development Bank. Christian Council of Nigeria said in a statement that the issue is "explosive, corrosive and suggestive of a subterranean move to Islamise Nigeria."
Almost every schoolchild reads Lord of the Flies, but as hurricane Katrina proved a few weeks ago, it takes little to turn novelist's dystopias into tragic reality. From Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake to José Saramago's Blindness; the writer's imagination is little exaggeration on reality. Curiously, the illness that overturns world order in Saramago's novel is a "white blindness." In the case of New Orleans, it's difficult not to assess the post-storm debacle as a serious case of "black blindness": the vast majority of those affected by the storm being black (and poor), an indictment of a nation's insistent blindness to the racism that shackles its black population.
The attitude the letter displayed, reminds me of two young men who once attended worship in the congregation where I choose to worship. One member made it clear to them that "we do not want your kind here." Now we are all being told in print, by the writer of the letter, that he is obliged to speak on behalf of Almighty God, in order to set the church straight. How presumptuous to state that he is doing this before it is too late.
James Wing is my grandfather and the senior elder of the congregation, who came to Canada in 1923 at the age of 11. He was compelled by the Canadian government to pay a head tax of $500 in order to stay in the country, as were most Chinese people.
Presbyterians are helping raise money for starving families in Niger, where drought and a locust plague have left the West African country in a severe state of famine. Presbyterian World Service & Development is supporting a major relief effort through Action by Churches Together. ACT members Swiss Interchurch Aid (HEKS) and Lutheran World Relief have already distributed more than 1,000 tonnes of food to about 60,000 people.
Marion Boyd "did not find any evidence to suggest that women are being systematically discriminated against as a result of arbitration of family law issues." She believes that arbitration should continue to be allowed in family law cases, and that the Arbitration Act should continue to allow arbitrations using religious law — both of which would be subject to the safeguards she recommends in her report. Some of these safeguards include:
I have just returned from an exciting weekend with Knox, Sundridge, Ont., on the occasion of their 125th Anniversary. The sanctuary was overflowing with people, and also with faith, hope and love. From my vantage point in the chancel, the scope of ministry at Knox, and throughout our denomination, was dramatically portrayed by the baby, weeks old, on the far right of the front pew and a senior member of the congregation in her wheelchair on the far left. It is a symbol of the church* the very young and the very old glorifying and enjoying God.
"We do not want the same to happen here as is happening in Nigeria and Sudan because of religious laws," said David Githii, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, on behalf of Kenyan church leaders responding to proposed laws that they fear will legalize Sharia or Islamic law.
The Da Vinci Code juggernaut continues unabated. It has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years, is about to be a movie and has spawned several new sub-genres in publishing. Where to begin talking about this phenomenon?
A minister of the Reformed Church in America was found guilty and punished for presiding over the marriage of his daughter to another woman. Rev. Dr. Norman Kansfield, 65, was tried at the RCA's General Synod in June and was fired from his teaching post and suspended from the office of minister until he repents for his actions.