Tony Carnes and I met for breakfast at Penelope, a homey little cafe across Lexington Avenue from First Moravian Church. Penelope sits one block north and three avenues east of Marble Collegiate Church, where Norman Vincent Peale preached for 52 years, and it is a 2.8-mile drive from Sons of Moses, the tiny Lower East... Continue Reading

A newcomer to the religious scene in Holland, Pastor John Kim of Korea shares a common affinity with the city’s first pastor for daily prayer meetings. Holland’s founder, the Rev. Albertus Van Raalte, observed how prayer meetings out of a Dutch reformed church started a nation-wide revival in the mid-1850s — and thanks to Kim,... Continue Reading

Church policies and values that cause black seminarians to scorn their own culture or that fail to recognize black pastors as full partners in ministry can only produce churches in the favored mold rather than dignify other ways of thinking and doing church in the PCA. I live and work in an urban community undergoing... Continue Reading

In the last week of February, Jonah faced a revolt among his own bishops at a conclave in Santa Fe, N.M. According to an OCA news release, Jonah kept his job but was relieved of several duties and sent on a two-month sabatical during Lent. They appeared at the edge of the crowd on the... Continue Reading

Rest on the Sabbath. Heed Old Testament dietary codes. And be ready for Jesus to return at any moment. If these practices sound quaint or antiquated, think again. They’re hallmarks of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the fastest-growing Christian denomination in North America. Newly released data show Seventh-day Adventism growing by 2.5 percent in North America,... Continue Reading

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons has been signing a lot of letters lately. Of course, I’m sure he signs letters all the time—the kind of routine correspondence that any organization puts out. But the letters he’s been so prolific in signing lately are of a different sort. These letters are really political manifestoes,... Continue Reading

But these are different times. If timing is everything then this just may be the time for the kind of radical change The Fellowship is proposing. In 1996 it was a meeting in Chicago and The Presbyterian Coalition emerged to advance Amendment B which then became G-6.0106b. In 1997 the meeting was in Dallas and... Continue Reading

The following motion was approved at the Presbytery Meeting; Whereas the response of the session of Pinecrest Church relative to Dr. Parker Young is inadequate and insufficient, I move that First Presbytery resume jurisdiction in this matter and assign it to an ecclesiastical commission to adjudicate the charges listed against Dr. Young in the report... Continue Reading

Assistant Attorney General Amy Kunstling Irene argued that even though Davidson has historic ties to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the school is independent of church control and doesn’t meet the criteria for a sectarian religious establishment that would create a First Amendment problem by maintaining a police force. A prestigious North Carolina private college was... Continue Reading

At its stated meeting on March 12, Iowa Presbytery approved an overture to the 39th PCA General Assembly to “Give Book of Church Order Chapter 59 The Solemnization of Marriage Full Constitutional Authority.” Teaching Elder James Hakim explained the rational for this overture: The gist of the overture is to acknowledge that God has given... Continue Reading