Rick Ufford-Chase was endorsed unanimously by the Presbytery de Cristo at its meeting on January 23, 2004, as a candidate for Moderator of the 216^th General Assembly.

He is the co-founder and co-director of BorderLinks, a binational organization that provides experiential education on issues such as trade and globalization and the concerns of migrants on the border. Rick is sponsored in that work as a Mission Co-Worker in the Worldwide Ministries division of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is also a co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.

His address to the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship at the 215^th GA is posted here on the Witherspoon website.  It was entitled "Empire and Church: Pitfalls and Priorities for the Presbyterian Church in a time of Globalization."

His candidacy is represented on the web at www.rickuffordchase.com.

Overture for population stabilization

Looking carefully at the rhetoric in the State of the Union address

Stephen Zunes offers a helpful "annotation" of President Bush's State of the Union address.  Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, and associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation responded to the State of the Union address with a reminder from Martin Luther King that we live in a "world house." 

Over a month ago we received a thoughtful note from ruling elder Eric Muñiz, putting forth some basic arguments against the views of Prof. Douglas Ottati in his theological reflections on "why we shouldn't wait."

In the rush of the holiday season, we lost track of his note.  He recently sent a very gentle question about where his comments had gone.  Well, the lost is found, and we offer his thoughts now ... at last ... with our apologies for the delay.  

Human Rights Watch dismisses one of the Bush administration's main arguments for the invasion.

As the months roll by without any discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration has increasingly emphasized Saddam Hussein's brutality and human rights violations as an important justification for the preemptive war it launched to overthrow his regime. After former chief US weapons inspector David Kay announced over the weekend that Iraq did not possess any WMD stockpiles before the war, the White House has backed off the claim that had been its main justification for the war. But a leading advocacy group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), released a report Monday challenging the administration's other main justification. The report said that the war in Iraq should not be justified as a defense of human rights. In its annual report, the independent, nongovernmental organization argues that, because there was no ongoing or imminent mass killing when the conflict began, the war was not necessary to stop such atrocities.

The story is in the Christian Science Monitor.

You can also go directly to the Human Rights Watch report

Marilyn White, former co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, reported on Monday, Jan. 26 from Columbus, GA, that the Rev. Don Beisswenger (an active member of both the Peace Fellowship and the Witherspoon Society) has been sentenced to 6 months in jail and a $1000 fine for his protest action in last November's demonstration against the School of the Americas. He pleaded guilty, and as a second-time offender was given the maximum sentence. (First-timers are being given 3 months.)

Marilyn estimates that he'll probably start serving in April. Peace Fellowship leaders urge us to remember him and all the other Prisoners of Conscience in our prayers.

"We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society.... What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed."

- Martin Luther King Jr. to his staff in 1967, quoted in To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Sacred Mission to Save America, by Stuart Burns, and excerpted in Sojourners.   

Source: Sojourners 2004 (c)

We've received more comments in the conversation generated by Gene TeSelle in his essay on "Learning from the Anglican Dilemma:  How can we live together as one church?"

In addition to earlier comments from the Rev. Winfield Casey Jones, D. Min., of Pearland, TX, and Doug Nave, we have now added these:

Here are some sources for "alternative news reports" on the events:

Sojourners is providing daily reports by Elizabeth Palmberg.  Check out her daily (more or less) updates.

The Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare Association (PHEWA), National Ministries Division, is seeking nominations for five General Assembly Ministry Awards, during the 216th General Assembly (2004) in Richmond, VA.

In response to yesterday's report on Washington Presbytery's rejection of a proposed overture on "gracious separation," we received a note asking for evidence of the groups that have been supporting it.

By a vote of 26 in favor to 76 opposed, the Presbytery of Washington, in western Pennsylvania, rejected the proposal that has been put forward by a number of conservative groups in the PC(USA). [The vote count comes from the Washington County [PA] Observer-Reporter; the Layman Online reports a vote of 28 in favor.]

The Rev. L. Rus Howard, pastor of Peters Creek United Presbyterian Church, introduced the motion calling for an overture on gracious separation. The Rev. Mr. Hubbard gained national attention in October of 2002 when he, with four other Presbyterian ministers, taped a "Call to Confession and Repentance" on a wall of the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, charging that the PC(USA) is "decaying and dying in the belly of the beast" and is "irretrievably apostate under current management." The Peters Creek church is a member of the "Confessing Church" movement.

We have received the text of an overture from Bethany Collegiate Church, in Havertown, PA, which may be of interest as a counter-move to those who now call on the Presbyterian Church (USA) to allow some freedom in matters of ordaining LGBT people.

The Layman Online has reported on this, and the full text of the proposed overture is here, too.

Focus and the Family will be holding a "Love Won Out conference" in Nashville, TN, on February 7^th. The same day there will be a conference at Vanderbilt University will sponsor at conference under the theme ''Psychology, Religion and Homosexuality: Critical Responses to Reparative Therapy.''

The Nashville Tennessean reports on the competing events.

According to Rob Kall, editor of OpEdNews.com, "A Clear Channel station has put a strong, real liberal on the air, going up against Rush Limbaugh's time slot. Thom Hartmann is taking talk radio by storm, pulling liberal and conservative listeners with his entertaining, radical middle, non-nasty, smart, polished talk and programming. Hartmann is an author and the host of the nation's largest nationally syndicated progressive daily radio talk show, heard on stations coast to coast from noon to 3 PM ET."

Kall has posted an article on this development, including an interview with Thom Hartmann.

You can also check out Hartmann's own website.

To listen to the network's on-line broadcast, click here and choose whichever listening software works for you - or download one from that page.

HOW CAN WE LIVE TOGETHER AS ONE CHURCH?
Reflections on the Anglican dilemma 

Witherspoon Issues Analyst Gene TeSelle looks at the ways the Anglican churches are trying to deal with the tensions arising from the confirmation of the Rev. Gene Robinson as their first openly gay bishop. Some of their conservatives are exploring possibilities of affiliating with more conservative Anglican churches outside the United States, and this leads to reflections on the possibility of "non-geographical presbyteries" as one way of accommodating conservative congregations in the PS(USA).

We've been asked what was decided by the Presbytery of Cincinnati in response to the recommendation of its Administrative Commission that has been dealing with Mt Auburn Presbyterian Church and its purported refusal to comply with certain provisions (or prohibitions) in the Book of Order.

The Presbytery, in its regular meeting on Saturday, January 10, decided to postpone the issue, to be considered at a special meeting to be held on February 10.

Thanks to Hans Cornelder of PresbyWeb for this update.

For background click here.

A related question:

One friend asks about the "provisional status" recommendation:

Could someone speculate about what effect congregations' ineligibility to vote will have when their issue of conscience is debated? If the vote count is a near tie, will the conscientiously objecting congregations' stance on the question be "counted" in any way? Will change have to come with one group of those most strongly invested stripped of vote?

Thanks so much for keeping us informed!!!

Betty Hale

Marcia Casais, an Elder and Clerk of Session in Chatham, New Jersey, writes of Parker Williamson and friends that the sky is not falling simply because the Presbytery of Western North Carolina is going to consider not validating his ministry with the Presbyterian Lay Committee. There are many possible actions the Presbytery could take, she says - few of them as dire as Williamson's supporters seem to think.

It may not be surprising that the Lay Committee might not be considered a validated ministry, since it doesn't even report to the General Assembly as do most affinity organizations.

Click here for background.

Two leading experts on the space program are warning that the expected space policy announcement by George W. Bush to establish permanent bases on the moon and an aggressive program to take humans to Mars will be an expensive and dangerous undertaking.

Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick reflects on the upcoming General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.  The Bible study prepared for that gathering, as well as the study for our own 216th General Assembly, both invite us to reflect on the fullness of life in Christ -- and the unity of the church that flows from that new life.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship is seeking a one-year intern to work especially developing the Latin America solidarity experience.

Here's something for those who enjoy language, or severe distortions thereof.

It's a new list of puns, including:
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

A PBS documentary begins tonight, Monday, Jan. 12, 2004

Today the Presbytery of the Twin Cities Area voted by 124 to 50, with 2 abstentions, to send to the 216^th General Assembly an overture calling on the Presbyterian Church to remove G-6.0106b from the Book of Order. It would also replace all existing authoritative interpretations that prohibit the ordination of gay and lesbian persons with an affirmation that all other standards for ordination presently in the Book of Order are "the sole and exclusive standards for ordination by ordaining bodies acting in prayerful discernment of the leading of Almighty God."

This was a clear reversal of last year's vote to "take no action" on a similar overture.
 

The Administrative Commission that was appointed by the Presbytery of Cincinnati in May, 2002, will report to the Presbytery at its meeting on Saturday, January 10, on its recommendations for responding to the actions of Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church that have been alleged as defying the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church, specifically in relation to the ordination of GLBT people and the blessing of same-sex unions.

Perhaps the most creative element of their recommendations has led them to propose an overture to the 215^th General Assembly that would be needed to make it possible. This would establish the category of a "provisional status" for a congregation such as Mt. Auburn, which it describes as "an intentional, consistent, and conscientious objector to certain responsibilities in the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church." It would require a two-thirds vote of the presbytery to place the congregation in this status.

Under this provisional status, the presbytery would hold conversations with the congregation to explain the reasons for the action, and to hear comments from the members. During the two-year period, the congregation "would lose voting privileges, but would continue to have voice in presbytery matters."

The commission also recommends that the Presbytery "establish and facilitate a Presbytery-wide "Year of Exchange" during which delegations from congregations within our Presbytery would visit one another, share their varying points of view, arrange pulpit exchanges, and form collaborative prayer groups and mission projects."

The final recommendation would "establish a three-year moratorium whereby member churches of the Presbytery voluntarily comply to refrain from legal or procedural challenges to one another in issues related to inclusiveness, with reference to the Book of Order Section G-6.0106b."

The full text of the Commission report, and the proposed overture are available on the Presbytery website, in PDF format. Click here, and scroll down to the bottom of the page for the links to each of them.

NOTE:  The presbytery has not yet taken action on the recommendations from the Administrative Commission.  It is planned that the report will be presented to Presbytery on Saturday, January 10th.  How the Presbytery will respond is of course an open matter.

Click here for a summary of the case as it stood in June, 2003.

If you have comments or information to add,
please send us a note!

America's national parks are getting a conservative Christian makeover. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has released documentation showing that the Bush Administration is "sponsoring a program of Faith-Based Parks," including selling new books of Creationist explanations for the Grand Canyon at Park Service gift shops, and re-editing a documentary video shown at the Lincoln Memorial to remove images of gay and abortion rights demonstrations that took place at the memorial.

Super Bowl Sunday (February 1, if you've been living in a cave) will again be an opportunity from church folk to give money and canned goods to aid the poor and ill-nourished.

A Presbyterian News Service report provides details.

In an article published on Christmas eve, the Christian Science Monitor posed the question: "Inequity: Is it a sin?"

The rich-poor gap in the United States has doubled in 21 years and is set to widen further under new tax cuts. People of faith say society has a moral responsibility to narrow that gap. So economists note that the society that has prided itself on being an egalitarian model for the world has become more unequal than "aristocratic" Europe.

Ron Sider, head of Evangelicals for Social Action, is quoted as saying, "It's a scandal that the richest society in human history has the highest poverty level of any industrial nation."

Thanks to Bruce Gillette.

The American dream is dead

And for another take on the growing inequality in American society, Paul Krugman cites that "leftist rag," Business Week, which declares that the American "Horatio Alger" dream is dead.

Krugman writes: "The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society. And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of 'class warfare.' "

Charles Henderson provides a listing of the ten stories chosen by the the Religion Newswriters Association.

The Layman Online has just posted an article by John H. Adams about the flood of letters they've been receiving - "94 percent in support of [Parker] Williamson" as he faces the possibility that his presbytery may not validate his ministry as chief executive officer of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor in chief of its publications.

Of the tiny pile of letters not expressing support for Williamson, which Adams labels "some of the most incendiary," the first is from Richard S. Hong, whose note he summarizes:

For instance, Richard S. Hong suggested that Williamson pack his bags, go find a real job and cease his 'attack-dog pseudo journalism.' Hong comes from a wing of the denomination that has been trying for decades to repeal the PCUSA's historical ban against ordaining practicing homosexuals and adulterers. He is the treasurer of the Witherspoon Society.

Not much we can add to that, except to offer a slight correction about mere facts: Mr. Hong did indeed serve as treasurer of the organization until a year ago, and we appreciate his service. He no longer occupies that position, however, as a new treasurer was elected last spring.

If you're wondering what issues might come to the 2004 General Assembly from our more conservative sisters and brothers, you might check out the list of recommended overtures provided by the Presbyterian Forum.

They fall into four groups: