Sight-Seeing: Building a more just church in a post-pandemic world
The Very Rev KELLY BROWN DOUGLAS, author and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary, argues that trying to ‘get back to normal’ is both folly and a missed opportunity – in more ways than one…
In the US, scholar and preacher Jonathan Lee Walton named next president of Princeton Seminary
United StatesRNS Rev Jonathan Lee Walton, an academician, preacher and administrator who has served on the faculties of Wake Forest and Harvard divinity schools, has been named the next president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He will be the first Black president of the seminary, which was founded in 1812, and is to officially begin his […]
Sight-Seeing: In faith communities, Gen Z minorities struggle to find belonging
JOSH PACKARD, executive director of Springtide Research Institute, and HANNAH TURNER, a research intern at the institute, write – in an article first published on Religion News Service – about what data reveals about the relationship between minority youth and churches…
Nearly two years after election, Episcopal Diocese of Chicago’s first Black female bishop takes office
Lombard, Illinois RNS Everyone would have understood if Bishop Paula E Clark had stepped away from her call to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, said her fellow bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde of Washington, DC. Just weeks before she was set to take office in April, 2021, Clark experienced a brain bleed while exercising. Surgery followed, […]
US evangelical group gets racial history tour to spark work toward racial unity
Washington DC, USRNS For missionary Doug Gentile, it was seeing the “shackles for tiny children” used during American slavery. For seminary professor Darrell Bock, it was confronting the specificity of the list of “Black codes” that restricted the lives of Black people after slavery ended – mandates in many states, for instance, that they sign […]
In the US, Fuller Theological Seminary names first Black president
United StatesRNS Fuller Theological Seminary, the largest inter-denominational seminary in the US, has chosen as its new president David Emmanuel Goatley, the first Black person to hold the office. Goatley will replace Mark Labberton, who announced he was stepping down last year after 10 years as president, saying he hoped his replacement would be a […]
Excavation of graves begins at site of colonial Black church in US
United StatesAP Archaeologists in the US state of Virginia began excavating three suspected graves at the original site of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches on Monday, commencing a monthslong effort to learn who was buried there and how they lived. The First Baptist Church was formed in 1776 by free and enslaved Black […]
“Pervasive racism” meant UK’s Black and Asian troops not commemorated: report
London, UKReuters As many as 350,000 Black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for Britain might not have been properly commemorated because of “pervasive racism”, a report concluded on Thursday. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission issued an apology after an inquiry it commissioned found hundreds of thousands of mostly African and Middle Eastern casualties […]
The Interview: Yolanda Pierce on grandmother theology, Black Jesus and Mariology
ADELLE M BANKS, of Religion News Service, speaks to Yolanda Pierce, dean of Howard University School of Divinity and author of ‘In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit’…
Inoculation challenges: Fear, mistrust fuel COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among UK ethnic minorities
LIN TAYLOR, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on why ethnic minorities are under-represented among those being vaccinated against COVID-19 in the UK…