Latest News

Ethan Loewi

:

Rev. Karen G. Johnston reflects on her arrest and what comes next for the movement.

The Trump administration’s indefinite refugee ban, stop work orders and prolonged delays in reimbursement for resettlement agencies have had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of refugee families and communities across the country and around the world. Welcome to the latest edition of State of Play from Church World Service. This resource will provide regular updates from the CWS ...

Read More

The post Daily State of Play: Trump’s Indefinite Refugee Ban and Funding Halt appeared first on CWS.

As actions and policies of governments, state authorities, and armed factions create millions of refugees and stateless people in Africa, church and faith-based organizations have become key respondents, offering humanitarian relief, advocacy, and spiritual support.

During a sermon at the St Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin on 15 September, World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee moderator Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm commemorated the signing of Charta Oecumenica.

Peace cannot be built on an economy that runs on war. That is the assertion of a theological communique released by churches meeting in Panama City. It asks governments to redirect military spending toward poverty and climate, and it asks the churches to move their own money first.

The evangelical church is growing

Background Stranded overseas: The Trump administration’s indefinite refugee ban remains in place, stranding over 100,000 refugees fleeing persecution around the world who were conditionally approved for resettlement before the ban took effect.  These stranded refugees, many of whom have gone through years of vetting and screening, include: Nearly 15,000 Iranians fleeing religious persecution in the Lautenberg Program pipeline Hundreds of ...

Read More

The post Take Action: Urge Your Elected Leaders to Fight for Refugees Ahead of Upcoming Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions appeared first on CWS.

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal City Mission, a Boston nonprofit affiliated with the Diocese of Massachusetts, distributed $2.75 million in reparations to 25 Massachusetts-based organizations that are dedicated to promoting racial and economic justice and equity, truth-telling, reconciliation and strengthening communities. The announcement was made Sept. 15 at a press conference at St. Cyprian’s, a historically Black Episcopal church in Roxbury. Reparations are “part of our commitment to following Jesus,” Arrington Chambliss, Episcopal City Mission’s executive director, said in a Sept. 15 press release. “There is no reconciliation without repair given the history that necessitates this work. This moment is not an ending but an important step in a much longer journey toward truth, accountability, and repair,” Chambliss said. “We hope these payments will serve not only as a tangible commitment to repairing historic harms but also as an invitation for other similar Christian and faith-rooted institutions to engage in courageous acts of justice.” Since its founding in 1844, Episcopal City Mission has committed to combating poverty and systemic injustices at their root causes. Its reparations initiative stems from years of historical research, community engagement and reflection. The organization formed a committee called Reparations Advisors and Stewards to guide the decision-making process on recipients. Cynthia Perry, a professor at Boston College’s Woods College of Advancing Studies, helped facilitate the initiative as lead project consultant. The recipient organizations, which are all led by Black, Indigenous and other people of color, address different areas of social justice, such as the Massachusetts Bail Fund for keeping low-income individuals from pre-trial incarceration, the Chappaquiddick Tribe of the Wampanoag Indian Nation to support the original Indigenous people of Chappaquiddick Island and Martha’s Vineyard, and Resilient Roses Respite Corp. for youth and young adult programming and mentoring.  Reparations in the United States date as far back as the 17th century, when Quakers propounded that formerly enslaved people were entitled to compensation from their enslavers. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which included a formal apology for the U.S. government unjustly incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II and $20,000 payments to concentration camp survivors. Discussions of reparations for Black Americans made a widespread modern resurgence in 2014 after Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations” was published in The Atlantic. In 2019, Evanston, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago, passed the first reparations law in U.S. history to compensate Black people for slavery and discrimination. The city has given $25,000 grants for down payments or home repairs to more than 300 recipients since approving the payments in 2021. The concept has also spread to supporting redress for Native Americans, including land restitution and compensation, institutional accountability and monetary compensation. Many Episcopal organizations, churches and dioceses are in varying stages of considering, developing and implementing financial initiatives devoted to reparations, often acknowledging that much of the church’s financial foundation and physical structures were built on enslaved labor and other forms of racial exploitation. Reparations programs are underway in several institutions, including the Diocese of Ohio, the Diocese of Texas, the Diocese of Washington, Virginia Theological Seminary, the Diocese of Massachusetts, the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, the Diocese of Michigan, the Diocese of Chicago, and the Diocese of Long Island. Since 1994, seven resolutions at General Convention have supported reparations for various historic injustices, such as The Episcopal Church’s role in supporting the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Indigenous boarding schools, including C011, “Support Legislation for Reparations for Slavery,” in 2006, and A015, “Create a Task Force on Reparations,” in 2024. –Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at [email protected].

[Anglican Communion News Service] The Most Rev. Renta Nishihara was installed as the 21st primate of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (Anglican Church in Japan) on Sept. 2, succeeding the Most. Rev. David Eisho Uehara. Nishihara was elected on the first ballot and installed during the province’s 71st general synod Aug. 31 – Sept. 2 at the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew in Tokyo. “I am committed to continuing to carry out my duties from the dimensions of personal, collegial and communal engagement,” Nishihara told Anglican Communion News Service. “Together with the laity and clergy of the NSKK, the College of Bishops and the NSKK and all the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion, I hope to devote my utmost efforts to advancing God’s mission as a primate of the NSKK.” Read the full article here.

[Episcopal News Service] All Saints Church Pasadena in California publicly confronted a painful chapter in its history Sept. 14, with the unveiling of a permanent plaque acknowledging and lamenting the parish’s participation in racial segregation during the Jim Crow era. The ceremony, attended by members of the community and civic leaders, included a prayer and blessing by Los Angeles Bishop Antonio José Gallardo Lucena, remarks by Pasadena Mayor Victor M. Gordo and a communal reading of the plaque inscription led by the Rev. Mark Chase, All Saints’ associate pastor and its director for justice advocacy and organizing. The plaque honors “the African Americans and people of color who were turned away from All Saints Church by its white parishioners during the Jim Crow era in Pasadena.” It also tells the story of eight African-American women who, after being excluded, began gathering in their homes to worship and eventually founded what became St. Barnabas, about a mile away in northwest Pasadena. “We acknowledge and repent of these racist actions, and we ask forgiveness from the descendants of those excluded,” the plaque reads. “Today, as we commit to living out our mission that all are welcome, we recognize our past history so that such racist actions may never be repeated.” The plaque was permanently placed above the cornerstone of the 1923 church building, and the date references the first plaque-unveiling ceremony, which took place a day earlier during the congregation’s liturgical homecoming observance. During the half-hour Monday midday ceremony, Chase, convener of the All Saints committee whose work led to the plaque’s placement, likened the effort to a farmer clearing his field. “Imagine a farmer going out to till the soil, and the soil has rocks and stones and glass and all sorts of things that aren’t conducive to growth within the soil,” he said. “Well, the farmer would be mistaken if they planted anything in soil like that. They would have to remove the stones and remove the rocks and remove the objects and anything within the soil that is not conducive to growth.” “Now,” he told the assembled crowd of approximately 30 people, “With this truth now being told, we have leveled and are continuing to level and clear the soil. So now that this truth has been told, it creates more space for a new truth to unfold.” In an interview in advance of the event, Chase told Episcopal News Service that the work leading up to the plaque has been underway for more than two years as part of the congregation’s Telling the Whole Story project, an effort begun in 2023 to examine aspects of the prominent Pasadena parish’s past that had not been fully acknowledged. The racial-history effort is the third committee to emerge from the broader project. Previous work examined the Indigenous history of the land on which All Saints sits (the land of the Tongva people), and a third committee has been studying the whiteness of the church’s iconography. St. Barnabas parishioner Marco White, who was among the attendees at the plaque unveiling, shared his thoughts with the ENS as the ceremony got under way. “I think it is symbolically important,” White said. “Obviously, it’s taken over a hundred years to get to this point. On the one hand, thank God we are at this point; on the other hand, it’s a plaque, and the most meaningful thing that I am hoping will develop from this is a meaningful relationship with St. Barnabas.” Chase emphasized that the plaque is not the project’s endpoint, noting that the project takes its name from the words of Indianapolis Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows: “‘You have to tell the whole story, so you can write a new story.’” The plaque and ceremony, he said, are “a step along that journey.” That sentiment was echoed by the Rev. Tim Rich, All Saints’ priest-in-charge:  “I want to say this with humility to make sure that we are right-sized in terms of our sense of importance,” he told the ENS right before the ceremony. “But part of why we did a church service on Sunday and now a more communal service on Monday is to inspire other communities and congregations to do this reflection and to think about what their history says about their identity.” For those congregations interested in doing similar work, Chase has some recommendations on where to start. “It is a national church call for us to wrestle with this and repair the racial history of our parishes,” he said. “But first, learn the racial history of your city, learn the racial history of your state, and then you will begin to see more clearly where your particular parish fits within that racial history. “Another piece of tangible advice that I would say is just get a small group of people together, and then follow the energy, the research and the commitment of that small group, and then it will grow from that small contingent. Also, I would highly recommend a seminal text that was a guiding force for us: “Black and Episcopalian: The Struggle for Inclusion,” by the Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart. In his remarks during the ceremony, John Williams, executive director of the Center for Restorative Justice, explained the ramifications of the plaque unveiling to the greater Pasadena community. “Reconciliation without memory is not reconciliation,” he said, “it’s amnesia. And that is why I believe this plaque matters. A plaque cannot repair the past; it cannot restore opportunities that were denied or relationships that were broken. But a plaque can interrupt the forgetting. Today we aren’t simply unveiling a plaque; we’re deciding what kind of city we will remember ourselves to be.” — Adam Tschorn is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and member of All Saints Beverly Hills.