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Under the Patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, chief advisor to His Majesty for Religious and Cultural Affairs and the Personal Envoy, the University of Dar Al-Kalima in Bethlehem, and the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman organized "The International Consultation on Understanding Christian Zionism and Its Effects on Christians in the Middle East." The conference was held at the Baptism Site from the 23-26 January. 

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was observed across the world with services, prayers, and gatherings—all with a heart for bringing together people in profound ways. From 18–25 January, people were inspired by the 2025 theme, “Do you believe this?” (John 11:26), as they united in prayer and reflection.

Reform Jewish leaders oppose Trump’s immigration policies, advocating for compassionate, just policies protecting immigrants and refugees.

The News Service has now integrated the Arabic language into its website, marking a notable enhancement since the News Service was established over two decades ago.

Cutoff for entering both Wilburs and DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Awards is Friday, January 31

[Episcopal News Service] Cheryl Mirabella left the Catholic Church when she was a young adult and went on a yearslong “spiritual safari” through different denominations.  “I have a very deep spiritual life … but I didn’t really feel like I was getting what I needed through church,” she told Episcopal News Service. Mirabella accidentally tuned in to the Jan. 21 Service of Prayer for the Nation at Washington National Cathedral and listened to Washington Bishop Mariann Budde’s plea to President Donald Trump to show mercy to “the people in our country who are scared now” – specifically LGBTQ+ people and immigrants. “I was so impressed by her kindness and her words, so I immediately went and downloaded her book (“How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith”) on Audible and … listened to the whole book while taking a solo trip down to Arches National Park in Moab,” Mirabella said. “I was so inspired by her and her words and her journey through life.” Then on Sunday, Mirabella went to her local Episcopal parish, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Park City, Utah, to check out the Jan. 26 worship service. “The priest, a woman, got up and her first words were to welcome us … That felt really good,” she said. “What Jesus teaches us is not representative of what a lot of denominations are now.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by ek (@emmakateshaver.art) Many people like Mirabella reported on social media that they attended an Episcopal worship service for the first time because of Budde’s sermon, and they were pleasantly surprised to learn that LGBTQ+ people, women and all immigrants, regardless of status, are not only welcome in The Episcopal Church, but also serve as clergy and lay leaders. “I think people really have a hunger, especially in times like these, to have a story that will help them, give them hope and give them purpose in life. They don’t always hear a Christian message out there that resonates with them,” the Rev. Clare Hickman, rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ferndale, Michigan, told ENS. “Having Bishop Budde speaking in a way that’s really talking about God’s kingdom coming in this world – this side of the grave – is powerful.” Five visitors told Hickman they went to St. Luke’s for worship after feeling inspired by Budde’s sermon five days earlier. Since her sermon went viral, Budde has made countless television appearances, including CNN and The View. She’s also done interviews with The New Yorker, The Nation, The Guardian, Glamour and other news outlets. Her image has appeared in works of art and on a cookie made by Hive Bakery in Flower Mound, Texas, which sold out every day. She also was mentioned in a folk song. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jesse Welles (@wellesmusic) Non-Episcopalians are also just learning about some of Budde’s past actions, like in 2020 when she criticized Trump for posing with a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square – one block from the White House – after ordering his security detail and law enforcement officers to forcibly push back protesters who had gathered outside the White House as part of an ongoing anti-racism demonstration a week after the killing of George Floyd.  In 2018, Budde safely interred the remains of Matthew Shepard – a young gay man who in 1998 was beaten and tortured to death – at Washington National Cathedral. Shepard’s parents held onto his ashes for 20 years out of fear of his grave being vandalized. News of Budde helping Shepard’s parents has been circulating among LGBTQ+ communities, organizations and news outlets. At Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge, New Jersey, about half a dozen people who either were new to the congregation or who don’t come regularly were in church, the rector, the Rev. Diana Wilcox, told ENS. The church has an average Sunday attendance of about 40, so that many new people not only was unusually high but really stood out, she said. After the service, she always asks visitors what brought them to the church that day. “One couple said they had lived in Bloomfield for a while and decided to find an Episcopal church to attend this Sunday” in response to Budde’s sermon, she said. During coffee hour after the service, people were lingering longer than usual and were talking about the sermon. “There was a buzz in the air,” Wilcox said. She suspects that additional people who are newly curious about The Episcopal Church were watching the livestreams of their service and those of other churches. They may translate into additional new visitors in coming weeks, she said. When Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin was a little girl growing up in Tennessee, her Southern Baptist preacher told the congregation that God calls people to the ministry, “and if you hear the voice, you’ll know.” When she told her grandmother that she thinks God’s calling her to the ministry, she was told that only men could serve as pastors. In elementary school, Sanderlin was sent to the principal’s office and then home from her conservative Church of Christ school one day because she prayed in front of boys before lunch. Her teacher accused her of “trying to spiritually lead boys.” “Looking back now, oh my God, those were horrible things to say to a small child,” Sanderlin told ENS. As an adult, Sanderlin searched for her spiritual home while frequently moving due to her husband serving in the Army. But when Trump won the 2016 election while she was living in the Florida Panhandle, a very religiously and politically conservative region, she no longer felt comfortable in church. When Sanderlin saw a clip of Budde’s plea to Trump, she decided to visit her local Episcopal parish, St. Aidan’s Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. “Just hearing Budde say the most basic tenets of Christianity, […]

[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe will be ceremonially seated at Washington National Cathedral on Feb. 2 during the cathedral’s main Sunday Eucharist, at which Rowe also will preach. The 11:15 a.m. Eastern service will be livestreamed on the cathedral’s YouTube channel. The liturgy for the service is contained in the church’s Book of Occasional Services (page 355 here). Washington Bishop Mariann Budde will preside. During the service, Rowe will formally enter the cathedral through its Great West Doors and take his seat in the Great Choir, according to a cathedral announcement. Rowe was elected by the House of Bishops and confirmed by the House of Deputies as The Episcopal Church’s 28th presiding bishop in June 2024 at the 81st General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. He took office Nov. 1, and the church celebrated the start of his nine-year term the next day with a Nov. 2 investiture at the Episcopal Church Center in New York that was livestreamed to a large churchwide audience. Washington National Cathedral, located in the United States’ capital city, is known as the formal seat of both the presiding bishop and the bishop of Washington. While Rowe chose a more intimate setting for his investiture, the Feb. 2 seating ceremony acknowledges the cathedral’s place of importance in the life of the wider church, particularly where the church’s mission overlaps with issues in the public sphere. The presiding bishop has a range of responsibilities, as outlined by The Episcopal Church Constitution and Canons. Those include presiding over the House of Bishops, chairing Executive Council, visiting every Episcopal diocese, participating in the ordination and consecration of bishops, receiving and responding to disciplinary complaints against bishops, making appointments to the church’s interim bodies, and “developing policies and strategies for the church and speaking for the church on the policies, strategies and programs of General Convention.” One of Rowe’s first priorities after taking office has been to study churchwide structures and staffing and develop a realignment plan that is intended to greater assist dioceses and congregations. Rowe has said he expects to announce the initial details of that realignment when Executive Council meets next, Feb. 17-19 in suburban Baltimore, Maryland.

[Anglican Taonga] There’s a lot of talk about connecting with communities in mission, and Ross McQueen, a retired farmer in the Canterbury region of New Zealand,  is exactly the kind of person our church could overlook if “connecting with communities” got left out of our plans. Back in 1976 when Ross McQueen was a young farmer in Mount Grey Downs (north of Rangiora), he turned up to an evening led by Christchurch City Missioner, the Rev. Maurice Goodall, who would later become a much-loved Bishop of Christchurch. Goodall was looking for a place where young men stuck on drugs and alcohol in the city, or courting problems with the law, could get a different view of life and learn skills to set them on a new trajectory. His eye had alighted on a closed-down country school next to McQueen’s farm, spying its potential as a learning center where young men could do on-the-job training and gather life skills. As Goodall shared his vision for giving young men a second chance, McQueen and his wife Carol stepped up to offer a helping hand. Although baptized in an Anglican Church, McQueen wasn’t a churchgoer, but he did know a bit about how life can deal a tough hand to young men. A few years earlier, when he was only 17 years old, his father died, leaving him and his brother in line to run the family farm. That experience meant he knew that young men in crisis needed genuine help, not someone to tell them what was wrong with them. “One thing I’ve always liked about the Mission is its only criteria is need … they don’t ask too many questions, they don’t judge – and it’s helped an awful lot of people.” Jump forward to 2025 and McQueen’s commitment to the City Mission continues, from his 1970s efforts to get young men on track for a better future, to serving the Mission’s various operations teams, to bringing his business acumen into the Mission’s Finance, Risk Management and Property Committee for over 30 years. McQueen is proud of the Mission’s recent successes getting people into supported housing, setting up social supermarkets and designing interventions that help people move out of charity and into developing the skills they’ll need to live a good life on their own terms. He thinks that Christians should care most about people who miss out on a good life, and our governments also should focus on preventing problems rather than fixing their sights on the negative results. “I volunteer at a high school here in Rangiora (with the Smallbore Rifle Club, also recognized in the honor) and the majority of kids are doing well. But there’s a group of children that school just doesn’t serve. But get them one on one, out there working on farms, or in forestry, in anything that’s a good job really, and it’s a different story. The vast majority are good kids.” A year or two back, one of those 1970s kids bowled up to McQueen and told him that his time in Mount Grey Downs had changed his life for the better. “‘I wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for the Mission,’ he said.” Now he has a family and runs his own business as a gibstopper, a craftsperson who applies a special compound to plasterboard to create a smooth surface.. “When someone says thank you, or says, “What the Mission did for me has made a difference,” it makes it all worthwhile. McQueen says it’s sad the Mission still has work to do, but that has shifted, too, over the years. “The people are changing, they’re not always unemployed, they might be working two jobs, but it’s not enough if you are paying hundreds of dollars a week for your house and you have a couple of children. What they earn sounds alright, but when something goes wrong it’s hard to cope. People who were donors five years ago are now coming in for help.” “I think half of New Zealand doesn’t know how the other half lives – and they don’t want to know. You talk to people and they say, ‘What a bunch of no-hopers’, and it’s just not true.” Ross McQueen was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Christchurch, Rangiora and Canterbury rural communities, including his almost 50 years’ service to the work of the Christchurch City Mission. His honor citation is in the 2025 New Year’s Honours MNZM list here.

[World Council of Churches] In an address before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Jan. 27, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew spoke of how religion can provide a unique perspective in the objective to eradicate poverty and hunger, to address fundamentalism and racism, and to advance tolerance and dialogue. “Churches and religious communities are not only pivotal in people’s personal or spiritual lives,” he said. “They also reserve a critical role in mobilizing institutions and societies on manifold levels.” He also emphasized the urgency of protecting our planet. “We are convinced that what we do for the earth is intimately related to what we do for people, whether in the context of human rights, international politics, or world peace,” the ecumenical patriarch said. “In other words, the way we respond to climate change is intimately connected to the way we respond to human challenges.” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew serves as the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. Read the entire article here.

[Episcopal News Service] After continuously advocating for firearm violence prevention, Episcopal leaders in the Diocese of Michigan are celebrating the passing of the state’s newest gun safety law, which requires the state police to completely destroy all guns turned in during community buyback events. “We are committed to making changes that matter,” Michigan Bishop Bonnie Perry told Episcopal News Service. “All of the work we’ve been doing with End Gun Violence Michigan – which is a coalition of 50 faith and secular groups – is how we, who happen to be Episcopalians, are embodying our baptismal promises, how we’re living out gospel values and, frankly, how we are saving lives.” Perry — a co-convener of Bishops United Against Gun Violence, a network of more than 100 Episcopal bishops working to curtail gun violence — was instrumental in helping to launch End Gun Violence Michigan, a grassroots group credited with helping several gun safety laws pass in the state over the last couple of years. Gun safety has been a growing issue of concern in Michigan in recent years, especially after the mass shootings at Michigan State University in East Lansing in 2023 and at Oxford High School in Oxford Township in 2021. “We’ve had two horrible mass shootings in schools, but we also have continuous gun violence in rural areas and in our urban centers,” Perry said. “When people see that a church is taking a stand and offering a service for something they care about, they can be reassured that the church understands their fears and sadness.” Since 2022, St. David’s Episcopal Church in Southfield, a suburb of Detroit, has hosted several public gun buyback events, where hundreds of unwanted firearms have been collected in exchange for Target or Meijer gift cards. The guns are supposed to be melted down to prevent further use. Despite the genuine effort to reduce the number of firearms, however, Yaw later learned from a New York Times investigation that the guns collected by police agencies, St. David’s and other churches and organizations in the Lower Peninsula weren’t being melted down as promised. Instead, a private company that collected the guns from the buybacks was only destroying the frame or receiver – whichever piece has the serial number – of each firearm and recycling the remaining parts to sell as gun kits online. “I blew a gasket when I found out,” the Rev. Chris Yaw, rector of St. David’s, told ENS. “We contacted our legislators, and Gov. [Gretchen] Whitmer signed our bill into law so that now in Michigan, when you donate a gun at a buyback or when the municipality gets a gun earmarked for destruction … it will not be broken down and recycled on the internet and making third parties millions of dollars.” Yaw pointed out that guns have a “very long shelf life,” and St. David’s has collected intact guns dating back to the Civil War at buybacks. “We’ve had families stuck with their loved one’s massive gun collection after they die, and they don’t know what to do with it other than get rid of it.”  Some of the buyback events at St. David’s have included an arts and crafts component, where guns are destroyed on site using specialized saws and transformed into jewelry, rosaries, key fobs and other works of art. During one “Guns and Crafts” event in June 2024, Perry blessed the saws ahead their use throughout the summer. “I see this kind of ministry as a means of congregational vitality and development, how our communities of faith become hubs for their local neighbors – as a place where people can turn to,” Perry said. “For many people, they feel safer and more comfortable dropping off their unwanted guns at a church than a police station. …We’re offering pastoral care to people as they are getting rid of these unwanted guns.” Perry and Yaw both said many people who turn in guns at buybacks need pastoral care because the guns have become a source of grief and fear, especially if a loved one was harmed or killed by gunshot. Yaw said one woman turned in a pistol that she discovered was loaded inside her mattress after her husband died, for example. “She freaked out because she had no idea her husband owned a gun or that he had it their entire married life, but she felt relieved when she saw that she could safely get rid of it at St. David’s,” Yaw said. As for grief, “Many families have brought in guns that were responsible for their loved ones dying by suicide,” Yaw said. Most U.S. gun deaths are suicides, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control classifies as a public health issue particularly in rural areas. Over the last 20 years, suicide rates have been higher in rural areas than urban areas. On average, 1,421 Michiganders die annually from gun violence, according to data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Jan. 29, nationwide 1,807 people have died from gun violence this year, including 21 from mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, an American nonprofit that catalogs every gun-related death in the United States. A mass shooting is any shooting in which at least four people are shot. Episcopalians can learn more about the church’s gun safety legislation dating to 1976 here. -Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.