2007 PHEWA Social Justice Biennial Conference calls participants to be "Repairers of the Breach"

Special Report: Gulf Relief Update

The Presbyterian News Service has released a special multi-media report detailing progress in Gulf Coast relief efforts since Hurricane Katrina devastated the area in August 2005.

January 11-14, 2007
New Orleans, Louisiana

"You shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to live in." (Isaiah 58:12)

When PHEWA board members saw the devastation in New Orleans that followed the winds and waters of Katrina and the broken levees, the decision was easy. That’s where the 2007 Social Justice Biennial Conference must be.

300 people came together in New Orleans to see for themselves, to stand in solidarity, to worship and work. They learned primarily from local persons who shared their experiences and hard-earned knowledge of how their city, with a failed infrastructure before the break in the levees, was recovering — or not recovering.

The message was clear throughout every presentation, workshop and worship experience — there are “katrinas” in all of our communities. We are called to be the repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets that Isaiah cried out for.

Conference leadership included Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans and an anti-poverty activist. Mr. Quigley helped conference participants understand the local context, particularly the issues of race, class and economic disparity. (See his “Katrina and Human and Civil Rights” Power Point presentation.)

The Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer Oget, a professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, served as theologian and worship leader. Her careful weaving of the biblical texts took participants from lamentation to the call for justice. Read the Rev. Oget’s sermons.

Dr. Robert Linthicum is a renowned educator and president of Partners in Urban Transformation, a Christian ministry equipping the church for engagement in public life. He challenged his listeners to transform their communities and congregations through a strategy of faith-based community organizing. Dr. Linthicum presented the keynote address, "Saving And Losing Life: A Call To The Urban Church."
 
Participants gained a better understanding of the extent of the disaster by touring the affected area by bus. The Presbytery of South Louisiana recruited volunteers from local Presbyterian congregations who narrated the tour. It was very clear that, even after 17 months, whole neighborhoods were still deserted and little rebuilding had been done.

Presbytery of South Louisiana staff members Alan Cutter, General Presbyter, and Jean Marie Peacock, Congregational Development and Disaster Recovery, encouraged conference attendees to continue sending volunteers to the area and to financially support their Homes for Christmas project. Funds donated to that project are used to purchase building materials for homes. Visit the Presbytery Web site and click “Homes for Christmas” to learn more.

Conference workshops

Worshop topics included

• Spiritual care and compassion fatigue
• Vulnerable populations: children, immigrants, persons with mental illness and disabilities
• Psychological first aid and long-term recovery
• Reestablishing food security in the region
• Faith-based organizing and community partnerships
• Race, poverty, class and gender issues
• Stories of volunteer opportunities

Pre- and post-conference volunteer experiences provided participants an opportunity to get their hands dirty. Some participants worked with the Presbyterian Hunger Program staff in the demonstration vegetable raised-bed gardens at the Trinity Christian Community Center in the Holly Grove neighborhood in New Orleans. Others stayed at one of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance volunteer villages and spent several days gutting a house.

The John Park Lee Award lunch, always a highlight of PHEWA biennial conferences, honored George and Kathy Todd for their lives spent pursuing justice. Trey Hammond, who nominated the Todds for this award, delighted those assembled as he introduced the Todds with stories of their life adventures as advocates for economic justice, peace, urban concerns and civil rights.

Biennial Business Meeting

The PHEWA Biennial Business Meeting gave attendees a chance to hear the accomplishments and goals of the 10 networks of PHEWA and to discuss actions to be endorsed by its members. Three resolutions were considered and passed by the body.

John Sharick received the Rodney T. Martin Award during the business meeting. This award recognizes a person who has made a significant contribution to the ministry of PHEWA. The award is named for Rodney T. Martin, who served as Executive Director of PHEWA from 1972 to 1990.

John has served PHEWA in many roles, including Network Moderator, President of the Board of Directors and as Chair of the Nominating Committee in his role as Past President. He has helped PHEWA through General Assembly Evaluations and served on the task force that produced the 1988 policy statement, "Life Abundant: Values, Choices and Health Care; The Responsibility and Role of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)."

Conference Leadership

Bill Quigley

Bill Quigley is a law professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University New Orleans. Bill has served as counsel with a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including Katrina social justice issues, public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform, constitutional rights and civil disobedience. Bill is the author of Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage (Temple University Press, 2003). He has served as an advisor to Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation and has been an active volunteer lawyer with School of the Americas Watch and the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

Download Bill Quigley's article Trying to Make It Home: New Orleans One Year After Katrina.

Margaret Aymer Oget

The Rev. Dr. Margaret Aymer Oget is Assistant Professor of New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Ga. She earned her B.A. in history at Harvard-Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass., and earned her M.Div. and her Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Her dissertation, “‘First Pure, Then Peaceable’: Frederick Douglass reads James” (New York: Union Theological Seminary, 2004) has been submitted for publication to the Henry McNeal Turner/Harriet Tubman series of Orbis Books. She is a minister member of the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta and is affiliated with Central Presbyterian Church. Margaret is a member of the Facing Racism Strategy Team for the PC(USA). She is married to Dr. Laurent M. Oget.

The Rev. Oget presented a series of four electrifying sermons during the conference. Participants were exhorted to set aside their self-righteousness, preconceptions and desire for happy endings in order to follow Jesus Christ into an unknown future.

Read the text of the Rev. Oget's sermons.

• Thursday evening worship: What Kind of Fast is This?
• Friday morning worship: Why Do You Walk?
• Friday evening worship: Faith Is ...
• Sunday morning closing worship: Repairing the Breach

Robert C. Linthicum

Dr. Robert C. Linthicum is president of Partners in Urban Transformation, a Christian ministry equipping the church for engagement in public life. He was an urban pastor from 1959 through 1985, serving Presbyterian (U.S.A.) churches in Milwaukee, Detroit and Chicago. From 1985 through 1995 Dr. Linthicum directed the urban community organizing of World Vision International outside the United States. He directed the Hollywood-Wilshire Cluster of Presbyterian Churches in Los Angeles from 1995 to 1999, which reached a neighborhood of 420,000 through community organizing, specialized youth and ethnic ministries. From 1987 through 2003 he taught at Eastern University in Philadelphia, Pa. He is the author of fourteen books, his latest being Building A People of Power: Equipping Churches to Transform Their Communities.

Dr. Linthicum presented the keynote address, "Saving And Losing Life: A Call To The Urban Church" at the conference.

Storm on River

This is one of a series of encaustic collages made in reaction to Katrina. It is about seeing houses destroyed by wind and water and knowing the struggle people have in losing their possessions and sense of place. The filminess of wax lends itself to the blur and melting of one house and life into another. It helps me begin to understand the many changes to life as I knew it."
— Artist Sarah Ashe

To achieve this effect, the artist adds colored pigments to heated wax and then applies the resulting substance to a surface such as wood or canvas

- Files marked with this icon can be downloaded in printable Adobe Acrobat format. This file requires the free Acrobat Reader. For best results, right-click the link (or click and hold for Macintosh), select " save target as" and save the document to your desktop for viewing and printing.