Presbyterians can practice faith in your everyday lives. Each short booklet explores lifestyle integrity for different seasons or choices of our lives. Choose individual booklets below, or use the download button on this page for a single pdf with all five of the booklets combined (20 pages).
This report focuses on the role that religion plays in relationship to violence, most specifically the form of violence used to attack important centers and symbols of American power on September 11, 2001. It also examines actions that have been, or can be, mounted to counter such violence and the role religion plays in supporting or challenging those counter terrorist actions.
This report, approved by the 219th General Assembly (2010),challenges our society’s fatalism and numbness in accepting the highest gun death rates in the world, reviews past church positions and proposes a new “spiritual awakening” approach: a church-related, community-based strategy inspired by “Heeding God’s Call” in Philadelphia, with similar groups in Richmond, Virginia and central New Jersey. The report looks at our culture of violence-acceptance, with its undercurrents of fear and desperation.
A central question of political ethics is: 'Why ought one to obey the state?' A Christian political ethic puts a different question: 'How can we love God in serving our neighbors through politics?' The purpose of humanity is to love God and to help our neighbor know the love of God. Therefore, Christian political ethics cannot be autonomous; that I, Christians cannot think of the state as an order independent of God that they are free either to remold or to rebel against apart from God. Christian political ethics are not heteronomous; that is, the laws of the state are …
For two hundred years, General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church have been concerned with religious liberty and the relationship of church and state. The first General Assembly might well have heard the echo of Hanover Presbytery's mighty Memorial to the Virginia legislature: "We ask no ecclesiastical establishments for ourselves; neither can we approve of them when granted to others." Since 1788, our basic Principles of Church Order have placed in the first position the powerful commitment of our Reformed faith to religious liberty: "God alone is Lord of the conscience.... We do not even wish to see any religious constitution …
Religious Freedom Without Discrimination and the shorter related resolution, The Boundaries of Religious Liberty, draw on the Historic Principles of Church Order (1788) to affirm that religious freedom should be “equal and common to all.” They thus build on the long policy statement, God Alone is Lord of the Conscience (1988), to provide contemporary Reformed interpretation of the First Amendment that is both practical and theological. Religious liberty can thus not be claimed to justify “discrimination in the provision of secular employment or benefits, healthcare, public or commercial services or goods, or parental rights to persons based on race, ethnicity, …
In a broken, sinful world, people often exploit rather than contribute to the well-being of others. This exploitation has many forms, and can be direct or indirect. This study document examines some ways by which we and others in our contemporary culture exploit persons sexually, using them rather than serving them, degrading them rather than affirming them, sometimes directly, often indirectly. It looks at some old issues - pornography, for example - in which the new sociocultural context that unites permissiveness with mass communication techniques. It discusses some recently emerged issues, sexism for example. And it suggests some directions and …
In 1978, the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church assigned to the Council on Women and the Church responsibility to "study the problems of sexual harrassment, and to explore ways of involving the church in ministering to victims of sexual harrassment." The Council appointed a committee which developed a working definition for sexual harassment: Any unwanted sexual advances or demands (verbal/physical) which are perceived by the recipient as demeaning, intimidating or coercive. The committee sought to find out how widespread was the incidence of the problem, what forms it took, and what sorts of solutions had been developed within …
The Council on Women and the Church (former UPCUSA) and the Committee on Women's Concerns (former PCUS) jointly appointed a focus group to initiate the study on the sexual exploitation of women. Due to funding limitations, the group focused on prostitution and tourism and the economic factors that nurture and sustain the exploitation of women.
A publication that seeks to understand the phenomenon of "professional misconduct through sexual abuse." Exactly what constitutes professional misconduct through sexual abuse? In the case of adults, why do pastors/counselors/supervisors become sexually involved with men and women in their congregations and workplaces? Where are the lines between an "ordinary" responsible relationship between two consenting adults, and "professional misconduct through sexual abuse?" Is the extent of the problem really so great?