Our General Assembly

A lot of you may not realize it, but our denomination just completed it's 224th General Assembly. The Assembly, which meets every two years, met electronically using a combination of Zoom and PC Biz. The agenda was limited to items that needed immediate attention, though as Presbyterians like to do there was a good deal of arguing over what needed immediate attention and what didn't!

If you want to see everything the GA did you can go to www.pcusa.org or www.pres-outlook.org. However, I would like to lift up one item that was approved by the assembly for your reading. It's a special statement from the assembly entitled Responding to the Sin of Racism and a Call to Action. You can read it here. (A small warning: this was just approved and hasn't been "cleaned up" yet. So the underlined bold parts were added to the original motion as an amendment and any lined out parts were deleted from the original as an amendment. This is the reason for the different fonts.)

Mostly I would like to share a poem that was included in the statement. The General Assembly commended it "to the entirety of the PC(USA), its members, congregation, presbyteries, synods, and the GA entities...for reading, reflection, and meditation.

A knee on a neck

laying bare for all to see

the evil of

callous

soulless

entitled

power

choking the life from

God's beloved

just because.

We know what must change.

Will we, church?

We have written many

true, significant,

sometimes even sincere

words.

We have confessed:

Belhar, C'67, Barmen...

Enough words?

Never enough witness.

We know we must change.

Will we, church?

Grace and peace...

PT