For the past 29 years, Belmont has hosted a public ceremony to honor the memory of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the national holiday which bears his name.
This year, the ongoing threat of COVID-19 means such a ceremony is impossible, so instead the 30th celebration will be a virtual one.
But the virtual nature of the event lessens neither the importance of remembering King s life nor finding wisdom in his words to help guide the nation through troubled times, organizers said. It would have been unthinkable not to host this event this year, said Karen Rubin, one of the organizers. With the tensions the country is facing right now, his life and his words remain extremely meaningful.
Posted Jan 8, 2021
[Episcopal News Service] Presiding Bishop Michael Curry added his name Jan. 8 to an open letter addressed to Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress and the U.S. Cabinet, calling for the removal of President Donald Trump from office. The full letter, distributed by the National Council of Churches, follows.
January 8, 2021
Our faith instructs us to take seriously positions of leadership, not to lead others astray and to be careful about what we say and do. In Philippians 2:3-4 we are taught to, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Obituary: Rev. Joan Ingwersen Mabon
KENNEBUNK - On Dec. 19, 2020, of Kennebunk, Maine. Born in Middletown, Ohio, July 19, 1930, she graduated from Duke University, .
Share
KENNEBUNK – On Dec. 19, 2020, of Kennebunk, Maine. Born in Middletown, Ohio, July 19, 1930, she graduated from Duke University, class of 1952, with a B.A. degree in music.
A summer romance in Kennebunk Beach with her future husband and life partner, Thomas M. Mabon (“Tim”), led to their marriage 1952 in Middletown. Joan and Tim had five children, all girls, and raised them while living in Pittsburgh, Pa., Kansas City, Mo., St. Louis, Mo., Fort Smith, Ark., and Rockville, Md. The family enjoyed summer vacations at the “Bait Can,” their beach cottage in Kennebunk, and settled in a nearby year-round home in 1982.
WASHINGTON (RNS) As Rear Adm. Margaret Grun Kibben, the chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives, made her way through the echoing halls of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday (Jan. 6), she could feel a charge of anticipation in the air. It was an auspicious day: Lawmakers were meeting in joint session to formally approve President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, a historic moment and, thanks to the outgoing president’s refusal to concede, an atypically contentious one.
But Kibben had her own reason for feeling an unaccustomed excitement: It was her third day on the job.
As she walked through the Capitol, Kibben, 60, a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister who had been sworn in Sunday, peeked out a window and saw a swelling crowd of Trump supporters massing at the East front of the building. She thought little more about it than what she’d said in her prayer before the House that morning: America is enduring a time of “great discord, uncertainty and unrest.”
by Kathy Melvin | Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. John Sinclair was a Presbyterian pastor for more than 70 years. (Contributed photo)
LOUISVILLE â The Rev. John Henderson Sinclair, 96, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor for more than 70 years and an ardent advocate for peace and social justice, died in Tampa, Florida, on Jan. 2.
His father was a Scottish pastor from Wick, a town in the far north of Scotland, and his mother was from Glasgow. Both became missionaries to the United States.
Their son attended Baker University from 1941 to 1944 and Temple Universityâs Graduate School of Education from 1947 to 1948. He received his B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1947 and his M. Th., also from Princeton Theological Seminary, in 1953. He was ordained by the Presbytery of Topeka in Kansas on May 26, 1947. He also served as the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America regional secretary for Latin America from 1960-1973.