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On 8 February, the St Thomas Mar Thoma Syrian Church in Chunakkara, India, celebrated its 125th anniversary, marking a long history of spiritual service and community involvement.

[Church in Wales] The Rt. Rev. Anthony Pierce, who was bishop of Swansea and Brecon between 1999 and 2008, has appeared at Swansea Crown Court and has admitted five counts of indecent assault on a male child under the age of 16. The offenses date from between 1985 and 1990, when Pierce was a parish priest in West Cross, Swansea. Pierce has been remanded on bail, and a provisional date of March 7 has been set for sentencing at Swansea Crown Court. The allegations came to the attention of the Church in Wales in 2023 when the survivor made a disclosure to a Church in Wales safeguarding officer. The disclosure was immediately passed to the police, and the Church in Wales worked closely with our statutory partners as the case was investigated and prosecuted. Following criminal sentencing, the Church in Wales Disciplinary Tribunal will consider further appropriate action. We acknowledge the bravery of the survivor in coming forward and thank the police, Crown Prosecution Service and the local authority for their careful work in this case. The Church in Wales is appalled at the offenses which have been revealed in this case and expresses its deepest sympathy with the victim for the abuse they have suffered. It is a cause of the most profound shame that a priest in the Church in Wales should have been convicted of such shocking crimes. Our prayers are with the survivor and with all victims of abuse, whose welfare must always be at the heart of our work. We hope that the manner with which the disclosure was handled when it came to light in 2023 will give confidence that the church is serious about dealing firmly and decisively with any such cases. An internal investigation prompted by the disclosure suggests that in 1993 a small number of members of the Church in Wales had been aware of a further allegation against Pierce but that this was not shared with police until 2010. The Church in Wales Safeguarding Committee has now commissioned an independent external review of the Church in Wales’s handling of this second allegation, which will commence immediately and will be published upon completion. The review will also consider how safeguarding allegations are handled in the church’s current systems for the appointment of archdeacons and bishops and whether any changes to these processes are necessary. The Terms of Reference of the Review will be published shortly on the Church in Wales website. The Church in Wales is determined to demonstrate that it is a safe place, and that anyone coming forward will have their concerns or disclosures taken seriously, treated with compassion and taken forward according to the highest current standards. If our people and processes have failed victims and survivors of abuse in the past, we intend to take responsibility for that fact and to fully apply the lessons which have been learned. There is no place for any form of abuse in the Church in Wales. We give the highest priority to the care and protection of children and vulnerable people in our communities. To this end we regularly review our safeguarding procedures and provide extensive training to staff and volunteers. We encourage anyone with safeguarding concerns to contact a member of our team via the Church in Wales website Alternatively, Safe Spaces is a free and independent support service, providing a confidential, personal and safe space for anyone who has been abused through their relationship with either the Church of England, the Catholic Church in England and Wales, or the Church in Wales.​ You can contact the Safe Spaces team by its website or email.

The year of Jubilee is upon us. In 2025, we embrace the biblical vision of release, restoration, and justice as the global movement for debt cancellation reaches a critical moment. The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) stands at the forefront of this effort, advocating for urgent economic reforms to break the cycles of debt […]

The post From Debt to Dignity: WCRC’s Vision for a Just Economy appeared first on WCRC.

The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) has reaffirmed its solidarity with the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) as it convened for its annual meeting Feb. 7-10 in Malang, East Java. Rev. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of WCRC, addressed the gathering, emphasizing unity, perseverance and the challenges facing the global faith community. “PGI is […]

The post WCRC and the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI) Unite to Tackle Faith Challenges at Annual Assembly appeared first on WCRC.

The question has been raised internationally: who is going to rebuild Gaza and who will pay? As yet, no one knows. There may be three options: Israel, in which case Israel would likely take over the land and sell it to settlers. Saudi Arabia, in...

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany The Call to Catch People In Luke 5, we find the starting point for the incredible ministry of Simon Peter. What a great story! Jesus got into Peter’s boat and told him to put the boat out into the water so he could teach the crowd. After teaching, Jesus told […]

The watchword for the week: The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.  Psalm 138:8 During this busy day, we pause to place God at the center of our lives. We lay aside the menial tasks and the important decisions for a moment as we focus on God’s grace. […]

[Episcopal News Service] This weekend, St. Peter’s Episcopal Parish, a historically Japanese church in Seattle, Washington, will commemorate the 83rd anniversary of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s executive order to authorize the incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps – commonly known as Japanese internment camps – during World War II. 2025 also marks 80 years since the camps closed. “So much intergenerational trauma came from my grandparents and my parents, who met and had gotten married in Minidoka [War Relocation Center in Jerome, Idaho], and passed on to my cousins and me,” the Rev. Polly Shigaki, a retired deacon of St. Peter’s, told Episcopal News Service. She will answer people’s questions during the “Weekend of Remembrance: Never Again is Now,” which will take place Feb. 8-9. “Now we’re at a big juncture with the urgency to capture the stories of the few living survivors,” said Shigaki, whose husband was born in Minidoka. A horse veterinarian assisted with his birth because health care was extremely limited in the camps. The Weekend of Remembrance will include historic tours, a luncheon and a livestreamed worship service. Click here to view the livestream from the Diocese of Olympia’s YouTube channel beginning at 10:30 a.m. Pacific. This year will mark 37 years since the U.S. government formally apologized for incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II, after a decades-long redress movement for restitution for survivors. Most of the people ENS interviewed for this story said they saw “a lot of parallels” between what happened to their relatives immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and anti-Muslim and anti-Middle Eastern sentiment right after the Sept. 11 attacks. They also said they’re seeing the same parallels – fear of the “other” – today with ICE arresting and deporting more than 8,000 migrants since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20. “We haven’t learned our lesson yet; we can’t let history repeat itself,” the Rev. Irene Tanabe, rector of All Souls Anglican Episcopal Church in Okinawa, Japan, told ENS. Tanabe’s father and grandparents were incarcerated at Minidoka. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, in response to the Empire of Japan’s Dec. 7, 1741, attack on Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawai’i, and the resulting growing fear and distrust of Japanese Americans compounded by long-standing anti-Asian racism. At that time, about 275,000 people of Japanese descent were living in Hawai’i and the mainland United States. Over the next six months, about 125,000 of them – including 70,000 U.S. citizens – were forcibly moved to “relocation centers” in 10 remote areas in seven mainland states, though they were actually concentration camps. Those living in the Seattle area at the time, like Shigaki and Tanabe’s families, were sent to Minidoka. Proponents of incarceration justified it as a military precaution, guarding against Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese descent who might secretly work to support Japan in the war’s Pacific theater. Defenders of incarceration also argued that it also would protect those detained from racial attacks, though such arguments were undercut by conditions at the concentration camps, which resembled prisons more than safe havens. Very few people were permitted to temporarily leave the camps, such as for conscription into U.S. military service. “We spend so much time talking about how the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor and how we retaliated by dropping the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in schools, but we don’t spend the same amount of time talking about how we retaliated by setting up internment camps for Japanese Americans right here on our own soil,” the Rev. Jo Ann Lagman, missioner for The Episcopal Church’s Office of Asiamerica Ministries, told ENS. “[It’s an erasure] I think that’s consistent with how Asian Americans are perceived in our society presently, that we’re invisible. …But history must never be erased.” Even though the “relocation centers” are mostly known as internment camps today, many scholars and the Japanese American Citizens League – the country’s oldest and largest Asian American civil rights group – call them concentration camps to more accurately describe the prison-like conditions. Click here to learn more about the JACL’s Power of Words campaign. The Weekend of Remembrance’s first day will include a gathering at the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup to view the Puyallup Remembrance Gallery, which showcases photos, personal stories, and a documentary. Most Japanese Americans then living in the Seattle area spent the first few months of incarceration at the Puyallup Assembly Center, where the Washington State Fairgrounds stands today, before settlement at Minidoka for the remainder of the war. St. Peter’s was formed in 1908 by a group of Japanese Anglicans who gathered in houses until raising enough money to buy property in 1932 and build a church. When the congregation’s families were forcibly removed to concentration camps, the church boarded up and closed on April 26, 1942, and didn’t reopen for more than three years. During that time, St. Peter’s served as a storage site for parishioners’ belongings while they were interned. “Everybody literally got a 4-by-4-foot square space in the church where they could stack their belongings as high as they could,” Jay Shoji – whose grandfather, the Rev. Gennosuke Shoji, was vicar of St. Peter’s at the time and when the church was built – told ENS. “Obviously, 4-foot-by-4-foot is not very big, but you could at least store a few things. …Not everyone came back to Seattle after they were freed, so some items were not claimed.” Click here to read Gennosuke Shoji’s ordination speech from Jan. 15. 1918. Shoji’s grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles were incarcerated at Minidoka. After the war, they temporarily lived at St. Peter’s, which was converted into a hostel to house other parishioners who returned homeless to Seattle. When survivors were released from the concentration camps after the war ended in 1945, restarting their lives was difficult. Many were left homeless because their properties were occupied or sold off, leaving them no choice but to […]

Faith leaders, humanitarian organizations, refugees, members of Congress, and resettlement organizations came together in a demonstration of solidarity and compassion through a public action and vigil in Lafayette Square in front of the White House. The event on Tuesday, Feb.…

The post Faith leaders, members of Congress and others speak out against Executive Order suspending refugee resettlement in Washington, D.C. appeared first on United Church of Christ.

Pickett Chapel has served both Black and white congregations over nearly 200 years. The fingerprints of enslaved people who built this church can still be seen today.