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Shuhada Street, which once served as the main marketplace and thoroughfare for the Palestinian people of Hebron, is now almost entirely closed to its 200,000 residents. See Around the Alliance below. |
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Open Shuhada Street
by Paula Clayton Dempsey
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Issa el Amro
and
Paula Calyton Dempsey
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Standing near a checkpoint in Hebron, the
second largest city in the West Bank,
Palestine, our ecumenical group of travelers with the National Council of Churches watched as a gentleman carrying a couple of bags of groceries was denied passage
. Wearily, he turned to walk another way
home--a grocery store errand lengthened
because of the oppressive 23 checkpoints
within one
square
kilometer that prevent
Palestinians from walking on their own streets.
Our group passed through the turnstile checkpoint with few questions and emerged on the other side to discover an astonishingly quiet and scarcely traveled street. Most call it a ghost town when compared to its bustling activity prior to the Israeli occupation. Shuhada Street, which once served as the main marketplace and thoroughfare for the Palestinian people of Hebron, is now almost entirely closed to its 200,000 residents.
Keep reading...
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Voices
There is no line
by Carol Blythe
There has been a lot of attention recently on
immigration reform. You have probably hear
d people say they
don't oppose immigration, but "people need to get
in line and wait their turn." The problem
with that sentiment is that most of the time, there is no line.
There is no line for my good friend at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Maria (whose name has been changed for her safety) came to the United States in 2000 with two goals: to work here for three years to save enough money to return to El Salvador and build a comfortable small house for her family. She also had a dream to learn English during those three years. That was her plan, but as she says, "that was not God's will."
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News and Analysis
Lean into disrupting binary choices
In November of 2017, messengers to the annual meeting of the Kentucky Baptist Convention cast their votes to 'monitor' congregations within their state-body that were also affiliated with
the
Cooperative
Baptist Fellowship.
Kentucky
Baptists
were and are concerned that the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Illumination Project, which is reportedly being released this week, might recommend removing the Fellowship's nearly eighteen-year-old hiring
ban on LGBT individuals.
The issue reveals the ways in which Anglo-Baptist life in the South continues to feel the affects of the fracturing of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s. While the national body of the Southern Baptist Convention may have worked through the affects of these divisions, state conventions and associations, regional bodies and Baptist bodies abroad continue to struggle through question regarding the ramifications of the more than 30 year old conflict. Some congregations and individuals even struggle to negotiate the relationship between the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists.
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Practicing Congregation
Resurrection dance at Chartres
by Tim Moore
Last summer while I was visiting the labyrinth at Chartres in France the cathedral announced newly discovered liturgical information. The announcement, provided on
an eight-foot-tall banner, stated that several
authenticated texts provided the new
information, though it did not provide any citations or source material. (If you have walked a canvass labyrinth, finger walked a
pottery labyrinth, or seen pictures of one, there's a 50 percent chance it's been a rendering of the Chartres labyrinth.)
On Easter morning the dean of the cathedral began walking the labyrinth, carrying in his arms a yellow ball of wool, while the Gregorian chant, Victimae Paschali Laudes, proclaimed Christ's resurrection. As the priest meandered through the pathway the congregation began encircling the outer rim of the labyrinth.
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