UCC affirms Common Agreement on baptism

News in the August 9, 2011 issue

At its biennial General Synod in July in Tampa, Florida, the United Church of Christ became the latest historic Reformed church to formally approve the Common Agreement on the Mutual Recognition of Baptism. The agreement was approved previously by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference, the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church.

"These five churches have taken a significant step on the road to unity," said Michael Kinnamon, the top executive of the National Council of Churches in a July 14 statement. Both Kinnamon and Karen Georgia Thompson, the UCC minister of ecumenical and interfaith relations, said the next step among the partner churches will be talks about the goal of being "fully united around a common eucharistic table."

This article appears in the August 9, 2011 issue.

Against killing children

We have become a society of people who cannot prevent our own children from being killed in their classrooms—and who do not much mind the killing of other people’s children by weapons of war.

by Wendell Berry