The top 1% took 95% of all new wealth created in the US from 2009 to 2012. Six of the top 10 fastest-growing job categories are $15/hr service gigs. And median income has fallen not since the crisis a… — Rana Foroohar
by Ken Sehested
Nearly a year ago I wrote a close friend who pastors in Texas, attaching a photo of seven of our congregation’s teenagers arrayed in baptism robes, standing on the bank of a lake.
My note said simply, “Is it OK to brag about this?”
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
Preface
June 26 is the International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture. The United Nations
Convention against Torture (CAT), approved in 1984, took effect on 26 June 1987. Since the CAT’s
entry into force, the absolute prohibition against torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman, or
degrading treatment or punishment has become accepted as a principle of customary
international law. The US ratified the CAT in 1994, but with a boatload of exceptions.
§ § §
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
The dogs of war threatening full scale conflict between the US and Iran are straining their respective leashes. Iran openly admits that it shot down a US drone, claiming it was over Iranian territorial waters—by international law, extending 12 miles from a country’s coast line.
The US claims the drone was over international waters, doing so under the terms of the 1982 UN 
Convention on the Law of Seas (UNCLOS). Complicating matters: Oman, across the Strait of Hormuz, also has legal claim to a 12-mile territorial sovereign claim. Yet at its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is only 21 miles wide.
Signs of the Times • 13 June 2019 • No. 195
¶ Processional. “Ain’t a That Good News,” performed by the combined Boston Chidren’s Chorus and the Chicago Children’s Choir.
by Ken Sehested, with extensive quotes from Jonathan Watts, “Greta Thunberg, schoolgirl climate change warrior: ‘’”, The Guardian
I confess I’m head-over-heels in awe of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who was recently awarded Amnesty International’s coveted “Ambassador of Conscience Award for 2019, on behalf of the Fridays for Future movement of school children demanding bold action to address the global climate crisis.
[For more on that, see Amnesty International. Also, watch this short (4:12) video of Thunberg and fellow “school strikers 
for climate change” from around the world.]
by Ken Sehested
Sometimes knees grow weak and hearts grow faint.
Sometimes vision grows dim and resolve wavers.
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Pentecost Sunday is far and away my favorite moment on the church’s liturgical calendar.
It wasn’t always so. In fact, I grew up with inherited suspicion of “Pentecostal” Christians. Their rambunctious style of worship—speaking in “tongues,” ecstatic trances, slayings in the spirit and, generally, excitable emotions—were considered reprobate in my pietist-revivalist culture. We had our amen corners, but other outbursts were frowned upon. Such intrusions into more restrained Baptist sanctuaries were considered divisive and inflammatory.
Read more ›Background
On October 19, 1987, the Shelby County Baptist Association held its annual meeting at Audobon Park Baptist Church. Some weeks earlier a group of pastors meeting at Bellevue Baptist Church had assigned the Credentials Committee to investigate the “doctrinal soundness” of Prescott Memorial Baptist Church for having called a female pastor, Rev. Nancy Hastings Sehested. The Committee reported to the annual meeting that its investigation revealed that Prescott had been able to give both historical and Scriptural bases for its decision, and that in view of varying practices among member churches it would be unfair to single out one church for action. The messengers rejected the Committee’s report, and a motion was made to withdraw fellowship from Prescott for “irregularities that may threaten the fellowship of the Association.” The motion carried. While the motion was being debated, Rev. Sehested rose to speak, and a motion was made to cut off debate. After some confusion she was permitted to speak. She walked to the pulpit so she could face the audience, which was largely hostile, and made the following extemporaneous remarks.
I am Nancy Hastings Sehested, messenger from Prescott Memorial Church, pastor of Prescott Memorial Church, and servant of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Read more ›Signs of the Times • 6 June 2019 • No. 194
¶ Processional. “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (“Come, Holy Spirit”), Taizé.
by Ken Sehested
15 January 2012
On the first Sunday on Lent in 2007, when tensions between the US and Iran were escalating, Circle of Mercy Congregation unanimously adopted a statement (“We Say No: A Christian statement in opposition to war with Iran—see below”) opposing an attack on Iran. With the recent assassination of another Iranian scientist—the fourth to be targeted in the past two years—tensions between our two countries are again at a boiling point.
This is an appropriate time, on this observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, to reaffirm our earlier convictions.
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