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Violence

Social Concerns
Some 40 faith leaders from across Washington, D.C., join Aug. 22 in leading a prayer vigil in the city’s ethnically diverse Columbia Heights neighborhood. The group aimed to present a vision of unity and hope in the face of Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in the nation’s capital. At center in the green and white stole is the Rev. Donna Claycomb Sokol, pastor of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, who spoke at the event. Photo by Sharon Groves, the Festival Center.

Churches push back on armed troops in US cities

United Methodists are prayerfully helping to mobilize nonviolent resistance and taking action to protect people targeted by President Trump’s show of military force in D.C. and other U.S. cities.
Ecumenism
Gothia Towers, a hotel and convention center in Gothenburg, Sweden, hosted the World Methodist Conference and the annual conference of the Uniting Church in Sweden at the same time. Gothenburg is on Sweden’s west coast. Photo by Klaus Ulrich Ruof, Germany Central Conference.

Methodist council sets membership rules

Amid breakaways from The United Methodist Church, the World Methodist Council formalized its application process for new members. The group also addressed international conflicts.
Violence
The Rev. Larry Clark, a United Methodist pastor from Toledo, Ohio, lights a candle in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Aug. 14. He and other members of a visiting delegation of U.S. church activists came to the Middle East to accompany threatened Christians and other Palestinians and call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Photo by Paul Jeffrey, UM News.

Pilgrimage for peace in the Holy Land

As war drives away tourists, the Rev. Larry Clark joined 11 other Christians from the U.S. in a trip to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Photos and story by Paul Jeffrey, UM News.
Faith Stories
The Rev. Tim Holton, a United Methodist pastor, visits family graves at the Simpson Cemetery in Eagleville, Tenn. In 1997, his cousin, Daryl Holton, killed his four children with a military-style rifle and was eventually executed in Tennessee’s electric chair. He is buried beneath the light-colored headstone at left, next to the graves of his children. Tim Holton now serves on the board of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and ministers to death row inmates as a volunteer chaplain at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tenn. Photo by Mike DuBose, UM News.

Pastor’s life shaped by family murders

The Rev. Tim Holton has spent more time than most thinking about the death penalty. He’s against it despite — or perhaps because of — the horrific murder of four Holton children in 1997 by his cousin.

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