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Social Issues

Human Rights
Timothy "GA" Underwood hugs the Rev. Dustin Mailman in the recently opened coffee shop of the Deep Time ministry in Asheville, N.C. Underwood serves as minister of social enterprise for Deep Time and Mailman is its founding pastor. The program, which seeks to create a spiritual community with people impacted by incarceration, is housed at Trinity United Methodist Church in Asheville.

Coffee fuels a future for former inmates

A new coffee shop located within a United Methodist church doubles as a place where struggling community members can find a job and support as they try to rejoin society.
Human Sexuality
Mountain Sky Conference Bishop Kristin Stoneking gives the benediction at the closing worship of Reconciling Ministries Network’s convocation held at First United Methodist Church in downtown Madison, Wis. The July 24-27 convocation, with the theme “Uncharted,” celebrated the removal of denomination-wide restrictions targeting LGBTQ people and also acknowledged the challenges ahead in a new denominational landscape. Photo by Joscie Cutchens, UM News.

LGBTQ advocates head for ‘uncharted’ territory

With The United Methodist Church’s removal of anti-gay stances, advocates for LGBTQ equality see reasons to celebrate but also challenges ahead in the denomination and wider world.
Church Leadership
Holding hands during a service of appreciation for African Americans who stayed in the church despite institutional racism at The United Methodist Church's 2004 General Conference in Pittsburgh are, from left: Anne Marshall of the church's Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns; Juanita Bryant of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; Jerry Ruth Williams; the Rev. Larry Pickens; and Bishops Violet L. Fisher and Charlene P. Kammerer. File photo by Mike DuBose.

Giving Methodist women their due

A new book brings Southern Methodist women and their social justice work to the forefront.
Church Leadership
Mary McLeod Bethune with some of her pupils in 1905. Bethune, the daughter of former slaves, was a pioneering American educator and civil rights leader. She founded what became the historically Black United Methodist college named in her honor, Bethune-Cookman College (now Bethune-Cookman University). Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress World Digital Library Collection.

9 women to know

“Southern Methodist Women and Social Justice: Interracial Activism in the Long Twentieth Century” features the stories of nine important Methodist women.

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