RISCC At the Cathedral: Intercontinental Children’s Advocate to Speak to RI 1/30/2011

The Rhode Island State Council of Churches and its members will join in a Service of Prayer for Christian Unity, Sunday afternoon, 3 p.m., January 30, 2011, at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, 271 North Main Street, Providence. All are invited, and service leaders will include Episcopalians, Lutherans, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Orthodox and Roman Catholics. This service will not only emphasize unity, but the practical purpose of unity to work for the benefit of all creatures and peoples.

The focus will be “Children and Poverty”, and our guest preacher will be the Rev. Gloria White Hammond, pastor, physician, community activist and co-founder of My Sister’s Keeper, a humanitarian group focused on freedom and healing for enslaved and abused women and children of Darfur and the southern Sudan.

Rev. Gloria, as she is called, received her MD at Tufts Medical School, and her Master’s of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School. She pursues an active pediatric practice and spearheads projects for the benefit of high risk girls and women in the Boston area as well as Africa. She and her husband the Rev. Ray Hammond are also co-pastors of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Boston.

Music for the service will be provided by the West Bay Chorale. and the offering from the service will be shared by My Sister’s Keeper and the Rhode Island State Council of Churches.

The Rhode Island State Council of Churches has promoted justice and unity among the churches of Rhode Island since its founding in 1937. Members include 12 Protestant denominations, 8 Orthodox denominations, several independent church organizations, and a number of independent congregations. The Council maintains an effective advisory presence with members of the RI State Legislature as well as government officials at the state and Federal level, and coordinates emergency funds for Rhode Island churches.

In the 1990’s the Council initiated a forum of interfaith leaders including and beyond the Christian churches. This has involved leaders of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. This forum is maturing into a regular interfaith network and the Council is in process of reforming itself to broaden its mission into an interfaith community.