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Nassau Witherspoon Partnership

Partners in Faith Invitation

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The Witherspoon Street Church and Nassau Church Partnership Team is chronicling the 175 plus year history between the two congregations.

Both churches have a long history of worshipping in Princeton (Nassau, 255 years and Witherspoon, 181 years), Nassau as a predominantly white institution and Witherspoon Street as a historically black institution. There is a complicated historic relationship between the two congregations, and in recent years many members of both churches have been working for reconciliation and collaboration.

The design of the project includes the production of a documentary, Telling Our Stories, with interviews from members of both congregations, a graphic timeline depicting significant events in the life of the partnership, and a one-time event to revisit and celebrate the historic 250th Year Partners in Faith Celebration of the Presbyterian Presence in Princeton held 2004-2006.

If you have a story to tell or other contributions, please contact Barbara Flythe (email).

Bending the Moral Arc video wins national prize!

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The Bending the Moral Arc video, Facing the “unpretty things” about our country’s history, was produced for the Bending the Moral Arc Webinar nationally screened on November 30. 2021, has been awarded the 2021 Associated Press Church Award of  excellence in The Video Educational Category. This award, presented annually, highlights the best of faith-based journalism produced for the year, and is presented in 78  categories, with 67 groups participating and, for 2021, had 885 entries.

 

The video was filmed on Saturday, October 9, 2021 in the sanctuaries of The Witherspoon Street and Nassau churches. The participants from WSPC: were: Barbara Flythe, Pamela Johnson, Denyse Leslie, Audi Peal and Cameron Stout; from NPC : Tom Coogan, Bill Katen-Narvell, Claire Mulruy and Pam Wakefield. Pastor Lukata Mjumbe, and Elder Jeffery Mascoll, Chair, WSPC Building and Grounds Committee, were particularly helpful in providing a COVID -Safe environment for the filming. Rev. Paul Seebeck,, Presbyterian Mission Agency, produced and wrote the script for the video. The videographer and director on-site at the two churches was Michael Fitzer, Presbyterian Mission Agency.

It is both gratifying and rewarding for us to be recognized among a group of many talented, courageous and committed journalists. For our part, the work of the Bending the Moral Arc continues and is successful to the extent, we are transformed as individuals and churches, authentically living out in action, the intent of the Matthew 25 call as we continue to build on and nurture the relationship between our two congregations as “Partners in Faith.”

Read more about the Associated Press Church Awards online including a YouTube video of the award ceremony and other relevant details about the awards.

2021 Associated Press Church Awards (link)

Find the updated Bending the Moral Arc resources and a video of the November 2021 webinar on our website:

Bending the Moral Arc Resources (link)

Criminal Justice Series: Chris Hedges on Sat. April 30, 1:00 p.m.

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Christian Education Committee Criminal Justice Series: April 30, 2022

Beyond Talking: Challenging New Jersey Mass Incarceration Practices and Policies

New Jersey continues to have the highest rate of racial disparities in its prison population in the country, with Black residents incarcerated at a rate of 12.5 times that of whites, even as the Black incarceration rate is 19% below the national average; more than half of New Jersey’s prison population is Black and, additionally, the state has the 10th highest Latino to white racial disparity in the nation.

In this the fourth and final program in our Criminal Justice Reform Series, our presenter is
Chris Hedges, noted Pulitzer Prize-winning author and prison reform activist. Hedges has worked for a decade teaching writing classes in prisons in New Jersey through a program offered by Princeton University and later Rutgers University. A class that Hedges taught at East Jersey State Prison in 2013 went on to collaborate in the creation of a play titled Caged. Hedges has become a fierce critic of mass incarceration in the United States, and his experience as an educator in New Jersey prisons served as inspiration for his 2021 book: Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. Available at Labryinth Books and Amazon.

Join the discussion with Chris Hedges this Saturday at 1:00pm on Zoom. Contact Witherspoon St. Presbyterian Church for the Zoom link (email).

Summer Reading 2021

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The Nassau Witherspoon Partnership Team invites members of our congregations to pick one of the following two books to read over the summer. Then, join for a conversation with members from both churches in the fall.