The annual Historical Lecture of the Dublin-Munster Presbytery will be given on Monday at 5 Gardiner Row (adjacent to the Abbey Presbyterian Church), starting at 8 p.m.
These lectures were inaugurated in the early 1970s with a lecture on "Dissenting Ministers in the 17th Century" by Dr Gerald Simms, who was senior lecturer in history, Trinity College Dublin. Since then, there has been a succession of distinguished lecturers, including Theo Moody, Dudley Edwards, Kevin Nowlan, A.T.Q. Stewart, and others.
Senator Maurice Manning will give this year's lecture, on James Dillon. He has recently published a very well received biography of Dillon. He has also published an authoritative work on the Blue Shirts, and has written on the ESB and on Irish political parties. Senator Manning lectures on politics in UCD and is the leader of Fine Gael in the Seanad. All are welcome. The Presbyterian Women's Association continues to be one of the most important and active agencies in the church. It is supportive of deaconesses, of overseas work and overseas workers, maintaining an informative link with the latter by receiving missionaries on furlough and hearing of areas and scope of overseas work.
A feature of the life of the Presbyterian Women's Association is its annual Friendship Day, when members of the branches meet. Friendship Day 2000 (Dublin-Munster Presbytery) will be held in Dun Laoghaire Presbyterian Church on April 2nd at 4 p.m. The guest speaker will be Mrs Alison McCaughan, editor of an information magazine Wider World.
It has been stressed that the rural community is of considerable importance in the Presbyterian Church. Half of the church membership is drawn from this community.
The Moderator, the Right Rev Dr John Lockington, joined with other church leaders recently to meet officials of the European Union to express concern about how the EU's current agricultural policies were affecting the farming community. Subsequently, an approach was made to the Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, to impress upon him the church's concern for the farming community, and ask him to lobby in government for means to ease some of the prevailing problems.
Dr Lockington returned to this issue recently when he met farmers, their families and ministers of country congregations at Greenmount Agricultural College, Co Antrim. It is believed that about 100 people attended. The Moderator is on a three-week visit to south-east Asia and will visit partner churches of the Irish church in Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
In Indonesia there is continuing violence between Christian and Muslim communities, with thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of Christians fearful for their lives. The Irish Presbyterian Church continues to make representations to the British and Irish governments and the United Nations to press the Indonesian government to take more positive action in protecting the Christian communities, some of whom have been settled in Indonesia for over 500 years.
The Moderator will attend the General Assembly of the Communion of Christian Churches in Indonesia, at which 2,500 delegates will represent some 70 Christian churches throughout the islands.