Massachusetts Conference at General Synod
Synod's anti-war message spearheaded by Mass. Conference folksMore than 1,000 people joined an anti-war protest at Synod on Monday, June 25, which was organized by Massachusetts Conference folks including the Rev. Lael Atkinson, pastor of the Payson Park Church UCC in Belmont, Conference Minister and President Jim Antal and Associate Conference Minister Peter Wells. Wells said that while Synod officials estimated that the march attracted more than 500 participants, Hartford police put the estimate at between 1,000 and 1,100. Wells said many people were involved handing out flyers at various Synod events to let people know about the march. Read national setting coverage of the protest Activities against the war began at the end of the Conference Annual Meeting on Friday, June 22, when Antal - with unanimous support from the Board of Directors - read a pastoral letter calling for the end of the war that was signed by the UCC's five-person Collegium of Officers, the Conference ministers and the presidents of the UCC seminaries. Also at the meeting and later at the Synod marketplace, Lael Atkinson and June Cooper of the City Mission Society of Boston and others distributed yellow ribbons which many Massachusetts Conference and Synod delegates wore throughout the rest of Synod. |
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| June Cooper, Executive Director of the City Mission Society of Boston, and Martha Crawford, a member of First Parish of Westwood, UCC, prepare yellow ribbons to distribute at the end of the Conference Annual Meeting. | |
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| Ginger Brasher-Cunningham, senior pastor of North Community Church in Marshfield (in blue jacket) participates in the March through Hartford. | June Cooper, holding a sign that reads "End the Arrogance" distributes ribbons to some teenagers at General Synod. |
