In response to Russia’s stepped-up air-defense training flights and the reopening of Russian military bases closed since the Cold War, “Norway’s defence minister has said her country’s armed forces will be restructured so they can respond faster to what she called increased Russian aggression” (The Guardian, February 25, 2015).

Has it been 50 years since that fateful day in the spring of 1965 in Selma, Alabama, when racial tensions boiled over as the Civil Rights movement focused on the hardened segregation culture of the “Old South?” As the decades have passed, much progress has been made in racial relations in the South and throughout the country. The brutality of the opposition back then, and the bravery, naïveté and willingness by the marchers, who were seeking the right to vote, to confront centuries of prejudice is still shocking today.

Ordination of women in the Anglican and Episcopalian churches has become increasingly common over the last few decades. The Anglican Church has been ordaining women since the 1970s. And in 2006 the U.S. based Episcopalian Church appointed a woman as their 26th Presiding Bishop. Now, the Seventh Day Adventist church may be following suit.