Union matters! podcast: Perils of peacemaking

  1. Expanding access to healthy food: Shalom Farms at Union
  2. Helping cops cope with traumatic violence: VALEAP
  3. Marking milestones at The Presbyterian Outlook
  4. Memory sanctions & Confederate statues
  5. The rise of Womanism: Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon
  6. Understanding Muslims: Dr. Zeyneb Sayilgan
  7. Union matters! podcast: God and the sanctuary movement
  8. Union matters! podcast: Perils of peacemaking
  9. How to revitalize a church through music and drama

More than 350-thousand people have died and 11 million have been forced to leave their homes since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Since the outbreak of civil war, Dr. Mary Mikhael has been interpreting the consequences of this global tragedy for the Syrian and Lebanese people, particularly the Christian communities. In 2018, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program sent 10 international peace activists to several U.S. cities to speak to churches and seminaries. Dr. Mikhael was one of them. She’s a native of Syria, resident of Lebanon, and alumna of Union Presbyterian Seminary. During a visit to Richmond, Virginia, she sat down with Union Professor of Christian Missions Stan Skreslet to discuss the challenges religious groups face as they seek to bring hope, peace, and reconciliation to this war-torn region.

Mikhael recently served as president of the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, the first woman to serve in this capacity in any seminary in the Middle East. A Presbyterian, born to Greek Orthodox parents in Syria, she is a 1982 graduate of the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond (now Union Presbyterian Seminary). She earned her doctorate in education at Columbia University in New York.  Returning to Syria she became the director of the women’s program for the Middle East Council of Churches. She is active in ecumenical and interfaith activities and is a noted authority on the church in the Middle East and the role of women.

Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Mikhael has been interpreting the consequences of this global tragedy for the Syrian and Lebanese people, particularly the Christian communities, as she serves with the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon.

She is the author of the Presbyterian Women 2010 Horizons Bible Study “Joshua: A Journey of Faith” for the Presbyterian Church (USA) and was co-author of “She Shall Be Called Woman,” a meditation on biblical women.

Top photo: Union professor Stan Skreslet, and international peacemaker and alumna Dr. Mary Mikhael