2024 had us back in person and meeting up together in Atlanta, Georgia, this time in conjunction with the PJN annual meeting, with the theme: Palestine in Focus.

We were joined by 11 participants, and again we decided to pivot our award money to a fabulous keynote speaker, Rev. Joi R. Orr, PhD who gave us an insightful message about prophetic witness and the intersection of Palestinian liberation and the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta.

Given the nature of the moment we are currently in, we also elected to grant an award to one of our seminarian participants, Naomi McQuiller, for her organizing work on Columbia Theological Seminary’s campus. We are elated to see how our work on prophetic witness has informed the student uprisings of 2023 and beyond. You can read a confession Naomi wrote for our PJN Advent series here.

This year we pivoted from a preaching award to hiring a featured speaker, the unmatched Dr. Taurean J. Webb and our organizer friend in the movement, Johnathan Brenneman, who supported our weeks-long online learning behind the scenes. Our teaching collective returned this year as the Hosanna Preaching Project, and we met over a series of weeks online instead of for our usual one-day, location-locked seminar in-person. We were able to host 25 participants this year due to our online capacity!

The Hosanna Project 2021 expanded our reach to include church educators as well as preachers. Black religionist Dr. Taurean J. Webb’s ground-breaking curriculum, “Journeys Toward Justice”, originally prepared for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, was the basis for our virtual conference this year.

“Journeys Toward Justice” explored the profound, intersectional connections and divergences between the Black and Palestinian freedom struggles. Webb and the Hosanna faculty lead us in an experiential pedagogy, with prayer and worship, presentations, discussion and breakout groups, and creative arts. Our learning experiences were oriented toward personal deepening and transformation. Topics included Black liberation theology, the Kairos Palestine document, the importance of interpreting Scripture in social, historical, and cultural context, as well as the social location of the interpreter, and intercultural, interracial, and interfaith dialogue.  We delved into Christian Zionism, parallel systems of oppression and supremacy, concepts of chosenness, racism, and settler-colonialism. Grounded in faith and equipped with anti-racist tools we sent forth our participants to engage our liberation work in a spirit of “loving resistance.”

On November 20, 2019, ten of us gathered in Pasadena, California at Knox Presbyterian Church to consider Risky Preaching in our polarized society, many preachers are deeply ambivalent about preaching prophetic sermons.

Our work together equipped preachers with resources needed to: preach prophetic sermons on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, lead a mid-week congregational dialogue on your sermon, and preach a follow-up sermon on the next Sunday that reflects the dialogue and engagement of the congregation. 

Our key claim: the impact would be transformational for them and for their congregation.

On April 26, 2017, eleven pastors and seminarians gathered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to consider and discuss their preaching on the topic of Blessed: Preaching "Israel" as Ancient Symbol and Contemporary Reality, based on the November 26, 2017 Reformed Lectionary texts for texts (Christ the King Sunday) Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 & Matthew 25:31-46. Their goal was to understand and challenge ways of reading scripture and practicing faith which privilege one group, and set apart their relationship to God as superior. It is also language which sits at the theological heart of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Rev Dr. Jeff Paschal, pastor of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina was our winner this year with his sermon “God of the Underdog.”

Nov. 17. 2014 - The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2014 Hosanna Preaching Prize, the Reverend Loren McGrail. Rev. McGrail is a United Church of Christ (UCC) pastor serving Global Ministries for the Disciples of Christ and the UCC in Israel/Palestine. She works there with the YWCA of Palestine, work which is also supported by the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Rev. McGrail’s sermon, entitled “Serve Life” was delivered at St. Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church in Jerusalem on August 24, 2014, at the height of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Centering her thoughts on the actions of Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives who defied the orders of the Pharaoh to kill Hebrew children (Exodus 1:8-20), Rev. McGrail explores our obligations to the children of Israel/Palestine and our responsibility as Christians to serve life rather than death.

The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [IPMN] is pleased to award the Annual Hosanna Prize. The award recognizes preachers who challenge and inspire believers to heed God’s urgent call to justice and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel. Up to two $1,000 prizes—one on an Old Testament text and the other on a New Testament text—are awarded annually.

The prize-winning sermons will raise a vision of God’s love that embraces all people, especially those who are oppressed and persecuted, exposing the theological error of using biblical passages to rationalize injustice to or by Jews or Palestinians.