(ANALYSIS) Has there been a noticeable decline in the share of 18–22-year-olds who identify as transgender over the last couple of years? The answer is unequivocal: Yes.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) Manger scenes displayed at Christmas usually feature an ox and an ass beside the infant Jesus. According to the Gospel of Luke, Mary placed her child in a manger “because there was no room for them in the inn.” No mere babysitters, the ox and ass harken back to the Book of Isaiah 1:3, which early Christians interpreted as a prophecy of the birth of Christ.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) Employees at large retail chains were instructed to avoid “Merry Christmas,” a greeting now deemed too specific and too religious. What emerged was designed to include everyone by addressing no one, to give a greeting that was universal because it had been smoothed of meaning. “Happy Holidays,” once an innocuous phrase, became a symbol in a newly branded American cultural war.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) They drank more, slept more and had more than six weeks of celebrations.
Read More
Oregon was the first state to approve physician-assisted suicide in 1997. In addition to Washington D.C. and Illinois, the practice is legal for adults in California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state.
Read More
It’s the best of the Godbeat, 2025 version. Many of the nation’s top religion journalists pick their top piece of the year.
Read More
Al Mohler believed a former seminary student when she told him in 2018 that a professor forced her to perform sexual acts. The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, then sought to deal with the professor discreetly, sidestepping the school’s formal process to avoid an investigation.
Read More
Hong Kong was tense and festive when I arrived for a small 1997 conference about religion coverage in global media. The reason for the odd atmosphere was obvious: In a few days, on July 1, Great Britain would yield control of that great city to the People’s Republic of China.
Read More
“My stories for Religion Unplugged are important because they offer readers a nuanced understanding of a complex region often reduced to simplistic narratives,” Iqbal said. “The website amplifies original, deeply reported stories that reveal how religion has become central to social and political developments.”
Read More
(OPINION) The most magical and mystical parts of the Christmas story reinforce the unique and elevated status of Jesus of Nazareth. When we read about the angels, the magi, the virgin birth, etc., we understand them to be signs of Christ’s divinity.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) In a move that underscores the priorities of the Catholic Church in the U.S., Pope Leo XIV replaced Cardinal Timothy Dolan as Archbishop of New York, appointing Bishop Ronald Hicks to lead the nation’s second-largest diocese. The announcement represents both a generational and ideological shift at the helm of a historically influential U.S. archdiocese.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) There are moments in our national life when a legal controversy reveals something deeper than a dispute over statutes or precedent. It exposes a fracture in our shared moral imagination — a failure to recognize what is sacred to communities whose ways of life do not mirror our own. The struggle for Oak Flat in Arizona's Tonto National Forest is one of those moments.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) Most of all, people in the valleys between the ridges wanted to find ways to be together — somehow. The traditional 12-day season, ending on Jan. 6, gave them more time for travel and simple festivities.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) Let us strive to spend more time caring for others in the truest sense and less time feeding the devil’s divisiveness, chastising those we think we disagree with.
Read More
(REVIEW) What does it mean when we finds moral clarity from not just punishing criminals, but making it a spectacle? When the most reviled offenders are exposed and humiliated in public view, few feel compelled to object. After all, who would defend a child sex predator? All this is examined in a new must-see Paramount+ documentary.
Read More
(REVIEW) The film follows Biblical hero David, and while the film itself is rather underwhelming, its very existence is cause for celebration and optimism. We’ll likely see more, and better, animated faith-based films on the big screen in the coming years.
Read More
Nigerian Christian leaders verified that Christians there are persecuted for their faith, refuting a growing international narrative that violence in the deadliest country for Christians is not religion-based.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) Steve Bannon is both brilliant and brutal in equal measure. A man of fierce intellect and darker instincts, he’s a practicing Catholic who talks about the culture wars and outside threats to the West. For him, politics isn’t about policy alone. It’s about purpose — a battleground where soul and state collide.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) In his final book, “Stop, in the Name of God,” Charlie Kirk praises Shabbat as a restorative, sacred pause rooted in Jewish tradition — while simultaneously arguing it must be stripped of Judaism to be acceptable for Christians. Drawing on Jewish thinkers, Kirk recasts Shabbat as a Christian practice in service of his broader nationalist vision.
Read More
(ANALYSIS) Here’s what I love about my “job” now — people actually go out of their way to send me updated denominational statistics. I used to have to hunt for them across all kinds of websites and online resources.
Read More