Generosity towards religious organizations grew slightly between 2021 and 2022, despite total U.S. charitable giving declining after two record years.
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North Carolina megachurch Elevation — known for its popular music and charismatic pastor — is withdrawing its affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention effective immediately, according to a letter sent to the SBC’s Executive Committee and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
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The artificial intelligence arm of Facebook parent company Meta has turned to widely translated religious texts like the Bible to provide data for its Massively Multilingual Speech project, which aims to expand text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology to underserved languages.
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The daughter of former Hillsong Church leader Brian Houston and her husband have resigned as global pastors of Hillsong Young & Free, the Australia-based church’s youth ministry. The resignations of Peter and Laura Toganivalu, nicknamed “The Toggsys,” were announced by Phil Dooley, the recently appointed global senior pastor of Hillsong Church, May 7 during a worship service, Church Leaders reported.
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The Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church has approved the conditional disaffiliation of 55 churches over human sexuality issues, including same-sex marriages and potential ordination of pastors who identify as LGBTQ+.
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Charles Stanley, the pastor at Atlanta megachurch First Baptist for 51 years and longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, died Tuesday at the age of 90.
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An Iowa church that uses a hallucinogenic drug as part of its religious ceremonies is engaged in an ongoing fight to win tax-exempt status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The Iowaska Church of Healing of Des Moines sued the IRS in U.S. District Court last year for denying its request to be recognized as a nonprofit organization.
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A North Carolina church cheated out of more than $793,000 in funds it had raised to build a new sanctuary has set up a GoFundMe account to try to replace some of the stolen money. Elkin Valley Baptist Church lost the funds when cyber thieves compromised a staff member’s computer and intercepted an email from Landmark Construction.
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Five women in California have filed a lawsuit alleging that the International Churches of Christ perpetrated a “systemic scheme of abuse” that included the sexual abuse of children as young as three years old and financial abuse of its members.
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An American missionary pilot serving with Mission Aviation Fellowship is being held in a maximum-security prison in Mozambique on charges he supported insurgents in the country. Ryan Koher, 31, was detained Nov. 4 along with two South African volunteers. He had been scheduled to fly supplies, including vitamins, to church-run orphanages.
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Attorneys representing an Atlanta megachurch have filed a lawsuit alleging the bank and investors group that financed its property engaged in predatory behavior, taking millions of dollars from the church as part of a widespread conspiracy that also targeted other African American churches.
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A Dallas-area church, St. Andrew United Methodist Church of Plano, with more than 6,500 members said it will disaffiliate with the United Methodist Church and will remain independent while it investigates alliances with other Methodist denominations.
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According to the 2022 Bank of America Private Bank Study of Wealthy Americans, most well-to-do people of all ages feel compelled to give to philanthropic causes. However, although 82% of parents believe their children share the same vision and goals when it comes to giving, members of younger generations feel the need to pave their own way in the world of philanthropy.
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The FBI has raided four churches in connection with an investigation into alleged abuses of the GI Bill education program by House of Prayer Christian Church’s Bible seminaries. GI Bill benefits help veterans pay for college, graduate school and training programs.
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Three activists with a Texas pro-abortion rights group interrupted a service at Joel Osteen’s Houston megachurch last weekend by stripping to their underwear and shouting, “My body, my choice,” “Overturn Roe,” “Hell no” and other epithet-laced slogans.
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An Oklahoma City woman has been charged with wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for allegedly embezzling more than $360,000 from the California church where she was an administrator for five years.
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A Korean church located near the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois that came under fire last year for allegations of ongoing sexual misconduct has terminated an independent investigation before its completion.
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A Washington, D.C.-area law firm has filed a complaint in a Virginia district court alleging Liberty University failed to properly investigate a student’s report that she was raped by another student and retaliated against her after she made the report.
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The Satanic Temple has filed a civil lawsuit against a Pennsylvania elementary school after the school turned down a request to form an after-school Satan Club. The proposed club for Northern Elementary School in York, Pennsylvania, was voted down 8-1 at an April 19 school board meeting.
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Megachurch head pastor Stovall Weems has resigned from Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida, as he continues to pursue a lawsuit alleging he was illegally suspended from his position by the church’s governing board earlier this year.
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