A Florida woman who impersonated the father of a Camp Mystic flood victim to solicit donations through GoFundMe has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to online fraud.
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Christian Chinese human rights lawyer Wu Shaoping, who represented persecuted religious believers and other victims of government repression before fleeing China, was released on bond July 24. He had spent nine days in federal immigration custody despite having been granted asylum in the U.S.
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More than a century after a mysterious Bible was reportedly discovered among a crop of yams in a rain-soaked Nigerian field, testimonies of miraculous births, healings and deliverance continue to draw thousands of pilgrims to the sacred ground. The Araya Bible Site is especially popular during the Christmas and Easter season.
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(ANALYSIS) I met Karolyn Grimes not long after moving back to Washington State in the summer of 2005. Grimes, best known for her portrayal of Zuzu (George Bailey’s daughter) in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” had just turned 65. I learned that she and her husband lived in Fall City.
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The reading crisis that’s taken over the 21st century raises immense implications for American Christianity, especially Protestants who have historically valued each individual having access to the Bible.
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Can an anti-conversion law protect indigenous culture, or does it threaten religious freedom? In this documentary, Newsreel Asia producer Harshita Rathore travels to Arunachal Pradesh to understand the decades-long debate surrounding the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act of 1978.
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(ANALYSIS) The secular world has engineered a brilliant liturgy of despair and its high priests come with PhDs in economics. You’re no doubt familiar with the prevailing narrative, as familiar as it is depressing. Marriage has become a luxury product, crushed by stagnant wages, soaring living costs and, in many places, a housing market where buying your first home is impossible.
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(ANALYSIS) Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. are living in uncertain times. On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could proceed with a plan to end Temporary Protected Status — a federal program that allows people to stay in the United States when the government considers their own country unsafe — for around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
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(ANALYSIS) A leaderless protest movement in New Delhi has evolved into a broader rejection of the divisive politics associated with Hindu nationalism. Sparked by a police crackdown, demonstrators have created an unusually inclusive public space where people of different faiths, castes, genders and backgrounds gather in solidarity.
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The new prime minister will almost certainly have a short political honeymoon. How will he handle his first public meeting with Pope Leo XIV? In terms of symbolism, will he seek a blessing?
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Move over history, crime and literature. Escape room themes featuring faith and the Bible are taking over in the United Kingdom. Churches and social groups are turning to this popular leisure activity and using it to challenge people to think about spirituality, life and even their connections with science.
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(ANALYSIS) The Vatican’s latest statement on the canonical trial of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik was intended to quash rumors that one of the Catholic Church’s most controversial abuse cases had quietly ended in acquittal. Instead, it highlighted a different issue: The secretive process by which the church’s judicial system operates and whether it’s capable of delivering justice.
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(ANALYSIS) At the box office, “Toy Story 5” is nearing $1 billion in global ticket sales. The movie isn’t perfect, but some religious leaders should note what Pixar got right about parents getting involved in the digital lives of their children.
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Amid a civil war, the government army finally reclaimed Emelda Vonve’s home city. She could finally go back to her church. She saw the priest. She saw faces she hadn’t seen since before the war. They prayed together, aloud, as a congregation, as they used to. Outside, 15 police cars were waiting to arrest them.
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Pastor Darryl Baker thought it might be best to cancel the outreach. Days before a scheduled sports camp in a Columbus neighborhood, a husband shot and stabbed multiple times his estranged wife and preteen stepdaughter, murdering them.
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Over the past decade, churchgoers are more likely to see someone of a different ethnicity in their congregation but less likely to hear about that racial diversity from the pulpit. A Lifeway Research study of U.S. Protestant pastors finds churches have seemingly grown more diverse, while pastors have grown less likely to see that diversity as a goal and preach about racial reconciliation.
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(ANALYSIS) To be sure, embryo adoption occupies a small corner of U.S. fertility medicine. Few people choose to donate remaining embryos for procreative use. Nor is embryonic personhood a popular idea: Only 39% of Americans support laws declaring that human life begins at fertilization. A majority of white evangelical Protestants, Hispanic Protestants and Latter-day Saints support that view, yet majorities of these religious groups also oppose banning IVF.
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(ANALYSIS) There’s a running joke in American religious life that goes something like this: Ask 10 Catholics what the church teaches on a given issue, and you’ll get eleven different answers. It’s meant to be affectionate, a nod to the big-tent nature of a tradition that has managed to hold together nearly a billion people across wildly different cultures, languages and political contexts.
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As global headlines celebrated the release of one prominent Chinese minister, the wife of another pastor is pleading with the world not to forget those still jailed in China. “Zion Church has eight leaders still detained,” said Sister Su Ziming, wife of Pastor Wang Lin, who leads Beijing Zion Church alongside the recently released Pastor Ezra Jin. “Our family and the others all eagerly await reunion.”
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While other community members chase modernity, migrating to cities for greener pastures due to recurring economic hardship, members of the Mennonite church, like Charles Ncube, a father of four, believe in faith-based farming, through which he is able to fend for his family and help needy neighbors.
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