From the beginning of their journey into the Orthodox faith, Meghan and Michael Jones were metaphysically connected to Alaska. But their sense of calling to spread the gospel, expand the church and launch socially redemptive initiatives eventually led the couple and their four children to Fiji.
Read MoreThere has been an increase in crimes committed against houses of worship across North America, predominantly aimed at Catholic churches, since last year. Many of these incidents have taken place in the weeks prior and after the Supreme Court decision to roll back federal abortion rights.
Read MoreOrthodox Christians in North America and around the world already are venerating the Alaskan matriarch for her care and concern for abused women.
Read MoreLike many others, 66-year-old Mayan Rosalina Tuyuc has been scarred by Guatemala’s decades-long civil conflict that officially ended in 1996, but from which the country has yet to recover. Raised Catholic, she has now learned to also look to her ancestors’ Indigenous spirituality for healing and answers.
Read MoreEstimates vary, but many agree that at least 30% of the world’s population has no access to the gospel, often because of the hostile environment in which they live. The goal of 2414, a coalition of church planting movements including Beyond, is to reach those people groups with a model that will have a lasting impact.
Read MoreFor years, Fairfax church members — including older Christians such as Harrington, Jan Johnson and Juanita Wheeler — have connected in person with immigrants through FriendSpeak. But when the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown came in the spring of 2020, face-to-face studies with friends from China, El Salvador, Syria and elsewhere became impossible.
Read MoreWhile less than 1% of Americans identify as Orthodox Christians, 5% of Alaskans identified as Orthodox in 2014, according to Pew Research. And while the number of regular attendees at Eastern Orthodox churches in the U.S. has declined 14% from 2010 to 2020, the number of parishes grew 3% over the same decade, according to the latest data in the 2020 Census of Orthodox Christian Churches.
Read MoreNew research recently found bias against Muslim women in India exists across all industries. For the study, two similar fake resumes were created, one of a Hindu woman and the other of a Muslim woman. The Muslim woman received half as many job offers.
Read MoreCatholic leaders in Africa said Pope Francis’ visit to South Sudan is long awaited and could help push the political players to a settlement. The wider Catholic community in Africa is in a state of frustration over Francis’ decision to cancel and postpone his planned visit to the crises-ravaged nations of Congo and South Sudan after opting to go ahead with his trip to Canada.
Read MoreWhile there has been a prevailing narrative since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June that pro-lifers don’t care about women, the facts tell a different story. For over 50 years, even preceding the Roe v. Wade decision, Christians have been serving women in unexpected or crisis pregnancies.
Read MoreThe first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope released July 12 revealed segments of God’s beautiful universe never seen before. Scott Acton, a Christian scientist at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, served as the wavefront sensing and controls scientist on the telescope project.
Read MoreThe Central Lutheran Church of Dallas just celebrated its 100th anniversary. The congregation, which recently merged with 70-year-old Bethany Lutheran Church of Dallas, is starting to reckon with the decline in attendance and membership that is plaguing mainline traditions across the United States.
Read MoreJoshua Prager’s book, “The Family Roe” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and received broad acclaim for Prager’s painstaking research into the life of the Roe v. Wade plaintiff — Norma McCorvey in real life and “Jane Roe” to the court — and many people connected to her, including the daughter born to her before abortion was legalized.
States, lawyers and legal scholars are continuing to evaluate the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned the decision in Roe v. Wade and subsequent abortion cases and held the U.S. Constitution does not, in fact, recognize a right to terminate a pregnancy.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The Gambia initiated proceedings against Myanmar, alleging it has been involved in atrocities against the Rohingya Muslims, including “killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting conditions that are calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, and forcible transfers, (which) are genocidal in character because they are intended to destroy the Rohingya group in whole or in part.”
Read MoreFor four weeks each summer, Kids & Christian Camp brings children ages 3 to 12 together in the nation’s capital to cook Jamaican food, listen to African music, learn about Mexican history and Japanese clothing, practice Brazilian martial arts and tour the Tanzanian embassy.
Read MoreFollowing a six-day voyage across Canada that included five stops and nine public appearances in Edmonton and Quebec City, Pope Francis said that the trip will result in reduced future travel and even the possibility he may choose to someday retire.
Read MorePope Francis apologized to Canada’s Indigenous communities for the Catholic church’s role in forcibly converting them to the faith that led to generations of physical and sexual abuse. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” the pope said.
Read MoreCatholic nun and medical doctor Teresa Forcades says women should make their own abortion decisions. Forcades is quick to clarify that she is not “pro-choice” and that she, too, believes in the sanctity of life, but the situation is “way more complex” to squeeze into the pro-choice/pro-life binary that frames today’s abortion debate.
Read MoreIn the past few years a national conversation has ignited about the character of racial and religious outsiders, who belongs in America and under what terms and conditions they belong. According to Stanford historian Kathryn Gin Lum in her latest book “Heathen: Religion and Race in American History,” these ideas and American conceptions of race can be traced back to the religious and racialized concept of the “heathen.”
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