The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from a Missouri Christian college seeking to halt a Biden administration policy the college believes may force it to allow biological males in women’s dormitories.
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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 death of a supreme court judge in Uganda has sparked a hot public debate on the burial rights of the dead and surviving spouses in church marriages. The debate started after the death of Justice Stella Arach-Amoko, who succumbed to cancer at Nakasero Hospital in Kampala on June 17.
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(ANALYSIS) One of the biggest religion-beat stories of the year is currently playing out, and most people are probably unaware of it due to lack of mainstream news updates. Maybe this story is too Catholic? I say this because the three-year process that began in 2021 known as the Synod on Synodality is reaching its most contentious and potentially dramatic stage.
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The feast day of saints Peter and Paul is a significant celebration in the Christian calendar because it commemorates the lives of two martyrs. The annual feast, observed on June 29, holds deep religious and historical significance for Christians around the world.
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The celebration of a Hindu festival, Ram Navami, which marks the birth of Lord Ram, was tarnished by violence in late March across 10 Indian states, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Delhi and West Bengal. It’s this kind of religious violence and intolerance that belied the surface of diplomatic talks between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his state visit to Washington.
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Nikhil Mandalaparthy is the advocacy director with Hindus for Human Rights, a human rights nonprofit that advocates for pluralism and civil and human rights in South Asia and North America. He spoke with Jody Hassett Sanchez in Washington during Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s state visit.
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Young and old, male and female, around one-fifth of U.S. adults deal with chronic pain. But at a monthly meeting in this Oklahoma town, fellow sufferers — some gathered in person, others connecting from afar via Zoom — find support through a ministry called Broken & Mended.
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Faith helped a COVID-19 patient and his family survive life support, a double lung transplant and 330 days in the hospital. Nearly a year after going home, Danny Mills has some normalcy back in his life, but he still lives with constant reminders of what he went through.
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(ANALYSIS) It’s worth pausing to note a couple of “behind the headlines” moments from the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. If you think there is deep division in the Southern Baptist Convention, you have to ignore a lot of hard data that suggest a strong consensus — on abuse reform, on women pastors, and on cleaning up decades of financial profligacy.
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Religious leaders in Uganda have condemned the Allied Democratic Forces rebels June 16 attack and massacre of 42 students in a secondary school in southwestern Uganda.
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(OPINION) The issue isn’t who is a Baptist and who is not. Church historians struggle to count the number of organized Baptist groups, and thousands of Baptist churches are totally independent. The question is whether the SBC’s DNA has changed in ways that will affect local churches, as well as agencies, boards and seminaries at the state and national levels.
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In recent years, bishops in the Anglican Church of Uganda commanded a lot of respect. Lately, however, the flock has been challenging the election processes of the new bishops in tribunals and courts of law. In the last 10 years, the Anglican Church of Uganda has been rocked by a number of grinding legal battles pitting the flock against newly consecrated bishops and archbishops.
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The disappearance of the 15-year-old Italian, who lived at the Vatican, has sparked a series of investigations and unanswered questions that continue to baffle investigators and the public alike. Indeed, 40 years later, the Orlandi case remains perplexing and accusations that high-ranking members of the church know what happened to her.
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(ANALYSIS) The Dodgers have held Pride Night for 10 years. This year’s edition became ensnared in controversy. Following criticism from Catholic groups, the team rescinded an invitation to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to be honored at Pride Night. They were later reinvited. Unless you attended the game and got there an hour before it started — that’s when the group was honored — you don’t really know what happened.
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Edna Adan Ismail sold her car and poured her life savings into turning a former landfill into one of the better hospitals in Somalia that has a fraction of the mortality rates elsewhere in the country. Her Templeton Prize is the latest chapter for one of the most remarkable women on the planet.
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Anyone working in prison ministry has heard the testimonies of men and women who came to faith in Christ while reading Scripture alone in their cells. Prison Fellowship has been hearing many more of these testimonies since it launched a program to distribute more Bibles, books and other resources.
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The ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq has had a devastating impact on Yazidis. The Islamic State group has specifically targeted Yazidis, resulting in mass killings, sexual slavery and forced displacement. The conflict has created a humanitarian crisis for the community, with more than 250,000 Yazidis living in refugee camps and struggling to rebuild their lives.
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(ANALYSIS) The mainline is just a bloodbath. Five traditions are down by at least 30%. The ELCA is down 41%. The United Church of Christ is less than half the size it was in the late 1980s. The United Methodists are already down 31%, but with over 15% of their churches disaffiliating just this year, I wouldn’t be surprised in membership is down 40% or more by this time next year.
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At least 25 Iranian citizens face death sentences since Iranian authorities started dealing with the cases of the 1,401 citizens detained during the 2022 protests that swept the country.
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