Just days after allegations surfaced that he molested a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s, Pastor Robert Morris has resigned from his Dallas megachurch, Gateway Church. In a statement released to media today, Gateway claimed it did not know the age of Morris’ victim and the length of her abuse.
Read MoreWhat if, when you Googled a question about Holocaust history, instead of being taken to, say, Wikipedia or a news article, you were just given a few bullet points written by artificial intelligence? This is the sort of thing a new UNESCO report, “AI and the Holocaust: Rewriting History?” warns about.
Read MoreA flurry of traditional and social media discussion surrounding two SBC resolutions (one on in vitro fertilization, the other on religious liberty) has provoked clarifications among Southern Baptists following the Convention’s Annual Meeting June 11-12 in Indianapolis.
Read MoreA specified Protestant version of the Ten Commandments must be displayed in all public schools in Louisiana by January 2025, the mandate of a bill Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law on June 19.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The Anglican Church in North America has been one of the success stories in recent American church history. But the denomination is experiencing growing pains. Its growth has flattened, and there is growing discontent in the denomination about its inability (or unwillingness) to address head-on some vital issues.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Oklahoma is the most recent state to allow school boards to implement “release time”: off-site classes with religious or moral instruction that K-12 students can attend for part of school days with parental consent. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 1425 into law, which authorized the program, on June 5, 2024.
Read MoreGrand Canyon Education (GCE), a for-profit marketing agency for Grand Canyon University (GCU), has been sued in federal court for allegedly engaging in a racketeering scheme by students who enrolled in the university’s doctoral programs.
Read MoreTwo years ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to an abortion. In the aftermath, many churchgoers say they’ve seen their congregations involved in supporting local pregnancy resource centers. A Lifeway Research study finds three in 10 U.S. Protestant churchgoers have seen at least one type of congregational connection with those local centers.
Read MoreRev. James M. Lawson Jr., who died on June 9, 2024, at the age of 95, was a Methodist minister and a powerful advocate of nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement. Lawson is best known for piloting two crucial civil rights campaigns – one in Nashville in 1960 and the other in Memphis in 1968.
Read MoreJews are a tiny minority in Mexico’s population of 130 million: 60,000, according to the latest national census. Those connected to the tight-knit Jewish community clustered in suburbs around Mexico City are estimated to be around 45,000. On the face of it, those small numbers make it remarkable that a Jewish woman, Claudia Sheinbaum, won the recent presidential election in a landslide.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Live seasonally. Inhabit the rhythms and cycles of nature. Find the Sacred in the shifts of the year. These themes have become prominent across sacred traditions and spiritual paths in the last few years.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention was as newsworthy as usual, but unusually significant. The Tennessean depicted the deliberations as “a turning point for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.” If so, will this turning turn out to be Southern Baptists’ migration toward neo-fundamentalism, a growing force within America’s complex evangelical movement?
Read MoreAppealing to their Christian faith, Cynthia Petion promised investors returns of up to 200% in just one year through her cryptocurrency investment platform, NovaTechFX (Novatech). Four years later, in May 2023, NovaTechFX collapsed. Now New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Petion, her husband Eddy and the defunct company for allegedly defrauding tens of thousands of investors.
Read MoreMore than $130,000 has been raised on GoFundMe for Natalie and Davy Lloyd, American missionaries who were shot and killed while serving in Haiti. Natalie Lloyd, 21, daughter of Missouri state Rep. Ben Baker, and her husband, Davy Lloyd, 23, were ambushed by gang members in Port-au-Prince while returning from a youth event on May 23.
Read MoreIdaho Republicans have increasingly disagreed over how far to take these efforts. Capitol police in Boise had to intervene in a 2022 fight over proposed “parental freedom” legislation that would have created a $1,000 fine if a school didn’t give parents what they want. This year, two prominent far-right Republicans were recorded quarreling over the party’s direction that illustrates “a fracture among key far-right figures in Idaho politics, in a state where many races turn on contests of conservative purity.”
Read MoreThe big news was politics, of course, as in a convention speech by Vice President Mike Pence. The journalism establishment was not amused, as illustrated in this CNN headline: “Pence accused of ‘hijacking’ evangelical meeting.” Various types of Southern Baptist conservatives welcomed him.
Read MoreThe U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously reversed the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals and told opponents of the Food and Drug Administration their argument over the safety of mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill, should be taken up with the Biden Administration rather than the courts.
Read MoreSouthern Baptists, voting at their annual meeting, winnowed their list of candidates for convention president Tuesday evening from six to three. The candidates in the run-off election are Clint Pressley, senior pastor, Hickory Grove Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC; David Allen, professor and dean at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, Cordova, Tenn.; and Dan Spencer, senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Sevierville, Tenn.
Read More(ANALYSIS) After the 1966 fire, St. Michael's was rebuilt with concrete, steel and other fire-resistant materials, using 1961 drawings from the Historic American Buildings Survey for reference. Today, there are leaks along joints in the church's domes, and the wooden floors squeak from water damage.
Read MoreSalem Media Group, the largest U.S. radio company providing Christian and conservative programming, is removing the book and film “2,000 Mules” from all its platforms. The group also apologized to a Georgia man who filed a defamation suit, claiming the film falsely accused him of ballot fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
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