Most pastors say their churches have policies in place to address significant misbehavior by church members, but few have actually used those policies recently. According to a Lifeway Research study of more than 1,000 U.S. Protestant pastors, only 1 one in six say their church has formally disciplined anyone in the past year.
Read MoreZohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who defied the establishment to win New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, extended an olive branch to the city’s sizable Jewish community in a passionate victory speech Tuesday night.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s affiliation with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches drew attention again with a Pentagon prayer led by Hegseth and his pastor, Brooks Potteiger, in which they praised President Donald Trump, who they said was divinely appointed.
Read MoreThe United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a group of pregnancy resource centers in New Jersey. The case began in November 2023, when New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin demanded that First Choice turn over sensitive documents.
Read MoreAccording to the latest figures compiled by Gallup, the rate at which an individual attends church still indicates his or her stance on abortion. Fifteen percent of those who attend church weekly felt abortion should be legal under any circumstances. That figure grew to 20 percent for those who attend nearly weekly or monthly before doubling to 40 percent among those who seldom or never attend religious services.
Read MoreBrady Boyd, embattled senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has resigned, elders announced at a service Friday night. In a statement, the elders said they did not believe Boyd’s earlier claim that he didn’t know about Robert Morris’ child abuse until recently.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Most of my research is in Chinese religions, and I find it fascinating that popular video games — like many popular films before them — draw from the mythologies, cosmologies, unseen powers and heroic narratives found across the world’s religious traditions. Recent examples such as “Black Myth: Wukong” and “Raji: an Ancient Epic” draw explicitly from mythologies and religious narratives of China and India, respectively.
Read MoreRoughly two-thirds of the way through his new book, “Good Soil: the Education of an Accidental Farmhand,” Jeff Chu, then a student at Princeton Theological Seminary and a worker at the school “Farminary” (working farm), reflects on the New Testament parable of the seed sower. What was its significance for him, a gay child of immigrants from Hong Kong raised in a conservative Christian family teeming with preachers and Sunday school teachers?
Read MoreFocus on the Family has joined a long list of conservative Christian ministries to receive a “hate group” designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Specifically, the SPLC has labeled the Colorado Springs-based ministry an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group” for its “biblical worldview strategy” that opposes same-sex marriage and affirms biological sexual identity.
Read MoreWhen Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, it wasn’t all that surprising when her Notre Dame Law School colleagues offered high praise for her work. Earlier, when she was nominated to the 7th Circuit in Chicago, every single member of that faculty signed an endorsement letter stating, in part: “Amy is a role model for all of us, and will be a model of the fair, impartial, and sympathetic judge."
Read MoreDeMeco Ryans’ sermon coincided with the start of Vacation Bible School at Fifth Ward, just off heavily traveled Interstate 10 in view of high-rises and Daikin Park, home of MLB’s Houston Astros. The church — about 11 miles from NRG Stadium, where the Texans play — traces its roots to the 1930s tent revivals of the famous traveling evangelist Marshall Keeble.
Read MoreIn the wake of federal funding cuts affecting nonprofits, over 150 organizations have signed a pledge urging grantmakers to extend their support and funnel fresh funds to hard-hit advocacy groups that have lost federal contracts.
Read MoreAt a Virginia church, Minister Chess Cavitt preached a message emphasizing the importance of the Lord’s Supper before worshipers — about 50 in all — rose from their seats and gathered on all sides of four tables. Believers greeted fellow Christians with handshakes and hugs — and gazed into each other’s eyes as they ate of the bread and drank of the cup.
Read More(ANALYSIS) One of the crucial services the Rev. Tony Marr provides as the leader of the Higher Ministries consulting firm is to connect young pastors — fresh out of seminaries and Bible colleges — with churches that need new leaders. There's a problem. Most of these churches seeking pastors have fewer than 150 members and are considered “small churches” in the Protestant marketplace.
Read MoreIn a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 18 that a Tennessee law banning gender transition medical treatments for minors is constitutional. The case involved a suit brought by three transgender teenagers and the Biden Administration against Tennessee officials seeking to bar the state from enforcing its ban on gender transition interventions or so-called “gender affirming care” for minors.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Details are still emerging about Vance Boelter, the 57-year-old man accused of killing a Minnesota state politician and her husband and grievously injuring another state senator and his wife. But the more we learn about Boelter, the more likely it seems that Christian nationalism may have played a role in motivating the attack.
Read MoreLike father, like son — or in the case of Kenneth Copeland, like grandfather, like grandson. Which may be why Jeremy Pearsons, Copeland’s grandson, is “believing God” — and his Legacy Church congregation in a tiny Colorado mountain town — for a $2 million private jet.
Read MoreNondisclosure agreements (NDAs) for child sex abuse victims are no longer allowed in Missouri, thanks to a piece of new legislation known as Trey’s Law. It is in memory of Trey Carlock, a victim of abuse at Kanakuk Kamps in southwest Missouri, who took his own life in 2019 at the age of 28.
Read More(ANALYSIS) All that and more underscores the significance of a long-awaited and definitive new biography, out now: “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet” (Yale University Press) by historian John G. Turner of George Mason University. It is the first biography to benefit from official publication of the 27-volume Joseph Smith Papers.
Read MoreWhile only 20% of U.S. adults currently identify as Catholic by religion, millions more hold cultural, familial or historical ties to the church. Among those who identify as Catholic by religion, levels of observance differ. Only 13% reported never or rarely engaging in any of the faith’s core practices. The vast majority — 74% — fall somewhere in between, the report said.
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