Posts in Religious Equality
These Religious Dating Apps Are Helping Singles Find Love

Finding a lifelong partner is no easy feat — but finding someone who shares the same morals and values is all the more challenging. A series of dating apps across several religions are combining tradition and technology to match singles with a desire for marriage built on a shared faith foundation.

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9 Church Members Released As China Pursues New Charges Against Leaders

Nine members of Beijing’s Zion Church have been released on bail after more than eight months in detention, while nine remaining church leaders now face more serious criminal charges in one of China’s most closely watched religious freedom cases.

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In India, The Catholic Church Becomes An Unlikely Sanctuary For Trans People

The Chennai office and other programs are carefully presented in the language of human dignity and spiritual accompaniment, not rights advocacy. But the effect, in the current political moment, is inherently political. For trans Catholics who seek out these spaces, carrying both faith and the experience of rejection, the distinction may matter less than the fact of welcome itself.

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How Evangelicals Helped Shape Indigenous Reconciliation In Canada

(ANALYSIS) As Canada marks National Indigenous Peoples Day, the often-overlooked partnership between evangelicals and Indigenous leaders deserves recognition. From Elijah Harper’s Sacred Assembly to ongoing reconciliation efforts, Canadian evangelicals have helped advance healing, Indigenous rights and renewed relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

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Seeing Pope Leo XIV’s AI Encyclical Through A Jewish Lens

(ANALYSIS) In Judaism, this distinctly-human urge — or as Immanuel Kant puts it, “self-imposed immaturity” — separates humanity from God. Immaturity, however, implies the concept of a future maturation process, induced by palpable experience and excluding any computational rigging or other attempt to authentically possess it.

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Chinese Police Raid Early Rain Covenant Church During Sunday Worship

Authorities in southwestern China launched a large-scale raid against Early Rain Covenant Church during its Sunday worship service on June 14, detaining dozens of believers, according to reports received by ChinaAid and a subsequent church statement.

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Religious Freedom Faces Growing Pressures Worldwide

A new Pew Research Center study found religious hostilities increased sharply around the world in 2023, driven by harassment of religious minorities and fallout from the Israel-Hamas war. Government restrictions on religion remained near record highs, an issue affecting billions of people across dozens of countries.

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The Pentagon’s Mormon Classification Revives Debate Over Christian Identity

(ANALYSIS) A recent decision by the U.S. Department of Defense has reopened one of the longest-running religious disputes in American history: Whether members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should be considered Christians. The controversy emerged after the Pentagon revised a list of religious affiliations available to military personnel.

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Taiwan Prayer Gathering Highlights Plight Of Chinese Christians

More than 3,000 Christians from multiple countries gathered in person and online on June 9 for a global prayer event supporting believers facing persecution in China, where authorities have intensified pressure on house churches and clergy in recent years.

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In Divided Sri Lanka, Monks Create Display Of Interfaith Unity

(ANALYSIS) A delegation of 12 Buddhist monks recently walked across Sri Lanka along with their adopted dog Aloka. People of all faiths in Sri Lanka, who have witnessed riots and bloodbaths in the past decade, welcomed them. Apart from Buddhist monks, Christian, Muslim and Hindu leaders joined the U.S.-based delegation during their week-long peace walk across the island nation.

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African Americans And Faith: It Goes Way Beyond The Black Church

African American religious practice is so much more complex than Christianity. Matthew Peterson spoke with Harvard Prof. Ahmad Greene-Hayes about his recent book, “Underworld Work,” which explores Black spirituality following the Civil War through to the Jim Crow era in the South.

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Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ Goal Inspires Kenyan Pastor To Pen Soccer Book

Argentine soccer icon Diego Maradona’s magic goal in the June 22, 1986, quarterfinal match against England in Mexico, which he attributed to the “Hand of God” as it was secured by his fist, has been the subject of intense debate whenever and wherever soccer fans are gathered.

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No State Charges for Protesters Who Halted Minnesota Church Service

The St. Paul city attorney declined to file state charges against protesters who disrupted a Southern Baptist church service in January, citing insufficient evidence. Pastor Jonathan Parnell and legal advocates criticized the decision as a failure to protect religious freedom.

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LDS Have Always Revered Religious Freedom — But Their Definition Has Evolved

(ANALYSIS) On July 5, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is encouraging its American members to participate in a special fast: a day to “express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world,” in the words of its top three leaders.

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18 Beijing Church Leaders Detained Without Trial In China

Eighteen pastors and church workers, including Senior Pastor Ezra Jin, remain in detention. In an interview with The Free Press published May 11, Jin’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, also disclosed previously unreported details of a 2021 incident in which she alleges her father was drugged. 

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Crossroads Podcast: Have Abortion Clinics Become More Sacred Than Churches?

On Jan. 18, a cell of anti-ICE demonstrators crashed a Sunday service at the Cities Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in St. Paul, Minnesota. Debates about the legality of this protest have been defined by the Red vs. Blue divide in American politics, which has dominated the Donald Trump era. On the cultural right, this protest was seen as a violation of the First Amendment religious-liberty rights of the worshippers. On the left, efforts to prosecute the activists were seen as a violation of their First Amendment free-speech rights.

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The Women Of Faith Who Shaped America

During the American Revolution, women like Abigail Adams asserted moral and spiritual authority despite lacking legal rights. Through religion, household leadership and revival movements, they shaped communities and laid groundwork for later reforms in abolition, education and women’s rights.

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Elderly Christian Among 31 Sentenced In China Church Crackdown

A court in central China, issued verdicts on May 22 against 31 members of a house church fellowship in one of the largest coordinated prosecutions of Christians in recent years.

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Stage Against Hate: A Theater Keeps Jewish Culture Alive Beyond Memory And Myth

In the heart of Budapest lies a theater unlike any other. Founded 20 years ago, Gólem Theater stands as the only professional Jewish theater in Hungary. By blending humor with questions of identity, the theater seeks to engage audiences with a different side of Jewish culture.

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UN Probes Religious Violence in Nigeria: Here’s What They Should Do

(OPINION) An international investigator will visit Nigeria to assess the religious persecution occurring across the country, and there are so many issues that it’s hard to know where she should begin. Will she detail the mass kidnappings that have occurred regularly over the past decade? The religious and tribal fighting? The terrorist organizations wreaking havoc on the country?

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