Shabbat dinners are canceled, community centers are closed, and leaders in the Jewish community are having to come up with creative ways to foster community in these unprecedented times.
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The main duties of a priest are to administer the church’s sacraments — which include baptism, confession and holy communion — while also visiting the sick and providing pastoral care to parishioners. How does all that work during the COVID-19 pandemic when most priests are in the high-risk age category for contracting the deadly virus?
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(OPINION) Here’s a fact: Pope Francis, a day after shaking hands with the faithful on Ash Wednesday, did not get coronavirus, something the Vatican later confirmed. That didn’t stop some news outlets from speculating on whether the pope had been infected by the deadly virus.
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Seventh Day Adventists advocate vegetarian lifestyles for a healthy body and spiritual life, countering the mainstream food culture of meat that Brazil is known for.
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(COMMENTARY) What has been lacking throughout the ongoing abortion debate, from a media coverage standpoint, has been broader context. This is especially true of covering those who are adamantly opposed to abortion.
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Eleven NGOs petitioned the Kenyan government and won to force a Kenyan church to remove billboards aimed at expecting mothers considering abortion.
Read More(COMMENTARY) Coptic Orthodox Ethiopians fast for 210 days of the year. Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant in New York, serves up traditional injera and berbere, two secret weapons to keep an ultra-lean diet long-term.
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The faith-based film, starring Chrissy Metz of ‘This Is Us’ fame, opens nationwide April 17. It’s the story of a teen who slips into an icy lake and has no pulse — until his mother prays.
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(COMMENTARY) While western Christians today view fasting largely as an individual activity, Eastern Orthodox Christians practice fasting communally.
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Cannabis has a long regard in Hinduism going back thousands of years, unlike the Western vices of alcohol and tobacco. No other day is this more apparent than during the ancient Hindu festival Holi.
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(COMMENTARY) One week after Britain’s leading anti-euthanasia activist Peter Saunders stepped down from his charity, the Royal College of Physicians and British Medical Association published new guidelines permitting its members to remove food and fluids from brain-damaged patients without the need of a judge’s permission.
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Politics and religion have come to loggerheads after Catholic conservatives called for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to be excommunicated, splitting the church’s hierarchy on how to deal with politicians who further an agenda contrary to the traditional teachings of the church. The call came after Cuomo signed into state law a measure that expanded abortion rights across the state.
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(COMMENTARY) While the United Methodist Church homepage notes a tension between upholding the sanctity of unborn human life and also the life and well-being of the mother, Bishop Timothy Whitaker spoke out against abortion referencing the Didache, a doctrinal statement on “gross sins” like murder.
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These African women’s activists say greater access to safe abortions will save women’s lives—and they believe that’s the most Christian response.
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(COMMENTARY) Without making an effort to understand how all these small differences expressed in eating habits add up to create the chasms that divide us, we have no hope of overcoming them.
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As a blind child in rural Kenya, Henry Kirwa endured a lifetime of stigma, isolation, and lack of education and opportunity - until he discovered he was fast. Sustained by his Christian faith, running became his ticket to a better life, culminating in multiple Paralympic gold medals and new life as a U.N. honoree.
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LSPT is a small but effective charity based at a private, Muslim academy in the town of Jombang, Indonesia. LSPT serves some 1,000 of its neighbors each month with its mission of meetings needs in the local community first.
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PERSPECTIVE - The Daily Mail, The Times, and other outlets report that claims that cutting government spending on sexual education would lead to a rise in teen pregnancy have now been shown to be untrue. Yet none bothers with issues of deeper ethical or religious motivations in the controversy.
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INDIA -- Swinging wildly from chemical dependency to religious fervor is a dilemma for counselors who aim to prevent risks of substituting addiction to chemicals with a dependence on religion.
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