Ministers in Minneapolis and across the country have been praying and calling for peace regardless of what verdict is handed down in the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd. Nightly protests have rocked Minneapolis again after the police shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, on April 11 in a suburb of the city.
Read MoreThe monastery Visoki Decani is one of the holiest sites of the Serbian Orthodox Church and is now considered endangered by Europe’s leading heritage site preservation organization.
Read MoreChristian school College of the Ozarks has filed a federal suit against the Biden Administration for a directive made in the Department of Housing and Urban Development on gender identity. The school claims the change forces religious schools to violate their beliefs.
Read MoreThis week’s Weekend Plug-in features Justin Bieber, $300 Bibles and all kinds of other interesting reads in the world of religion. As always, we round up all the week’s top headlines and best stories.
Read MoreA humble Congregationalist minister, with a Bible in one hand and a geologist’s pick in another, was at the center of discovering one of the richest troves of fossils in the world. He is Thomas Condon, the only clergyman with a national park visitor center named after him and a man who understood early on how religion and science could fit together.
Read More(EXCERPT) “Faith-Based Fraud,” by Warren Cole Smith, is a new book on financial and other scandals in the church. Almost a chapter centers around Bernard Madoff, who confessed to one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Massive crowds are expected to gather at India’s northern city of Haridwar throughout April 2021 for the religious festival of Kumbh Mela, despite the country’s grappling with a COVID-19 surge. The Kumbh Mela is a Hindu pilgrimage held every 12 years and is the world’s largest religious festival, with a total 100 million pilgrims expected over several weeks.
Read More(OPINION) Though Christianity later became preponderant in Europe and America, the assertion that it is a White man’s religion is neither historically accurate nor theologically correct.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Across the country, houses of worship are shuttering by the thousands. Municipalities have a role in finding new uses for abandoned buildings that have long anchored communities and neighborhoods.
Read MoreANALYSIS — For all the predictions and talk of a slump in support among evangelicals, it appears Donald Trump’s election loss was not at the hands of religious voters. There was very little notable change in the vote choice of religious groups between 2016 and 2020 – in fact, for most faiths, support for Trump ticked up slightly. Instead, it was among those who do not identify with any religion that Trump saw a noticeable drop.
Read MoreRamadan, which spans the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, is a full month of religious fasting. The associate professor of religious studies and director of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University answers six questions about its importance.
Read More(OPINION) How do we assess what can be known about people and events from long ago that we ourselves did not witness? One approach is the ideology known as “logical positivism,’ which rules out supernatural claims in advance by definition and thus wipes out many assertions by the great world religions. That’s a simple method, but other philosophers say it’s far too simple.
Read MoreHeraldic achievements — a personal ecclesiastical coat of arms — have historically been one of the most important possessions of high-ranking Catholic clergymen and contain layers of meaning. But today they are an increasingly ignored art form inside and outside the Church. Will the Church abandon heraldry traditions going back centuries or will more bishops resurrect the practice?
Read More(OPINION) In the first decade of the 21st century, the Pew Research Center began charting a surge of religiously unaffiliated Americans, describing this cohort in a 2012 report with this newsy label – "nones." But, hidden under that "nones" umbrella are divisions that deserve attention. For example, the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 5.7% of the American population is atheist, 5.7% agnostic and 19.9% "nothing in particular."
Read More(ANALYSIS) The study characterizes the Supreme Court’s previous approach to religious freedom as one that interpreted the First Amendment’s religion clauses to offer “weak but meaningful” safeguards for minority faiths from adverse treatment by public policies that privileged “mainstream Christian organizations, practices, or values.” But the study’s authors also admit that conservative Christian values are no longer mainstream.
Read MoreAn Afghan official told Religion Unplugged that the country plans to repatriate various ancient artifacts they believe were looted from their national museum in the nineties during civil war, including a medieval Hebrew prayer book now in the Museum of the Bible’s possession in Washington, D.C. The 1200-year-old prayer book is the world’s oldest Hebrew manuscript after the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The culture wars have been on full display during the first two months of the Biden presidency. It isn’t so much that Joe Biden is fueling the wars — he’s actually steered clear of many of these recent battles that brew on Twitter and cable TV news. How the press covers his faith, however, isn’t helping matter.
Read MoreBobby wrestles with a nasty finger infection. Meanwhile, evangelical leaders encourage congregants to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and a crucifix in a Michigan church was finally restored after being destroyed by a squirrel.
Read More(REVIEW) Horror movies have long been influenced by religious tradition, often involving evil spirits and possession. These are some of the most notable horror movies with religious themes, including new movie “The Unholy” — which follows a girl after she believes she’s been visited by the Virgin Mary.
Read MoreThousands of Kashmiris are flocking to Sufi shrines this Ramadan, where their faith and worship is taking a leading role in their healing from trauma, depression, PTSD and other mental health issues.
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