Entering into the final months leading up to the 2024 presidential election, former President Trump holds a sizable lead over Vice President Kamala Harris among evangelicals. Likely voters with evangelical beliefs are twice as likely to plan to cast their ballot for Trump than Harris (61% to 31%), according to a study from Lifeway Research. Few say they are still undecided (5%) or supporting another candidate (3%).
Read MoreAmong the parade of priests and nuns who stroll in and around Vatican City, there is a special breed of journalist who is tasked with explaining the pope and the Roman curia to the world. These people are known as Vatican watchers — a “Vaticanista” in Italian — and they've been around since the 1960s. Even in the digital age, these journalists have become essential to understanding the church.
Read MoreIf you fly up to high altitude to study the past 50 years of American religious life, here is what you will see.
Read MoreVice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris told an interviewer Tuesday (Sept. 24) that she would be in favor of eliminating the filibuster for votes on abortion-related legislation in the Senate. Harris has made abortion a centerpiece of her campaign, pledging to sign any bill that “restore[s] reproductive freedom nationwide,” according to her website.
Read MoreSkillet frontman John Cooper says the band wants a revolution. And from recent indications on Apple Music, fans agree. The band has a new album called "Revolution" that's coming in November, but its first single debuted at No. 1 on the Apple iTunes rock and music video charts in August. Ironically, the song is called “Unpopular."
Read MoreA new survey of Catholics in the United States and across six Latin American countries found that majorities want the church to allow for the use of birth control and letting women become priests. The Pew Research Center study also found that public opinion was more divided on whether the church should allow priests to marry and the recognition of same-sex marriages.
Read MoreControversial pastor Mark Driscoll is citing First Amendment rights in his fight against the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, to display a sign to vote for Jesus in property adjacent to his church. The sign reading, “Jesus Christ ’24,” is posted on the right of way property bordering the street in front of Driscoll’s church, Trinity Church in Scottsdale.
Read MoreChina has tightened its control of religion, creating such crimes as genocide, mass arrests and enforced disappearances, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a new fact sheet, days after China released long-imprisoned American Protestant pastor David Lin.
Read MoreEight years ago, Lifeway Research asked Protestant pastors who they planned to support in the presidential election and only three percent declined to answer. That number didn't change much in 2020, when four percent declined. But things changed recently, when almost a quarter of the pastors refused to voice their choice in the 2024 White House race.
Read MoreOver the last five years, a growing number of single Muslim women in their mid-30s in Islamic countries — including the UAE, Qatar and Egypt, among others — have been choosing to freeze their eggs to ensure motherhood later in life. It was previously not seen as an option in these countries — owing primarily to cultural beliefs and religious restrictions.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Two recent events have made major headlines in the faith-based film industry. The first was the dominance of faith-based, politically right-wing films at the domestic box office. The second was Dallas Jenkins’ announcement that his “The Chosen” TV series about Jesus was expanding into a whole “The Chosen” universe of shows.
Read MoreThe pager attack that killed at least a dozen people and injured thousands in Lebanon is the latest high-tech subterfuge in a long history of covert ops attributed to Israel.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The U.S. Census Bureau says about 7 million children, or about 13% of school-aged students, go to private schools. This includes about 3.5 million homeschooled children. Both numbers represent significant increases in the past five years. Why has this shift taken place?
Read More(ANALYSIS) An “intelligence” report has emerged suggesting that over 900 “Kuki militants,” trained in advanced warfare techniques, have crossed from Myanmar into India and may target Meitei villages in Manipur as Christians in the region continue to be persecuted. It’s strange that this information was shared with the public, rather than communicated discretely to the Indian army.
Read More(ANALYSIS) How Catholic voters view the candidates and issues could nudge margins enough to swing the election, and so could many other factors in such a nail-biter. Though political coverage emphasizes evangelicals, shifts by the two different Catholic segments are usually much more important in general elections.
Read MoreA new picture book is telling the story of a girl who takes her Jewish faith into her own hands, one swing of a plastic white ball at a time. “Ping-Pong Shabbat” recounts the true story of Estee Ackerman, a Modern Orthodox ping pong sensation from Long Island. At 11, Ackerman refused to play the final round of the U.S. National Ping Pong Championships because the match landed on Shabbat.
Read MoreAt 4:44 a.m., the calls to prayer begin. They come from everywhere, it seems, reminding me that I’m in the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. There’s at least one mosque in every direction from the home of Daniel Setiabudu, the Christian minister who’s graciously taken me in for a couple of nights.
Read More(REVIEW) Most people working in recent decades in America’s growing movement for international religious freedom are little-known except by those personally involved activists and academics. One whose name and work has generally not been recognized outside these circles is Knox Thames. This is principally because he has worked close to the heart of things, usually in government circles.
Read More(REVIEW) Over the past four years, PornHub — one of the most-visited sites on the internet — has faced a reckoning of epic proportions. Efforts spearheaded by sex-trafficking activist Laila Mickelwait are the reason behind this reckoning, recounted in Mickelwait’s new book “Takedown: Inside the Fight to Shut Down PornHub for Child Abuse, Rape and Sex Trafficking.”
Read More(OPINION) If you haven’t read Ruth recently, or ever, you should. It’s a classic romance. I should say, it’s a romance among other things. That’s what intrigues me about the Bible, Old Testament and New. Nothing is ever just one thing. It works on a straightforward level, but it’s also full of allusions to other biblical passages and buried meanings and, well, there’s no end to it.
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