Politics

(ANALYSIS) Of the many things said about the South over the years, “Bible Belt” is the cliché that just won’t die.

(OPINION) Marx saw religion as a top-down sedative administered by elites to dull the pain of feudalism. History offers a different perspective.

Civilian deaths increased 51 percent and abductions rose 153 percent between October and December 2025, compared to the same period a year before, researchers said. Months later, beginning in April, the government began arresting and convicting Boko Haram terrorists and others of related crimes.

Some billionaires buy yachts, rocket ships or art. The owners of Hobby Lobby bought something else entirely: Biblical artifacts and manuscripts.

(ANALYSIS) Texas politicians, however, portray sharia as a threat to American law. That suspicion has now produced official action against the Islamic Tribunal, a Dallas-based organization that offers religious arbitration, a process where parties agree to submit disputes to a religious panel, the way any two businesses might agree to skip court and use a private arbitrator instead. Much of the tribunal’s caseload is Muslim women seeking religious divorces.

(ANALYSIS) The Paris Grand Mosque — a cultural landmark located in the heart of the city — is celebrating its centenary. Built as a war memorial to honor Muslim soldiers killed during World War I, it was the first permanent mosque in the French capital and remains its only mosque built with a minaret and a dome.

(ANALYSIS) Members of the Christian community arrived at the protest site in New Delhi alongside Hindu, Muslim and Sikh groups. The participation of religious groups and leaders is part of a broader, interfaith effort to show solidarity with youth and students demonstrating against the Indian government.

Little over a decade ago, J.D. Vance was an atheist Yale Law School graduate obsessed with pursuing achievement in private life. Today he is a United States vice president who professes faith in Christ and rejects upward mobility as a means of fulfillment. Things have changed. Vance explains the change in his book “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” released this summer.

(ANALYSIS) Let me start by stating a fact that seems incomprehensible to even type out, but it undergirds almost every single graph that I produce: We don’t actually know the religious composition of the United States with any real precision. I know that sounds bizarre. The truth is that we are relying on a whole bunch of “best guesses” based on sound methodology and replication.

(ANALYSIS) Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has brought Homer’s epic tale back to the big screen. The film is the latest retelling of a story that is almost 3,000 years old. But why do these ancient Greek stories continue to captivate new generations? Nolan aside, Stephen Fry’s retelling of Greek myths in 2017 and Disney’s “Hercules” film, for example, are part of a much longer tradition of repackaging the ancient world for contemporary audiences.

In times of unrest, our impulse is to seek solutions in painfully precise increments. But what if the only way to bring lasting change is to shoot for the stars?

(ANALYSIS) Is it conceivable that the 2026 and 2028 election cycles will erode the Democratic Party’s lock on Jewish voters, one of the iron laws of American politics? Or instead, will Jewish Democrats increasingly turn against support for Israel? The results of the upcoming midterm elections could give us a glimpse of what’s to come.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel, the actor has frequently called out Israel’s military action in Gaza, notably wearing an Artists4Ceasefire pin to the 2024 Oscars. In 2024, he was among more than 700 SAG-AFTRA members who signed a letter demanding the actors’ union publicly call for a Gaza ceasefire and protect pro-Palestinian members from what they described as industry blacklisting.

ChinaAid is seeking 100,000 signatures petitioning President Donald Trump to urge Pastor John Cao’s safe passage to the U.S. when President Xi Jinping visits Washington in September.

(ANALYSIS) Nepal underwent major political upheaval just a year ago, toppling the government in a fashion few could have imagined. An even more dramatic development followed. Voters handed a near-supermajority to the Rastriya Swatantra Party, which was founded only four years earlier. Its senior leader, Balendra Shah, became the youngest prime minister in Nepal’s history.

(ANALYSIS) News from around the world gives little hope for the prospects of addressing violence based on religion or belief — nations need to act now in accordance with UN policies to ensure everyone has freedom of religion.

(ANALYSIS) This Sept. 15 marks the anniversary of an infamous terror attack: The 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. On that Sunday morning, members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group, planted dynamite on the east side of the brown brick building. The bomb went off in the midst of Sunday school, at 10:22 a.m., murdering four girls.

(ANALYSIS) India’s religious diversity has deep historical roots, reflected in the experiences of Hindu soldier Sitaram Pande and Muslim poet Mirza Ghalib. Their writings portray sacred landscapes shaped by multiple traditions while revealing identities that crossed religious boundaries, challenging contemporary claims that religious purity justifies anti-minority rhetoric or violence.

(ANALYSIS) Today, amid Japan’s shrinking population and anti-immigrant sentiment, it might be jarring to remember that there once were hopes that the island nation would be the anti-colonial leader of the world’s Muslims and that some of Asia’s Muslims dreamed of an “Islamic Republic of Japan.”

To say the least, Indiana Fever star Sophie (“Do the Sophie”) Cunningham’s quotes about trans athletes and women’s sports has ignited a firestorm in sports, politics, social media and the elite press. In this case, the sports world includes the small, struggling WNBA.

(ANALYSIS) Religion looks different in Australia. The first option for religious affiliation on the census is “no religion”, before Catholic, Anglican, Islam, Hinduism, other options, and a free-text field.

(ANALYSIS) The Pentagon needs to define America’s religious categories due to chaplains’ responsibility to handle the spiritual needs of soldiers as effectively as possible. The problem is that Americans’ religious choices are pretty much uncountable.

Terrorism that began in northeast Nigeria with the founding of Boko Haram in 2002 spread to the northwest, has become common in the Middle Belt and is now spreading to southern Nigeria — leaving safe for daily living only perhaps 20 to 40 percent of Nigeria, the largest nation in Africa and the sixth most populous in the world. Nigeria is the deadliest country for believers globally.

On hills just east of Ramallah is the village of Taybeh. Its population has fallen to 1,200 today, while more than 80% of the town's sons and daughters now live abroad. What sets Taybeh apart from every other village in the West Bank is that all of its residents remain Christian — Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Latin — making it a symbol of a presence that is fading but refusing to disappear.

(ANALYSIS) From polluted rivers to disappearing forests, the modern world bears the scars of human greed. Christians cannot simply point fingers at secular culture or blame industrialization while ignoring our own failures. If we believe the world is God's creation, then neglecting it goes beyond environmental policies.

The political time machine has now landed in similar journalism terrain. During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, we discussed several important news reports, including this Religion News Service feature: “‘They’re not real pastors’: As clergy run as Democrats, Republicans question their faith.”

(ANALYSIS) For Christians working in sports, the challenge becomes even greater. Faith calls believers to engage culture without allowing society to define them. Identity comes not from applause, criticism or trending hashtags, but from Christ.