The Christian Century

When their priest, Brian Lisowski, was caught with an alleged prostitute last summer, parishioners at St. Bede the Venerable Catholic Church began to suspect their pastor had been keeping secrets from them. They were right—he had a million of them.

The nonprofit status of the Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, which filed for bankruptcy last month, and the Protestant-affiliated National Benevolent Association, which filed for protection in February, may help determine legal precedents for church bodies that say they are unable to meet their financial obligations.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth will not be allowed to exhibit at the Baptist General Convention of Texas meeting this fall—further fallout from the deteriorating relationship between the Texas convention and the Southern Baptist Convention.

Faced with its worst financial situation in a decade, the Boston-based First Church of Christ, Scientist has undertaken a series of painful belt-tightening measures, including the elimination of 125 jobs over the past two months.

Two top officials of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel resigned in March after the church lost $14 million to two investment firms that have been alleged to be fraudulent. The resignations of the president, Paul Risser, and the corporate treasurer, Brent Morgan, were accepted during an annual cabinet meeting in Los Angeles, the denomination announced.

The Episcopal Church has seen a 7 percent drop in contributions from local dioceses since it voted last year to approve an openly gay bishop, but officials say it may be premature to link the two developments directly.

Recent findings have reopened arguments concerning when humans arrived in our hemisphere. Most believe that our ancestors came from Asia, either across the Bering Straits or, thanks to Ice Age vagaries, across “Beringia,” a temporary isthmus. Some say it was about 10,000 years ago, while others set it at about 30,000.