The Christian Century

When Staff Sgt. Brandon Hill came home from his third tour in Iraq last year, he expected his wife and young daughters at the welcoming ceremony. What he didn't expect were the pastors, secretaries and members of their Assemblies of God church to be there, too.

American Muslims are celebrating the ouster of two congressmen known for their anti-Islamic rhetoric, and heralding the outcomes as a sign that Muslim voters, at least in some districts, are a political force to be reckoned with.

Mitt Romney failed in his bid to win the White House back for Republicans, but the biggest losers in Tuesday's voting may be Christian conservatives who put everything they had into denying President Obama a second term and battling other threats to their agenda.

SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) Mormons in Utah and across the nation were thrilled by the prospect that one of their own might occupy the highest office in the land.

That won't happen now. But Mitt Romney came closer than any other Latter-day Saint since that once-beleaguered brand of Christianity burst onto the American scene in 1830.

It's been debated for more than a decade, covered with a wooden box and stolen.

But on Veterans Day, a controversial war memorial cross will be re-erected and rededicated on a rock in California's Mojave National Preserve.

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) For nearly a decade, hundreds of local Boy Scouts have learned the virtues of the Ten Commandments on an annual Thanksgiving holiday hike to churches, synagogues and mosques, where clergy and scholars explained their faiths' take on the ancient code.

Anti-Jewish incidents in the U.S. dropped by 13 percent in 2011, according to a recently released report by the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks assaults and other attacks on Jews.

There were 1,080 incidents against Jews last year, according to the ADL—the lowest tallied by the nonprofit civil rights group in two decades.