The Christian Century

Americans’ acceptance of gays and lesbians is continuing to grow, with a new poll showing that just over a third of Americans view homosexuality as a sin, down from 44 percent a year earlier.

CANTERBURY, England (RNS) A royal row has broken out between Church of England bishops and Prime Minister David Cameron's liberal-minded coalition government over a planned bill to change ancient laws governing the royal line of succession.

An ad campaign on San Francisco buses is aimed at trying to change public perception of the word "jihad," which the program's founder says has been distorted by extremists – Muslim and anti-Muslim alike.

Ahmed Rehab, a 36-year-old political activist, started the campaign in Chicago in December and expanded it to 25 San Francisco buses at the start of the year.

The interior of the West End Temple in New York City’s Rockaway Beach neighborhood in Queens looks like a construction zone—walls and floors gutted down to the wooden studs, bathroom fixtures gone, warped pews piled in the banquet hall.

The synagogue is being dried out after Superstorm Sandy pushed four feet of water into the building from nearby Jamaica Bay.

WASHINGTON (RNS) President Obama will take the oath of office with two Bibles that once belonged to a pair of civil rights icons: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

NEWTOWN, Conn. (RNS) Four days after a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six others inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, boxes of books showed up at the Newtown public library.

Staff at the Cyrenius H. Booth Library, who were just beginning to comprehend the massacre, accepted the boxes from a man who said he was from Aetna headquarters in Hartford.

Despite a deep drop in the number of Americans who identify with a particular faith, the country could be on the cusp of a religious renaissance, says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll.