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Amid tensions, Doris Smith is pastor and police

She’s a plainclothes cop, but on Sun­day mornings she wears a uniform: her clergy robe and stole.

Doris Smith, 49, works full time as a Dallas police detective while serving as a part-time licensed local pastor, leading Warren Chapel United Methodist Church in Terrell, Texas.

When not solving cases or working on her studies in the part-time education program for local pastors, she’s preaching, teaching, counseling, and visiting the sick.

“With anything you do, it has good and bad, ups and downs,” she said of pastoring on top of policing. “Mostly, it’s a lot of joy.”

Yisrael Kristal, world's oldest man, finally gets a bar mitzvah

Yisrael Kristal, 113, considered by Guinness World Records to be the world’s oldest man, celebrated his bar mitzvah 100 years after Jewish boys traditionally mark this rite of passage.

The ceremony took place at his local synagogue in the Israeli city of Haifa in October.

Kristal, who survived the Auschwitz death camp where his first wife died (his two children from that marriage died in the Nazi-controlled Lodz ghetto), was born in Poland on September 15, 1903.

Michelle Alexander wins award, takes job at Union seminary

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, won a prestigious award and became a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City as she focuses more on partnership with religious groups.

She received the 2016 Heinz Award for Public Policy, one of five awards honoring the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsyl­vania. The prize includes $250,000 in “unrestricted cash,” according to the mid-September awards announcement.

Amanda Tyler to head Baptist religious liberty organization

Amanda R. Tyler will be the next executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, an organization committed to defending religious free exercise and separation of church and state.

Her predecessor, Brent Walker, retires at the end of this year.

“I feel called by God to do this work,” Tyler said. “There are many challenges and opportunities surrounding our First Freedom, such as increasing religious pluralism and the unease it can bring.”

Pierbattista Pizzaballa appointed to Jerusalem Catholic post

Pierbattista Pizzaballa, an Italian Franciscan known for being friendly toward Jewish people and Israel, now heads the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The pope made him an archbishop and appointed him to the role of apostolic administrator for an area including Israel, Palestine, and Jordan—one of a handful of patriarchates in the Catholic Church. He took his post in late September. His predecessor, Fouad Twal, had reached the retirement age of 75.