Ardeth Platte, a Dominican sister who fought for nuclear disarmament, died in her sleep at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington, DC, on September 30.
Platte, 84, spent years in prison for nonviolent civil disobedience in opposition to nuclear weapons and war. In recent years, the brunt of her work was speaking in support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Darrell Goodwin, a United Church of Christ pastor, was elected as the first executive minister of the denomination’s new Southern New England Conference by an overwhelming margin on September 26.
Goodwin currently serves as associate conference minister for the Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota UCC conferences.
LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, announced on October 6 that it had reached an “amicable” out-of-court agreement with former president and CEO Thom Rainer.
The agreement required Rainer, who had signed a book deal with a competing Christian publisher, to refrain from publishing his book until November 2021, when his noncompete clause with LifeWay expires.
A phrase from the book of Deuteronomy hangs framed on the wall of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court chamber: “Justice, justice you shall pursue.”
For Ginsburg, who died at home surrounded by her family on September 18 at the age of 87, the phrase summed up perfectly her calling as jurist and a Jew.
In a 2018 interview with Jane Eisner, then editor of the Jewish daily Forward, Ginsburg said that she grew up in the shadow of World War II and the Holocaust and it left a deep and lasting imprint on her.
Influential pastor Charles Stanley is stepping down from his role at First Baptist Church in Atlanta after more than 50 years.
“As much as I love being your pastor, I know in my heart this season has come to an end,” Stanley told his church in a prerecorded message shown at the end of First Baptist’s online service on September 13.
In the message, he said he had informed the church’s board earlier this month that he planned to step down as senior pastor.
J. Delano Ellis II, a Black church official who started Pentecostal organizations and emphasized ecumenism, died on September 19 following a recent hospitalization. He was 75.
Ellis was also among a group of “High-Church Pentecostal” clerics who in the 1990s became known for wearing Roman collars, wearing priestly garments with links to their African heritage, and reciting the Nicene Creed. They were part of a trend that reshaped a portion of American Black religion.