Veteran broadcast journalist Bob Abernethy, who founded the PBS program Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, has died at the age of 93.
He died on May 2 in Brunswick, Maine, his daughter Jane Montgomery Abernethy announced in a Facebook post. She said her father died of natural causes.
Abernethy was a correspondent for NBC News for more than four decades. Working in Washington, Los Angeles, London, and Moscow, he covered the fledgling US space program, Congress, and the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregation has chosen internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to design a new building for the site where 11 Jews were gunned down nearly three years ago in the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.
Libeskind was the unanimous choice of the steering committee as well as of Tree of Life’s board of trustees, and for reasons beyond his architectural qualifications: Libeskind was born to Holocaust survivors living in a homeless shelter in Lodz, Poland, after the war.
Womanist theologian Chanequa Walker-Barnes has joined the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary as professor of practical theology and pastoral counseling.
In a statement, Millie Snyder, one of the seminary’s board of trustees, said Walker-Barnes’s expertise will help equip seminarians for the work of reconciliation in both the church and the world.
“Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes has woven together the best scholarship in clinical psychology with an incarnational faith grounded in justice and faith,” she said.
On April 8, Celeste Kennel-Shank, the Century’s former news editor and a current contributing editor to the magazine, was named president of the Associated Church Press.
The ACP, founded in 1916 as the Editorial Council of the Religious Press, is a professional organization committed to excellence in religion journalism as a means of supporting “the life of faith and the Christian community.”
Ole Anthony, a small-church pastor and activist who spent years investigating the lifestyles of rich and famous televangelists, died April 16 at the age of 82.
Anthony, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, was the longtime president of the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation Inc., a nonprofit that helped people experiencing homelessness. He also ran a radio show, held Bible studies, and eventually spent years investigating televangelists.
Sohaib Nazeer Sultan, Princeton University’s Muslim chaplain and an interfaith leader, died April 16 after a yearlong battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. He was 40.
A public lecturer and writer on Islam, Sultan was greatly revered for his compassionate outlook on life, inspired by his faith. He was known for his interfaith leadership in higher education and as a bridge builder between Muslims and other faith communities.