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Saying he wants to spend his time focusing on racial reconciliation, Southern Baptist Convention president Ed Litton announced via video on March 1 that he would not seek a second term in office.

Litton will become the first SBC president in four decades to not seek reelection after his first one-year term. The last SBC president to do so was famed Memphis, Tennessee, megachurch pastor and radio preacher Adrian Rogers.

A pastor from Mobile, Alabama, Litton was elected in June 2021, narrowly defeating the more conservative Georgia pastor Mike Stone.

Cheyenne peace chief and Menno­nite pastor Lawrence Homer Hart died on March 6 at age 89.

Hart, who was raised by his paternal grandparents Corn Stalk and Chief Peak Hart near Ham­mon, Okla­homa, converted to Chris­tianity at age 17. He attended Bethel College, a Mennonite school in North Newton, Kansas, for two years before leaving in 1955 to realize his dream of flying fighter jets in the US Navy and Marines. He later became the first American Indian to become a US military jet pilot and instructor.

The pastor of one of Canada’s largest churches was forced to resign after an independent investigation found evidence of his sexual misconduct.

Bruxy Cavey, who grew the Meet­ing House into a megachurch with 5,000 people attending 19 campuses in the Greater Toronto Area, was accused of sexual misconduct by a woman who reported it to the church’s overseers board in December.

World-renowned physician and medi­cal anthropologist Paul Farmer died of an acute cardiac event in his sleep on February 21. He was 62.

Farmer, who is credited with helping to improve health-care equity around the globe, was deeply influenced by his Catholic faith and by liberation theology in particular. He maintained a close friendship with Gustavo Gutiérrez, the Peruvian Catholic priest credited with creating liberation theology, and carried a “preferential option for the poor”—a core liberation theology concept—into all of his work, even at secular institutions.

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, who drew international acclaim for his handling of a hostage situation at his Colleyville, Texas, synagogue in January, has accepted an of­fer to lead a Reform synagogue in North Carolina.

Cytron-Walker will become rabbi of Temple Emanuel, a Reform congregation in Winston-Salem, a city with a population of about 250,000 in the Pied­mont region of North Carolina, best known for its former tobacco industry.

Paula Clark returned to work on March 7 in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, following a cerebral bleed in April 2021.

In December 2020, Clark became both the first Black Ameri­can and the first woman to be elected bishop of the Diocese of Chicago. Her ordination and consecration were postponed while she recovered.

In an open letter, Anne B. Jolly, president of the diocese’s standing committee, said Clark will initially work only 20 hours a week, incrementally increasing her hours each month.