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Morocco, held up as a model for reform in the wake of the Arab Spring, is slipping back into autocracy. Though a new constitution was passed in 2011, ongoing economic marginalization, a lack of transparency, and abuses by security forces have driven citizens to the streets for the first time in five years.

Observers and activists say that the government has responded by stifling speech and press freedoms and using the long reach of its security services to prevent a new protest movement from gaining steam.

Gary Dorrien, professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, won the 2017 Grawe­meyer Award in religion for his book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel.

The award honoring “creative and significant insights into the relationship between human beings and the Divine” is given annually by the Louisville Pres­by­terian Theological Seminary and the University of Louis­ville. The prize is one of five given in different fields and in­cludes $100,000. Re­cip­ients will give free lectures in Louisville, Kentucky, in April.

Cristo Perez wishes he had listened to the bird. If he had heeded its warning, he might not have stepped on a land mine that day three years ago.

Birdsong is an omen to Perez, a 32-year-old father of eight and member of the U’wa people, whose ancestral territory is in northeastern Colombia.

As Kenyan coastal region sheikhs, imams, and preachers vanish in alleged killings and forced disappearances, their wives are demanding answers.

The clerics have disappeared or died after security service involvement.

“The common thread is all the victims are Muslims,” said Hussein Khalid, “perceived by authorities to be actual or potential terror suspects.”

Khalid is executive director of Haki Africa, a human rights organization that has been offering legal aid for victims’ families.

John H. Glenn Jr., best known as the first American to orbit the earth, who was also a lifelong Presbyterian, died December 8 in Columbus, Ohio, at age 95.

Glenn was raised in New Concord, Ohio, and attended West­minster Presby­terian Church with his family. His mother was the first female ruling elder ordained in the congregation, where his father also served on the congregation’s governing body, or session.

Glenn and his wife, Annie, continued to visit Westminster, the last time they came to worship being seven or eight years ago, said George St. Clair, a ruling elder.

When Christians fled the small town of Bartella in August 2014 as militants from the self-declared Islamic State swept toward them, 14-year-old Ibrahim Matti and his elderly mother stayed behind. Without a car, they waited on a relative who promised to return for them after ferrying his own family to safety.