What do pastors think about social or political issues? Americans don’t particularly want to know.
Only 8 percent of adults say they are interested in hearing pastors teach about issues such as same-sex marriage, LGBT rights, abortion, guns, tax policy, climate change, drug policy, or religious freedom, according to the Barna Group’s The State of Pastors report.
(The Christian Science Monitor) For a week after President Trump’s executive orders suspending visas and immigration to the United States for nationals of seven predominantly Muslim countries and temporarily stopping refugee resettlement, protesters massed outside airports, attorneys filed lawsuits across the country, and thousands of immigrants to the United States were thrown into legal limbo.
President Trump issued memoranda advancing the construction of “high priority infrastructure projects,” including one specifically about the Dakota Access pipeline, despite opposition from the indigenous people who have documented the construction’s threat to sacred sites, burial plots, and water supply. At the same time, the Standing Rock Sioux, for safety reasons, sought to evacuate camps of those who have been blocking pipeline construction.
(The Christian Science Monitor) This time it was a team of archaeologists, rather than a Bedouin goat herder, who made a potentially history-shaping discovery.
The team found a 12th cave that they say was once home to ancient documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the first such find in 60 years. While no new texts were recovered, the discovery suggests that the hills of Qumran in the Judean Desert may hold more secrets.
c. 2017 Religion News Service
(RNS) In one weekend, the swastika appeared in public places in three U.S. cities—Houston, Chicago, and New York. The sight was so offensive, average New Yorkers pulled out hand sanitizer and tissues to wipe the graffiti from the walls of the subway where it had been scrawled.
“Within about two minutes, all the Nazi symbolism was gone,” said one subway rider. Everyone “did their jobs of being decent human beings.”
Two leaders in an organization advocating for children sexually abused by Catholic priests have resigned. Meanwhile, the group faces a lawsuit from a former employee alleging that the group colluded with lawyers to refer clients and to profit from settlements.
David Clohessy, longtime executive director of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said January 24 that he left in December and that his departure had nothing to do with the lawsuit, which was filed in Illinois on January 17.
(The Christian Science Monitor) Austria’s ruling coalition has become the latest government body in Europe to ban full-face veils, such as those worn by some Muslim women, in public places. The measure is part of a larger deal struck by the center-left Social Democratic Party and the center-right Austrian People’s Party to avert the disintegration of the coalition.