It’s been 100 years since Germany’s first democratic government decided to stop making generous payments to its Protestant and Roman Catholic churches—and did nothing about it.
The bill now runs to over half a billion euros a year—more than $560 million annually—but neither the current chancellor, Angela Merkel, nor the governors of the states that have to pony up that money show any interest in finally stopping the payments.
At the 20th biennial JAINA Convention in California over the Independence Day weekend, nearly 3,500 Jains, followers of an ancient Indian sect, were treated to highly sought-after speakers such as Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a yogi with 1.6 million followers on Instagram, and Gaur Gopal Das, a motivational speaker who has more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube.
But the real stars of the show, in a sense, were young Jains such as Pooja and Poonam Shah, 36 and 28 respectively.
In May 2018, days before the annual parade celebrating the Soviet victory in World War II, a convoy of military trucks carrying long-range nuclear weapons trundled to a halt on the Russian capital’s ring road. As police officers stood guard, two Russian Orthodox priests wearing cassocks and holding Bibles climbed out of a vehicle and began sprinkling holy water on the missiles.
Trump administration officials announced a new international alliance focused on religious freedom and imposed new sanctions against foreign military officials supporting religious persecution.
Sarah Howell-Miller, a United Methodist minister, was once opposed to needle exchange programs for opioid addicts—a stance shared by legislators in some three dozen states. The idea of giving addicts the means to shoot up was, in Howell-Miller’s word, “garbage.”
Then she fell in love with a drug user.
Conflict in northern Nigeria has often pitted the Muslim majority against the Christian minority. Some neighbors are working to change that.
A local voter complained about the church’s Black Lives Matter banners and the church was removed as a county polling place.
The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference is launching a campaign to offer aid to immigrant children held in detention centers at the border.
The road, which was at ground level 2,000 years ago, is now under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.
The vote expelling the 145-year-old First Covenant Church Minneapolis was the first time the Evangelical Covenant members have removed a congregation from the denomination.