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United Methodist pastor Anna Blaedel will face a church trial for “practices de­clared by the United Methodist Church to be in­compatible with Chris­tian teachings, including . . . being a self-avowed practicing homosexual.”

Blaedel has faced several complaints after announcing at the 2016 Iowa Con­ference: “I am a self-avowed practicing homosexual.” Blaedel re­signed as director of the Wesley Center at the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa last April during Holy Week.

Alison Cheek, one of the first female priests in the Episcopal Church and the first to publicly celebrate the Eucharist, died on September 1 at her home in Brevard, North Carolina, according to friends. She was 92.

In the wake of reports alleging objectionable rhetoric and conduct by Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., about 200 students at the evangelical Christian school gathered at a protest on campus on September 13. Student orga­nizers estimated that about 60 of the demonstrators were there to demand an investigation of the president and his administration.

Is there an inexorable trend toward secularization in the West because younger generations are less likely to affiliate with organized religion? Or does long-standing evidence that people become more religious as they age indicate that secularization trends may reverse in rapidly aging societies of high-income countries?

Virginia Theological Seminary took what appears to be an unprecedented step by announcing that it has set aside $1.7 million for a slavery reparations fund—something considered but not yet enacted by other institutions of higher education that historically benefited from slave labor.

Enslaved African Americans worked on the Alexandria-based campus, which was founded in 1823, and at least one building was built with slave labor. Black students were excluded from attending the Episcopal seminary until the 1950s.

Prominent televangelist Benny Hinn has captured headlines recently for seemingly renouncing the prosperity gospel on which he built his ministry.

“I’m sorry to say that prosperity has gone a little crazy, and I’m correcting my own theology,” Hinn said in a recent Your LoveWorld broadcast shared September 2 on the Benny Hinn Min­istries Facebook page and YouTube channel, “because when I read the Bible now I don’t see the Bible in the same eyes I saw the Bible 20 years ago.”

The movie Flint: The Poisoning of an American City, a production of Presby­terian Disaster Assistance’s Story Pro­ductions, was slated to have its world premiere September 12 in the heart of the city whose story it tells.

J. Herbert Nelson II, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), along with community leaders and experts on lead poisoning, were scheduled to attend the first showing of the film at the Capitol Theatre in Flint.

The book Evicted and a General Synod speech have inspired United Church of Christ members in Indianapolis to keep two families from losing their home—and to start a fund to do more of the same.

Since protests began more than 12 weeks ago over an extradition bill that would allow Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China for trial, the city’s Christian community has taken an active role.

Groups of Christians regularly participate in the marches that have coursed through Hong Kong’s streets every weekend since June, and their pleas for peaceful protests, hymns, and prayers are often heard along with protest chants. One hymn, “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord,” written in 1974, has caught on as an anthem of the protests, sung by believers and nonbelievers alike.

Members of an Ohio congregation invited the community to a Septem­ber 8 worship service officially welcoming as its new pastor one of the few openly transgender Baptist ministers in the US.

Erica Saunders, a 2019 graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Divin­ity ordained to the gospel ministry this spring by Wake Forest Baptist Church, began July 1 as pastor of Peace Com­munity Church in Oberlin, Ohio, affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.

Saunders began the process of changing her gender presentation during her first year of seminary.