Former Christian Century news editor John Dart died July 3, according to his daughter, Kim Dart Hurwitz. Prior to his 14 years at the Century, Dart spent 31 years as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where he specialized in religion and was awarded the Supple Award for excellence in feature writing by the Religion News Association in 1980.
On January 14, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI asked not to be mentioned as coauthor of a book scheduled for release in February, according to a close aide. Excerpts from the book appeared to place the ex-pope at odds with Pope Francis on rules over priestly celibacy.
The book in question, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy, and the Crisis of the Catholic Church, was publicized as being coauthored by Benedict with Cardinal Robert Sarah, who heads the Vatican office for liturgy.
On January 18, Cyntoia Brown-Long was the keynote speaker at OneLife LA, an antiabortion event hosted by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Since her much-publicized release in August from the Tennessee Prison for Women, where she had been serving a life sentence for killing a man who solicited her for sex at age 16, Brown-Long has advocated for incarcerated people and publicly spoken about her spiritual journey behind bars.
Worshipers who frequently attend religious services are the least likely to own a pet, according to a new study analyzing data on religion and pet ownership from the 2018 General Social Survey.
But not all animals are created equal when it comes to uncovering the truth about cats and dogs and religion.
“We find a strong, negative association between worship attendance and cat ownership,” wrote researchers Samuel Perry and Ryan Burge in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
A group of “never-Trump” Republicans targets Christian voters in its first political ad warning that “evangelical leaders who lay their loyalty and faith on the altar of Donald Trump are betraying their congregants and their country.”
“It is clear that in exchange for power and money these ‘pastors’ have been tasked with recasting Trump’s absurdities and moral failures as nothing short of prophetic divinity,” says a social media caption introducing a two-and-a-half-minute video titled “The MAGA Church.”
Opponents of the planned Atlantic Coast Pipeline are celebrating after a federal court in Virginia invalidated a key permit for the project on January 7.
A federal judge in Maryland has blocked President Donald Trump’s recent executive order allowing state and local officials to refuse refugee resettlement.
The preliminary injunction is part of HIAS v. Trump, a lawsuit by three faith-based organizations over the order.
“Today the sun is shining on refugee families and the communities who for decades have devoted their time and resources to welcome them,” John L. McCullough, president and CEO of Church World Service, said in a written statement.
President Donald Trump, surrounded by schoolchildren of a variety of faiths, has announced what he called “historic steps to protect the First Amendment right to pray in the public schools.”
Within hours of senators being sworn in for Trump’s pending impeachment trial, the president and nine federal agencies on January 16 made moves they said would support the rights of religious people, including students who report their freedom to pray has been violated.
For Nathan Brittsan, it was his own “mini dark night of the soul.” Days into his first quarter as a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, Brittsan was expelled.
He spent another six months “in limbo,” he said, trying to appeal the school’s decision.
An associate pastor at Grace Baptist Church in San Jose, part of the American Baptist Churches USA, he needed to earn his MDiv on his way to ordination. He felt called to attend Fuller, an evangelical, multidenominational graduate school in Pasadena, California.
Archbishop Atallah Hanna, head of the Sebastia Diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, who has been outspoken on political issues of the region, was hospitalized on December 18 after being poisoned, according to a message from the World Council of Churches. According to reports, Hanna was rushed to the hospital after someone threw a gas canister into his church residence.