Tornadoes that destroyed more than 140 buildings on March 3 in Middle Tennessee left their mark on a number of religious landmarks in Nashville.
Known as the “Protestant Vatican” and “the buckle of the Bible Belt,” the city has more than 700 churches and is home to Bible publishers, Christian universities, and denominational headquarters for groups including the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Free Will Baptists, and the National Baptist Convention USA.
As religious groups nationwide began taking dramatic steps to halt COVID-19, even canceling Sunday services, the initial response from some evangelical leaders who advise President Donald Trump was less “batten down the hatches” and more “business as usual.”
But as new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emerged and the stock market continued to free-fall, they soon changed course.
When Marla Perrin, now 25, first heard about Mutual, the dating app designed for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was thrilled.
Perrin had tried dating apps like Tinder in the past but found the experience fruitless and frustrating: the men she matched with often didn’t share her faith, and her guard was always up, worried that someone would harass or stalk her.
Former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign is facing growing pressure to fire a top aide with Hindu nationalist ties.
Civil rights activists say Amit Jani, who was hired in September 2019 as the campaign’s Asian American and Pacific Islanders national vote director, is unfit to work with the campaign due to his close association with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Some came wanting a new denomination. Others said they prefer, for now, to keep working within the United Methodist Church.
But all who attended a UM-Forward event held March 6–8 expressed commitment to gospel-based activism on various fronts, namely LGBTQ inclusion, but also reparations, workers’ rights, and climate change.
The Dallas gathering, called Trailblazing the Liberation Methodist Church, was held at Preston Hollow United Methodist Church, and the agenda included work toward forming a new denomination, as well as strategizing for the 2020 General Conference.
Barbara Harris, the first woman to be ordained and consecrated as a bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion, died on March 13 at a hospice house after a recent hospitalization. She was 89.
Harris, who was known for quoting the words “Hallelujah anyhow” from a gospel song, served as suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Massachusetts from 1989 until she retired in 2002. She then served as assisting bishop in the Diocese of Washington from 2003 to 2007.
Ioan Sauca has been appointed acting general secretary of the World Council of Churches until the WCC executive committee meets in June. The executive committee had planned to meet at the end of March, but that gathering was postponed due to concerns about COVID-19.
Bread for the World, a prominent Christian advocacy group dedicated to ending hunger, has elected Seattle pastor and author Eugene Cho as its new president.
It’s a dramatic change for Bread, which is well known in Washington for galvanizing religious groups to protect federal policies that help the impoverished. Recent years have seen the group fight to stop proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, and push for more flexibility in allowing the government to provide aid for nations in need.
Edith Blumhofer, a renowned scholar of religious history in the United States, died of pancreatic cancer on March 5. She was 69.
Blumhofer, who taught at Wheaton College for nearly 30 years, was known for studying subsets of evangelicalism that other scholars did not take seriously, namely, Pentecostals and charismatics. She wrote numerous books on the topic, and in 2006, she wrote a cover story for the Century about the Azusa Street Revival.
In a visit to one of North Carolina’s most prominent African American churches, Sen. Bernie Sanders scored big points talking about poverty in the United States.
The front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination spoke on February 26 with William J. Barber II at Greenleaf Christian Church, where Barber is senior pastor. The talk came ahead of Super Tuesday, when a significant segment of black voters cast their votes—including in North Carolina, where African Americans make up 22 percent of the state’s residents.