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Inner World, the Dalai Lama’s first album is set to be released on July 6, his 85th birthday. The 11-track project, featuring teachings and mantras by the Da­lai Lama set to music, was re­leased in conjunction with a companion booklet.

“The entire purpose of this project is to try to help people,” said Junelle Kunin, a New Zealand Buddhist who first had the idea for the album. “It’s not a Buddhist project, it’s to help everyday people like myself, even though I am Buddhist. The messages couldn’t be more poignant for our current social climate and needs as humanity.”

In January 2021, Javier A. Viera will become the first person of color to head Garrett-Evangelical Theological Semi­nary. The native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, will succeed Lallene J. Rector, who has served as seminary president since 2013. Earlier this year, Rector announced her intention to step down in order to help care for loved ones with serious health conditions.

Rolland Slade, senior pastor of Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, has been elected as the first African American chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Execu­tive Committee, the group that runs the business of the nation’s largest Protes­tant denomination outside its annual meetings.

He was elected unanimously.

Slade was previously vice chairman of the Executive Committee and chair of its Cooperative Program Committee, which handles the denomination’s central funding mechanism.

Every service at the Cathedral at the Gathering Place begins with an incense-filled procession of the crucifer and the Gospel, followed by the singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the black national anthem, before Emilio Alvarez, in full vestments, leads the congregation through the collect, scripture readings, and after the sermon, the Eucharist.

Zondervan, the Christian media and publishing company, is suspending promotion of two books and indefinitely halting a documentary by popular Enneagram teacher and best-selling author Christopher Heuertz after allegations by nearly three dozen people who saw or experienced “spiritual and psychological abuse” by him.

The Center for Action and Contem­plation, founded by popular writer Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, has also said it would “pause” all collaboration with Heuertz.

As citizens across the country filled the streets to protest police killings of black people, the violent response from law enforcement has added urgency to a national conversation about police brutality. As cities look for what’s next, there is already a proven system of de-escalation for the high volume of mental health calls that police respond to, which often end in violence.

While smoke still billowed from buildings in Minneapolis and pepper spray choked the air from Los Angeles to New York, a movement to reshape policing coalesced around a demand conveyed in hashtags and spray paint.

“Defund the police” was a rallying cry and a policy prescription long before the killing of George Floyd ignited protests in all 50 states. But as the demonstrations continued, the once obscure idea gained support with the public and a number of city leaders.

Faith groups are applauding the US Supreme Court’s decision temporarily halting the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind an Obama-era program granting legal protection to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children.

The 5–4 decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and handed down on June 18, blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to “wind down” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was created by President Obama in 2012 to shield qualified young immigrants from deportation.

In a landslide vote on June 20, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elected its first Na­tive American moderator of a General Assembly.

Elona Street-Stewart, a member of the Dela­ware Nanticoke tribe, ran for comoderator of the 2020 General Assembly alongside Gregory J. Bentley, pastor of Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.

A day after Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Virginia, tweeted an image of a face mask depicting figures in blackface and dressed as Klansmen, Christopher House, an online instructor for the university, announced his resignation on Facebook.