An early morning fire in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood has destroyed the 128-year-old building of Middle Collegiate Church, one of the oldest congregations in the city.
Nearly 200 firefighters worked to put out the fire in a slow drizzling rain, according to reports from the Gothamist. No one was killed in the fire.
On the last Sunday of October, Karl Anderson helped arrange a Souls to the Polls event on a blocked-off street in downtown Gainesville, Florida, to encourage people to vote early.
The bipartisan gathering included candidate speeches, free hot dogs and hamburgers courtesy of the NAACP, and live gospel music. Between speeches and music, clergy prayed. Some participants, wary of the coronavirus, watched from a distance in the “park and praise section.”
But the location was the main attraction.
Stephanie Christoffels started the communal prayer at the fall training of her fellow Minnesota National Guard chaplains by reminding them of Christianity’s two greatest commandments: to love God and neighbor.
“It’s difficult to love our neighbors . . . to go on Facebook and see what they’re posting,” the Lutheran pastor and only female chaplain in the Minnesota Guard told the faith leaders in military fatigues, each with the cross insignia of a Christian chaplain and many with badges for service in combat zones. “It’s hard to love people that hate us.”
Patriarch Irinej, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, died of COVID-19 on November 20 at the age of 90. He contracted the virus three weeks earlier while officiating the large, public funeral of a senior bishop who had died of COVID-19.
According to reports, mourners at the bishop’s funeral did not wear masks or maintain social distancing. Many of them also kissed his body, which was in an open casket. Local health officials had flagged the funeral as a health risk.
Cheryl Stewart Pero, one of the first Black Lutheran women to be ordained in the United States, died on October 28 after a short illness and hospitalization. She was 69.
In 1980, Pero became the second Black woman ordained in the Lutheran Church in America, a predecessor body of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. She was also the first Black woman to receive a PhD in biblical studies, which she earned at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.
Eddie Benton-Banai, who helped found the American Indian Movement, partly in response to alleged police brutality against Indigenous people, died on November 30. He was 89.
Benton-Banai, who was Anishinaabe Ojibwe, was born and raised on the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation in northern Wisconsin. He made a life of connecting American Indians with their spirituality and promoting sovereignty. He was the grand chief, or spiritual leader, of the Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge.