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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.

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.”

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.

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.

A group of progressive United Methodists and other Christians have launched a new denomination named the Liberation Methodist Connexion, or LMX.

The new church aims to center on the voices of people of color as well as queer and transgender individuals—those the LMX organizers see as marginalized in the United Methodist Church.

On November 26, as coronavirus cases surged again nationwide, the Supreme Court barred New York from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches and synagogues in areas designated as hard hit by the virus.

The justices split 5–4, with new, conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett in the majority. The court’s three liberal justices joined Chief Justice John Roberts in dissent.