On March 26, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson signed into law legislation allowing doctors to refuse to treat someone because of religious or moral objections, a move opponents have said will give providers broad powers to turn away LGBTQ patients and others.
The measure says health-care workers and institutions have the right to not participate in nonemergency treatments that violate their conscience. The new law won’t take effect until late this summer.
Hundreds of Uyghurs staged protests in Ankara and Istanbul on March 25, denouncing Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to Turkey and demanding that the Turkish government take a stronger stance against human rights abuses in China’s far-western Xinjiang region.
The crowd gathered in Istanbul’s Beyazit Square, holding posters of missing relatives they believe are being kept in detention camps in China and chanting slogans against Beijing.
In 2001, when the Church Pension Group first started publishing differences in average compensation between male and female full-time Episcopal clergy, men earned 18 percent more than women. Nearly 20 years later, according to the most recent CPG report, the gap in median compensation between male and female clergy is 13.5 percent.
The primary factor in the lingering clergy gender pay gap is the shortage of women in higher-paying senior positions, according to both the data and the observations of diocesan leaders.
Luis Palau, an evangelical pastor who was born in Argentina and went on to work with Billy Graham before establishing his own powerhouse international ministry, died March 11. He was 86.
The Luis Palau Association said he died at his home in Portland, Oregon. He had announced in January 2018 that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.