“My name is Alex Stovall. I am Republican. I am 26. I am a Chaplain,” tweeted a 24-year-old chaplain candidate in the US Army Reserve in late May, announcing his campaign for a congressional seat in Arizona’s 9th District. Stovall went on to proclaim himself an America Firster who is “running for Congress to take on AOC,” apparently referring to US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive New York Democrat.
Baselios Marthoma Paulose II, head of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, died on July 12 at the age of 74. He had been undergoing cancer treatment for the last two years.
Paulose was ordained as a priest in 1973 and consecrated as a bishop in 1985. He became the head of the MOSC, also known as the Indian Orthodox Church, in 2010 following the abdication of Baselios Marthoma Didymus I.
Popular activities for this summer include visiting heavily populated beaches, hanging out indoors with crowds of more than 50, and debating translations of New Testament Greek on the internet.
On TikTok, more than 55 million users have viewed the hashtag #deconstruction—a buzzword chiefly among evangelicals and former evangelicals who are reanalyzing the traditional faith they grew up in. And now a dynamic subsection of creators is using the platform to debunk what they see as dangerous misinterpretations of biblical texts.
Shaikh Rahman, a business systems analyst in Chicago and a Muslim, was not a proponent of COVID-19 vaccines because he did not feel that credible information about them was being disseminated effectively and the distribution seemed rushed.
“Our faith says to investigate a matter before passing it off as truth,” he said.
But Rahman’s sentiment changed after his local imam, Jamal Said of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, began to suggest that those who were not vaccinated may be prohibited entry to the mosque.
The United Church of Christ kicked off its “special edition” general synod on July 11 by passing a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis.
Delegates to the denomination’s biennial meeting, held virtually this year, approved “A Resolution to Declare and Respond to Racism as a Public Health Crisis” with 96 percent of the vote during the opening plenary.
A day after its general conference voted down a bill that would have allowed clergy to perform same-sex marriages, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, meeting in Orlando, Florida, passed a resolution on July 8 to appoint a sexual ethics discernment committee to make recommendations to the denomination about LGBTQ matters.
Sam Brownback, former US ambassador for international religious freedom in the Trump administration, helped launch a conference on international religious freedom in Washington, DC, on July 13, bringing together an array of faith and political leaders with the goal of tackling discrimination around the globe.
The head of Haiti’s national police announced on July 11 that officers arrested a Haitian man accused of flying into the country on a private jet and working with the alleged assassins and masterminds behind the killing of President Jovenel Moïse.
Police Chief Léon Charles identified the suspect as 62-year-old Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian physician, pastor, and Florida businessman who has denounced the country’s leaders as corrupt.
The German military got its first rabbi in over a century on June 21, with the inauguration to the post of Hungarian-born Zsolt Balla at a synagogue in Leipzig.
The German government in 2019 approved a proposal by the Central Council of Jews to restore religious counseling for Jews serving in the armed forces. “This was unthinkable for decades and still can’t be taken for granted,” said Central Council head Josef Schuster. “That’s why we have all reason to be happy and grateful today.”
Actor Allison Mack, who played a key role in the scandal-ridden, cult-like group NXIVM, was sentenced to three years in prison on June 30 on charges she manipulated women into becoming sex slaves for the group’s spiritual leader.