A coalition of more than 40 American Muslim groups is leading a global boycott of Hilton Hotels over its involvement in a hotel project in Xinjiang, China, where a Uyghur mosque was bulldozed to make way for the building.
Women in Black Baptist circles knew that it was only a matter of time before one of their own was named to lead a major church organization.
Female clergy describe having a sense of anticipation for years before the elevation of Gina Stewart this summer to president of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, a 124-year-old movement of about 10,000 volunteers and contributors based in Maryland.
Though the electricity was turned off in all buildings on the site, visitors arriving at Crystal Springs camp on September 12 for its official decommissioning were embraced by the sacred power of the place. Until its closing in 2019, Crystal Springs had been a United Methodist camp and retreat center for 160 years.
But earlier this year, Michigan Area United Methodist Camping sold the Dowagiac, Michigan, campgrounds to the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The United Methodist group could no longer maintain the grounds, due to increasing costs and declining membership.
After the death of its founding pastor a few years ago, membership at Cullen Missionary Baptist Church in Houston took a nosedive.
André Jones, the current pastor, said that with fewer donations supporting the upkeep of a building equal in size to a city block, “we had more space than we knew what to do with and didn’t have the people or resources to pay for it.”
Albert Raboteau Jr., the “godfather of Afro-Religious studies,” died from complications related to Lewy body dementia on September 18. He was 78.
For most of his career, Raboteau was considered one of the preeminent scholars of both Black religious history and American religious history. His 1978 book Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South, which centered the perspectives of enslaved people, is still seen as one of the definitive books on the origins of the Black church.
The founder of one of the world’s largest megachurches has died, according to news reports from Korea. The English-language Korean Herald reported that Cho Yong-gi died at a Seoul hospital on September 14. He was 85.
Cho, known in the United States as David Yonggi Cho, was the founder of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, a Pentecostal megachurch with hundreds of thousands of members.
Timothy Stewart, the first international president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, has died, his denomination announced.
The Bahamas pastor served three years of his four-year term and presided over the virtual annual session of the historically Black religious group in August. He died on September 17 at age 64.
“Dr. Stewart faithfully served the Progressive National Baptist Convention for over 3 decades, making history in 2018,” the PNBC said in a statement. “He was the first President from the International Region in Progressive’s 60 year history.”