Monday’s shooting at The Covenant School, which left seven dead including the shooter, highlights a dual reality of life in Nashville, often known as the buckle of the Bible Belt.
It’s a place where God is everywhere—and so are guns.
Each Wednesday evening, a group of congregants from First Baptist Church of Mt. Olive, located about 65 miles southeast of Raleigh, North Carolina, gathers for a Bible study called “Tackling Tough Topics Together.” The 10 to 20 regulars have discussed race, human sexuality, and mental illness.
When volunteers show up after a disaster like this past weekend’s deadly tornadoes in Mississippi, some bring chainsaws, tarps and heavy equipment.
Donnie Wedgworth and his friends bring catfish.
Womanist theologian Yolanda Pierce will be the next dean of Vanderbilt Divinity School. Pierce, a Century columnist, is currently the dean at Howard Divinity School—the first woman to lead the 153-year old institution.
Her research focuses on literature and religion, womanist theology, and African American religions. In 2016, Pierce served as the founding director of the Center for African American Religious Life at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
With no time even to wash her clothes as the Russians approached Mariupol a year ago, in southern Ukraine, Kalakeli Devi Dasi fled her native city with only a small suitcase filled with her dirty laundry. She also took with her a letter she was unable to deliver to her mother before Kalakeli and her friends joined a large convoy of cars heading southwest to the city of Berdyansk.
Instead of fully enjoying celebrations for Eid al-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan, Aisha Majdoub has often found herself preoccupied, wondering what her classmates were doing or thinking about missed schoolwork as she tried to commemorate the holiday with family.
“If you miss math for one day, it’s pretty tough to get back on track,” said Majdoub, 15, a sophomore at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology, a public high school in San Francisco.
Catholic leaders are pushing back against efforts to alter state laws that exempt clergy from reporting child abuse they hear about during the sacrament of confession, arguing the changes will force priests to choose between the law and their faith.
Advocates for abuse survivors insist the changes are necessary, noting instances where abuse by a parishioner or even a cleric continued despite a priest learning about it during confession.
The producers of a documentary on the 11 women who broke down barriers in the Episcopal Church to become its first female priests have released a trailer for the film, as they work to raise the remaining money needed to complete it in time for the 50th anniversary of the church milestone next year.
When Megan Rohrer was elected bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2021, he was celebrated as the first openly transgender bishop in the country’s largest Lutheran denomination.
The goodwill Israel earned when it sent a team of nearly 700 emergency medical responders to Turkey following the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that devastated Hatay province on February 6 evaporated after the revelation that the search and rescue team secretly exported two 200-year-old Scrolls of Esther from Antakya at the end of its six-day mission there.