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Black churches, others face hate on Zoom

With their eyes closed in prayer, asking God to help the country’s overburdened health-care workers, members of the Impact Movement ministry group never saw the attack coming.

“God is dead, God is dead,” they suddenly heard a young male voice say in their Zoom video conference. Then other voices joined in, laughing and chanting: “N****r, n****r, n****r.”

When members of the national black Christian campus ministry group opened their eyes at the unexpected voices and words, the screen was showing footage of the New Zealand mosque shooting.

Larger churches urged to help smaller ones survive COVID-19 pandemic

National Christian groups are urging larger and more stable churches to financially help small churches that could potentially close in their communities due to a steep decline in offerings in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Through the Churches Helping Churches Initiative, a relief fund has been set up to provide $3,000 grants to churches at risk of closing this spring due to a decrease in financial giving. The initiative is led by the AND Campaign, with support from other organizations like the National Latino Evangelical Co­alition and the Pinetops Foundation.

What sobriety looks like in a time of crisis

On March 14, six days before New York governor Andrew Cuomo implemented a shelter-in-place order for the state, effectively shutting down all nonessential services, Reagan Reed was notified that 50 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings had been canceled across New York City’s metropolitan area. As executive director of the Inter-Group Association of AA of New York (NYIG), an umbrella organization for the area’s 6,000 AA chapters across the five boroughs and surrounding counties, it was her job to update the website’s event page.

Shunning online services, some churches preach ‘abstinence’ from gathered worship

For weeks, churches have been rushing to use the internet in new ways, live streaming and video conferencing to keep the faithful together for weekend worship.

But when some political and health officials said coronavirus-related social distancing rules applied to religious gatherings, at least a handful of churches across the country intentionally decided not to worship online on recent Sundays.

Liberty Baptist Church in Missouri is one of them.

California, New York provide hotel rooms to people who are homeless and released from jail 

Two hotels near the airport in Oakland, California, are receiving unusual guests now that coronavirus has eviscerated tourism: people who are homeless after being released from jail.

It’s part of an experiment to provide government-paid hotel rooms to people who are homeless, including those released from jail under emergency orders, in an effort to limit the spread of the virus both behind bars and in this state’s sprawling homeless encampments. California and New York appear to be the first states trying it.