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Vice President Mike Pence hugs Evelyn Holcombe at Florseville High School during a stop, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, in Floresville, Texas. A man opened fire inside a church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday, killing and wounding many; Holcombe was in the church during the shooting but escaped. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Need to know: Thursday, November 9, 2017
Pence tells grieving town ‘Faith is stronger than evil’
A memorial service for the victims of Sutherland Springs, held in a neighboring town with the vice president and Texas’ governor in attendance, was replete with Bible readings and prayers to Jesus.
Texas church to be demolished, like other mass killing sites before it
In what is becoming a grim American ritual, mass shooting sites from Sandy Hook to Columbine are demolished and then rebuilt. But some churches that experienced horrific killings have sought to reclaim existing sacred spaces.
Mother Emanuel AME pastor shows solidarity with Sutherland Springs
The Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, who leads the church in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist killed nine people in 2015, hopes to offer a “ministry of presence” by visiting members of First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.
Tenn. Baptist church hires female pastor, may lose state Baptist voting rights
A Tennessee Baptist Committee decision goes to the heart of Southern Baptists' affirmation that only men can pastor a congregation, despite the Baptist belief that each church is autonomous and can make decisions without a hierarchy of denominational authority.
New York’s Metropolitan Museum to show Catholic Church’s fashions
The museum’s Costume Institute is planning a 2018 fashion exhibition called “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” It will include feature 50 or so ecclesiastical garments and accessories on loan from the Vatican.
Elizabeth Smart, who changed Mormons’ views on sex, is wary of religion
After surviving a horrific and highly-publicized abduction in 2002 as a Mormon teenager, she is now is wary of people who use religion to justify their actions.
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When Americans tried – and failed – to reunite Christianity
(The Conversation) — In the early 1900s, ambitious Protestants in the U.S. attempted the unthinkable.
Trump’s white evangelical strategy backfires in Virginia
It's hard to win elections by appealing only to your base.
After Sutherland Springs, pray … and do something
It would be good to hear a word from our president now about how we can find the laws and practices that will counter the ways we have come to rely on the instruments of violence to provide our security, writes Richard Mouw.
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