EDS: HINDU-TAKEOUT will not be coming today.
NEWS STORY
RNS-StJohns-Priest: Ahead of Trump Bible photo op, police forcibly expel priest from St. John’s church near White House
WASHINGTON (RNS) — Early Monday evening (June 1), President Donald Trump stood before the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Washington and held aloft a Bible for cameras. The church appeared to be completely abandoned. It was, in fact, abandoned, but not by choice: Less than an hour before Trump’s arrival, armored police used tear gas to clear hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square park, which is across the street from the church. Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio. By Jack Jenkins. 1,121 words (category: a)
NEWS STORY
RNS-Greear-Church: Southern Baptist Convention president’s church policies questioned
(RNS) — A year after the Southern Baptist Convention unveiled a “Caring Well” report to address sexual abuse within its ranks, the megachurch pastored by the denomination’s president is being questioned for its hiring of a pastor with ties to a decade-old abuse controversy in Tennessee. By Adelle M. Banks. 1,100 words. (category: a)
NEWS ANALYSIS
RNS-Black-Tuesday: As artists and celebrities blackout their social media profiles and “mute” their feeds to amplify black voices, learn from these faith-rooted black activists working to promote racial justice. By Kathryn Post. 1,236 words. (category: k).
COMMENTARY
RNS-House-Oped: Why I resigned from Liberty University: Because Black Lives Matter
(RNS) — While blackface and other racist imagery has been used and studied by African Americans recently to provoke honest discussion of America’s racist past, Liberty’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., used anti-Black images in a public spat with the governor of Virginia, at the expense of Black people. By Christopher House. 1,200 words. (category: k)
COMMENTARY
RNS-Whitehead-Oped: With Bibles and flash grenades, Trump walks the Christian nationalist walk
(RNS) — President Donald Trump’s walk across from the Rose Garden to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday (June 1) was a short one in terms of geography, but represented an enormous leap in rhetoric. How do we square Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric with a photo-op in front of a church he did not enter, holding a Bible he did not seem to own, after not speaking to any clergy? By Andrew Whitehead. 926 words. (category: k)
COMMENTARY
RNS-Burton-Oped: There are few gatherings more appropriate to Pentecost than protest
(RNS) — Some called graffiti sprayed on New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in support of Black Lives Matter a desecration. To imagine that a church could be desecrated by political protest against inequality is to catastrophically misunderstand the message both of Pentecost and of Christianity as a whole. By Tara Isabella Burton. 900 words. (category: k)