Elizabeth E. Evans
Elizabeth E. Evans is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Elizabeth E. Evans
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Amid surge of campus protests, chaplains find reason for hope in their students
By Elizabeth E. Evans — May 10, 2024
(RNS) — The chaplains at Ivy League and other top schools say the students have learned about the concerns of other faiths, while finding ways to express their own.
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Nuns in a time of nones: The winding path to today’s religious vocations
By Elizabeth E. Evans — February 29, 2024
(RNS) — From 2020 to 2022, more than 900 women and men entered religious life. They all took their own, sometimes circuitous routes to get there.
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Can American congregations learn to embrace the uncoupled?
By Elizabeth E. Evans — February 15, 2024
(RNS) — Many American congregations tend to focus on traditional families, recollecting a mid-20th-century model for church growth or else simply as a model of what a Christian life should be.
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In Catholic men’s religious orders, diversity brings new opportunities — and occasional friction
By Elizabeth E. Evans — February 1, 2024
(RNS) — ‘Their lives are so much more complicated and distracting than mine was,’ said Brother Larry Schatz, vocation director for the Christian Brothers Midwest province.
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In a secular age, some young Americans still choose religious life
By Elizabeth E. Evans — January 2, 2024
(RNS) — While the numbers of priests and nuns have declined in recent decades, many millennials and Gen Zers still find a calling to religious life in the Catholic Church, even if the path to discernment has changed.
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As churches shrink and pastors retire, creative workarounds are redefining ministry
By Elizabeth E. Evans — July 28, 2023
(RNS) — As older clergy get set to retire, there are few younger seminarians to replace them — and few churches that can afford to pay them.
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How the teen mental health crisis is turning some youth pastors into first responders
By Elizabeth E. Evans — April 18, 2023
(RNS) — Young people, youth pastors say, are pushing the church to be more willing to talk about mental health.
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These Catholic nuns are raised up on Eagles’ wings
By Elizabeth E. Evans — February 10, 2023
(RNS) — Catholic nuns in the Philadelphia area are preparing for Sunday's Super Bowl between their beloved Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs with prayer (and a few small wagers).
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As Pennsylvania’s ‘Bible belt’ evolves, clergy look to one another for mutual support
By Elizabeth E. Evans — February 6, 2023
LANCASTER, Pennsylvania (RNS) — The difficulties of the pandemic and the widening gap between people of different political persuasions have put a strain on the clergy of one small town in this historically religious region. They have found mutual support in a 'ministerium' dedicated to community unity.
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In ‘Raising Lazarus,’ Beth Macy summons the stone rollers
By Elizabeth E. Evans — November 4, 2022
(RNS) — A new book chronicles an addiction-recovery movement known as 'harm reduction,' an alternative to strict abstinence that has drawn many people of faith as helpers.
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For clergy, COVID-19 has brought both burnout and breakthrough
By Elizabeth E. Evans — February 21, 2022
(RNS) — For clergy, the COVID-19 pandemic has been both a long haul and a time of new beginnings.
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Streaming online has been a boon for churches, a godsend for isolated
By Bob Smietana and Elizabeth E. Evans — February 1, 2022
There's been a lot of bad news about churches in recent years. Online church has been one bright spot.
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Matthew Dowd stakes his run for Texas lieutenant governor on kindness and faith
By Elizabeth E. Evans — November 11, 2021
(RNS) — Can a Democrat find the right mix of interfaith values voters to get him over the top?
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As COP26 conference gathers, faith-based environmentalists fight ‘eco-grief’
By Elizabeth E. Evans — November 2, 2021
(RNS) — For some veteran climate change activists, a positive perspective is central to their faith.
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How Philadelphia’s reform DA is teaming with clergy to tackle rising gun violence
By Elizabeth E. Evans — July 1, 2021
(RNS) — Clergy and activists are looking to address the long-term problems that they believe drive the crisis, and they are urging faith leaders to mobilize their flocks in addressing them.
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