homepage featured
What is Eid and how do Muslims celebrate it? 6 questions answered
By Ken Chitwood — June 4, 2019
(The Conversation) — Muslims all over the world are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, one of the religion’s principal festivals.
Urban oil well to be shut down, cleaned up after pressure from LA faith activists
By Bob Smietana — June 4, 2019
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — The city of Los Angeles gave AllenCo three years to clean up an urban oil well in Los Angeles. The move comes after years of activism by local faith-based groups, who say the neighborhood well was a nuisance.
Adam Hamilton on ‘Methodists in the middle’ and what’s next for the denomination
By Emily McFarlan Miller — June 4, 2019
(RNS) — As the United Methodist Church has spent decades wrestling over the inclusion of its LGBTQ members, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the United States, has emerged, as one local radio station put it, as 'the Pied Piper for Methodists in the middle.'
Southern Baptist leaders plan to remedy ‘insufficient’ approach to abuse claims
By Adelle M. Banks — June 3, 2019
(RNS) — Their denomination’s Executive Committee may also vote to create a year-round Credentials Committee that will consider complaints about churches mishandling abuse or 'discriminatory behavior on the basis of ethnicity.'
Why a Boston church is stamping Harriet Tubman on all its $20 bills
By Aysha Khan — June 3, 2019
BOSTON (RNS) — Since May, the Jamaica Plain church has been stamping all $20 bills from its offering plates with abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s face. It is, the church's pastor said, a 'worthy replacement.'
Scholars fear Franklin Graham will cut off access to Billy Graham archives
By Tim Funk — June 3, 2019
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (RNS) — Franklin Graham said plans are underway for a new research center, but no professional archivists or librarians appear to be in place.
During Ramadan, growing Muslim philanthropy enters the spotlight
By Aysha Khan — June 1, 2019
(RNS) — Many Muslim-run charity groups are drawing a connection between their philanthropic causes, the Ramadan fast and the Islamic imperative to give to the poor.
At her funeral, Rachel Held Evans is memorialized with quotes from her own writings
By Carina Julig — June 1, 2019
(RNS) — Her friend Nadia Bolz-Weber gave a sermon, saying that though theologically she knows that death knows no sting, 'it stings now.'
Soviet power gone, Baltic countries’ historic pagan past re-emerges
By Aliide Naylor — May 31, 2019
SAMMA, Estonia (RNS) — The Maausk community, along with Estonia’s other prominent neopagans, the Taaraists, tripled in size from 2001 to 2011, the latest figures available from the national census.
Fighting hate with a holy, and blessedly ordinary, partnership of Christians and Jews
By Daniel Greyber and Katie Crowe — May 31, 2019
DURHAM, N.C. (RNS) — Sharing a sanctuary, a church and a synagogue wrote a narrative that refused to let our current divisions have the final word.
With anti-Semitism on the rise, U.K. begins formal inquiry into Labour Party’s attitudes
By Catherine Pepinster — May 31, 2019
LONDON (RNS) — Britain is facing an unprecedented political crisis over religious discrimination as its two biggest political parties are confronting mounting accusations over their treatment of Jews and Muslims.
To save our politics, we need new ways to think and speak about abortion
By Charles C. Camosy — May 31, 2019
(RNS) — When it comes to talking about abortion, restricting people to a simplistic 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice' identity creates the mother of all antagonistic binaries.
California lawmakers threaten to break confidentiality of confession to find abusers
By Jack Jenkins — May 31, 2019
(RNS) — The bill extends the debate over 'clergy-penitent privilege' provoked by similar provisions passed or considered in other states since at least 2002.
Franklin Graham ‘burdened’ to pray for a president he says is under attack
By Yonat Shimron — May 31, 2019
(RNS) — Graham's call for 'special day of prayer for the president' on Sunday (June 2) has been joined by a who's who of evangelical leaders.
The Pacific Northwest is the American religious future
By Mark Silk — May 31, 2019
SEATTLE (RNS) — Recent research on the region's distinctive religious culture gives us hints about what a society dominated by Nones may look like.
