The latest Supreme Court case over public funding for religious schooling examines a policy in Maine, a state dotted with small towns too tiny to run their own public schools. Over half of the state’s school districts (officially called “school…
As COVID continues, church-run food pantries, ministries adapt and expand
On a cold, cloudy afternoon in late November, two dozen volunteers were busy unloading a truckload of food in the parking lot just south of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, setting out a table filled with produce, staples and other groceries…
$6.6M awarded to Tree of Life synagogue, site of massacre
The state of Pennsylvania is pledging $6.6 million toward redevelopment of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where a gunman killed 11 people in 2018 in the nation’s deadliest attack on Jews.
Is the growing anti-pope ‘rad-trad’ community poised to become ‘Qatholics’? History isn’t encouraging
On Halloween, Rhode Island police announced that they had arrested Father James Jackson, the pastor of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP)’s church of St Mary in Providence, Rhode Island, for possession and transfer of child pornography.
Scientists use stem cells to create models of pre-embryos
Scientists are using human stem cells to create a structure that mimics a pre-embryo and can serve as a research alternative to a real one.
Celebrity surgeon Dr. Oz seeks to be first Muslim elected to the US Senate
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity surgeon and host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” has launched a campaign for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat now held by Pat Toomey, who is retiring. If Oz wins the Republican nomination, he will be the…
U.S. Catholic bishops encourage government search for boarding school graves
Two influential U.S. Roman Catholic Church bishops are encouraging their peers to cooperate with a federal investigation into abuses committed within the former Native American boarding school system.
Texas now bans medical abortions after seven weeks of pregnancy
A new law limiting the use of abortion-inducing medication in Texas goes into effect Thursday.
Cornerstone University’s new president is under fire. His former colleagues see a pattern.
In March 2012, Katy Attanasi, then an assistant professor of religion at Regent University in Virginia, was at home feeding her newborn son when she heard a knock at the door. On her stoop, she found a snow-dusted FedEx envelope…
A tree that survived the Holocaust gains a new life in New York City
In January of 1943, Irma Lauscher, a teacher at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, smuggled a tree into the camp so that the Jewish children imprisoned by the Nazis could celebrate Tu B’Shevat in a secret ceremony. The children…
Turkey’s Only Christian Magazine Turns 10 Years Old
Publisher Gökhan Talas recalled the early days of his Miras magazine when he took a finished issue of Turkey’s only Christian periodical to an advertiser to collect payment. One pastor had not only bought an advertisement but also written a…
Bidens, Harris, Emhoff celebrate Hanukkah at White House
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses held a “family” celebration of Hanukkah at the White House Wednesday, with the first Jewish spouse of a vice president, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, joining in lighting the menorah.