Thousands of Christian pilgrims took part in Palm Sunday celebrations in Jerusalem at the start of the Holy Week.
Disgraced founding pastor Brian Houston feuds online with Hillsong about his wife’s future
The status of Bobbie Houston, the longtime co-pastor and co-founder of Hillsong, the troubled global megachurch based in Australia, is uncertain after the church’s board and her husband, the church’s former head pastor, Brian Houston, traded feuding online messages this…
The most forgotten queer folks in the US are fighting back against a powerful — and publicly funded — group that discriminates with impunity
“How do we get people to view the CCCU as an extremist organization, the same way they view ADF?”
Islamic State morphs and grows in Pakistan, Afghanistan
Basheer was a young Taliban fighter barely out of his teens when the Islamic State group took over his village in eastern Afghanistan, nearly eight years ago. The militants rounded up villagers identified as Taliban and killed them, often beheading…
War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values
In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray…
Died: Gerald Coates, New Church Movement Pioneer
Gerald Coates, a church leader who envisioned a new way of doing church, free from formality and the trappings of tradition, has died at 78.
Chicago church’s plan to fast from ‘whiteness’ for Lent gets pushback
To say that First United Church of Oak Park isn’t used to getting national media attention for its Lenten programming is “perhaps the understatement of the year,” according to senior pastor the Rev. John Edgerton.
Repaired Texas synagogue reopens months after hostage crisis
In the three months since Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three of his congregants were held at gunpoint in their Texas synagogue, new carpet has been laid in the sanctuary, the walls have been repainted, the entry retiled and new doors…
American Atheists to take a quieter approach to culture wars at Atlanta meeting
American Atheists, one of the leading organizations dedicated to defending nonbelief, is taking a quieter approach as it prepares for its first in-person convention in three years.
Alabama passes bill criminalizing some healthcare for transgender youth
Alabama lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that would criminalize gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth, with a threat of 10 years in prison for medical providers.
‘We expect to win.’ Ayahuasca churches vow to remain as court case largely dismissed.
Every other weekend, Scott Stanley, founder of the Arizona Yagé Assembly, facilitates sacred ceremonies where congregants share ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic they say “has the capacity to heal the entire human being.”
Rebuffed privately, influential rabbis go public with plea to cut off American Jewish funding of Israeli extremists
In the wake of last year’s round of deadly fighting in Gaza, a group of prominent rabbis in the New York area came to believe that a major American Jewish charity had indirectly fueled the violence.