Religious Articles

(RNS) — On the first Sunday (May 3) after the Supreme Court decided to hollow out the Voting Rights Act, the Rev. Richelle Lewis-Castine offered some clear advice to her congregation in Patterson, Louisiana. “I encouraged them to early vote,” said the pastor of an...

(RNS) — When the Rev. Kim Sue Jackson, a 41-year-old Episcopal priest and Georgia state senator, started browsing Facebook for breastmilk donors in the Atlanta area, she didn’t think religion would play much of a role in the effort.  Over nine months, she drove...

(RNS) — Charlie Kirk often dismissed college as a waste.   The far-right activist and Turning Point USA co-founder never earned a college degree, a fact he proudly touted in his 2022 book “The College Scam.” But in a February 2025 talk, he described one exception....

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenya’s political word of the moment is “goonism,” frequently uttered by national leaders to convey annoyance at the gangs that intimidate those whose political activities they oppose. Supporters of President William Ruto, who is seeking a second...

BERLIN (AP) — Artist Gunter Demnig carefully placed a palm-sized Holocaust memorial brass plaque into the sidewalk on a busy street corner of Berlin. It said: “Johanna Berger, born in 1893, lived here; deported on Nov. 17, 1941, murdered on Nov. 25, 1941.” After...

(RNS) — Joni Lamb, the co-founder of Daystar Television Network, a prominent Christian television ministry, died Thursday (May 7). She was 65. “Joni’s love for the Lord and for the people we serve shaped this ministry from the beginning,” the Daystar board of...

(RNS) — This week marks two years since the United Methodist Church voted to remove the last barriers to full equality of LGBTQ+ members. The removal of those punitive measures came in the wake of a schism that saw the departure of more than 7,600 congregations, or...

DJERBA, Tunisia (AP) — The annual Jewish pilgrimage to the 26-century-old El-Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia drew a modest but notable return of international visitors this year, worshipping together under tight security after a deadly 2023 attack disrupted the festival....

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV will inaugurate the soaring central tower of Barcelona’s famed Sagrada Familia basilica when he visits Spain next month in a weeklong trip that will also take him to a migrant reception center in the Canary Islands, the Vatican said Wednesday....

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of antisemitic incidents in the United States tallied by the Anti-Defamation League declined sharply in 2025 — the first drop in five years — due in part to what the ADL said was a dramatic decrease of incidents on college campuses. The ADL...

(RNS) — Shortly after Pope Leo XIV was elected last May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a Catholic, was asked about his thoughts on the newly minted pontiff’s comments signaling deep concern for immigrants. After defending President Donald Trump’s mass...

PARIS (AP) — The painting shows a girl in a bonnet and her younger brother staring across the Normandy coast toward an unknown horizon. The artwork itself faced an unknown future in 1942, when it was acquired in Paris for Adolf Hitler, one of countless works swept up...