Christianity

Awe and dread: How religions have responded to total solar eclipses over the centuries

April 4, 2024

Throughout history, solar eclipses have had profound impact on adherents of various religions around the world. They were viewed as messages from God or spiritual forces, inducing emotions ranging from dread to wonder.

Ahead of the total solar eclipse that will follow a long path over North America on Monday, here’s a look at how several of the world’s major religions have responded...

New York inmates are suing to watch solar eclipse after state orders prisons locked down

April 2, 2024

NEW YORK -- Inmates in New York are suing the state corrections department over the decision to lock down prisons during next Monday's total solar eclipse.

The suit filed Friday in federal court in upstate New York argues that the April 8 lockdown violates inmates' constitutional rights to practice their faiths by preventing them from taking part in a religiously significant event.

The plaintiffs are six men with varying religious backgrounds who are incarcerated at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Woodbourne. They include a Baptist, a Muslim, a Seventh-...

A year after deadly Nashville shooting, Christian school relies on faith — and adopted dogs

April 1, 2024

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nearly a year after a shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville that left three adults and three children dead, the students and their families have formed tight bonds out of their shared suffering. They’ve also adopted a lot of dogs.

Among the adopters is Matthew Sullivan, who now cares for a Rhodesian ridgeback named Hank. He is the chaplain at Covenant School, which endured an all-too-common tragedy on March 27, 2023, when a former student shot through the exterior doors and kept going. Sullivan isn’t allowed to talk about...

LGBTQ-inclusive church in Cuba welcomes all in a country that once sent gay people to labor camps

April 1, 2024

MATANZAS, Cuba (AP) — Proudly wearing a rainbow-colored clergy stole and a rainbow flag in her clerical collar, the Rev. Elaine Saralegui welcomed all to her LGBTQ+ inclusive church in the Cuban port city of Matanzas.

“We’re all invited. And no one can exclude us,” Saralegui told same-sex couples who held hands sitting on wooden pews in the Metropolitan Community Church where she had recently married her wife.

These words and this kind of gathering would have been unimaginable before in the largest country in the conservative and mostly Christian Caribbean, ...

Virgin of Charity unites all Cubans — Catholics, Santeria followers, exiled and back on the island

March 18, 2024

Ramon Nieblas fixed his tearful eyes on the small golden statue, a beloved icon of Cuba's patron saint. Whispering, he asked the Virgin of Charity of Cobre for a miracle: Please save his sick son.

"I came to pray for his health," said Nieblas, a Cuban living in Brazil who traveled thousands of miles to the basilica in eastern Cuba, a pilgrimage site nestled in the shadow of the Sierra Maestra mountains.

He sat in Mass, wrapping his arm around 26-year-old Hernando Nieblas, a physician undergoing treatment for leukemia. They were among the thousands who visit the...

Was Jesus vegetarian? New ‘Christspiracy’ documentary says yes.

March 18, 2024

(RNS) — Is there an ethical or spiritual way to kill an animal?

That’s the question that animates “Christspiracy: The Spirituality Secret,” the forthcoming documentary that suggests Jesus and many of his early followers opposed the killing and eating of animals. This bombshell truth, the filmmakers ...

Thousands of churches will likely close down. What happens to all that real estate?

March 15, 2024

(RNS) — If experts were predicting that 100,000 libraries across the United States were likely to close in the next few decades, people would probably sit up and take notice. Certainly, if 100,000 school buildings were going to be empty in small and large communities, someone would be talking about it.

But the possible demise of thousands of churches? Crickets, said the Rev. Mark Elsdon, a Presbyterian minister, author and social entrepreneur who co-founded RootedGood, a nonprofit that works with churches on how to use their space.

Source: https://religionnews....

BYU’s LGBTQ students spotlighted in new grassroots documentary

March 14, 2024

(RNS) — When, in 2020, Brigham Young University’s Provo, Utah, campus erupted in rainbow-colored protests after the school quietly removed — then reaffirmed — its ban on “homosexual behavior,” David Sant was a closeted queer BYU student afraid to join the fray.

But now, as the director of the new documentary “A Long Way From Heaven,” Sant is spotlighting BYU’s treatment of LGBTQ students who, like him, felt pressured to stifle parts of their identity at the flagship school of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Source: https://religionnews.com/2024...

Many Christian voters in US see immigration as a crisis. How to address it is where they differ.

March 7, 2024

MIAMI (AP) — Christian voters and faith leaders have long been in the frontlines of providing assistance to migrants — but when it comes to support for immigration policies, from border security to legalization options for migrants already in the U.S., priorities diverge broadly.

Both President Joe Biden and GOP challenger Donald Trump ...

How Hakeem Jeffries’ Black Baptist upbringing and deep-rooted faith shapes his House leadership

February 28, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stood together at the annual National Prayer Breakfast — an opportunity, in the words of one introductory speaker, to “put our political differences aside.”

Such differences are vast between Johnson, a staunchly conservative Republican, and Jeffries, a hero to liberal Democrats. But at the prayer breakfast earlier this month, they collegially took turns reading Scripture — evoking how their shared Christianity confronts evil.

It was a fleeting moment of unity for...

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