Religion News Service

A group of evangelical Christians hoping to reclaim their tradition from the culture wars put out a call Monday (Sept. 9) for a broader understanding of evangelicalism urging a rejection of "political idolatry and its messengers" as well as the "false idols of power, wealth, and strength rather than the true God."

"The fathers of the Second Vatican Council threw out the documents drawn up by the Vatican Curia and set their own agenda," writes Thomas Reese. He wonders if history could repeat itself at the October synod on synodality.

The lawsuit is one of two in Maine that focus on the collision between the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and the state law requiring that schools participating in the tuition program abide by the Maine Human Rights Act, which includes protections for LGBTQ students and faculty.

Too many people, when they grow older, give up on the God they learned about as children. What they really need to do is think about God in a more mature way.

At a conference at the Vatican, physicists and theologians made the case for cooperation between faith and science.

What I found was disturbingly out of step with the teachings I hold dear, and since all the commentaries on Project 2025 I've seen lack the perspective of nuns, I thought I'd offer a few observations.

After a crackdown on unapproved churches, Christian leaders say the government's move encroaches on religious freedom and applies regulations unequally.

The shroud remains an object of faith, intrigue and controversy that reappears periodically in the public sphere, as it has in recent weeks. As a scholar of early Christianity, I have long been interested in why people are motivated to create objects like the shroud and also why people are drawn to revere them as authentic.

The recent Gospel seemed to reflect what is going on in the Catholic Church and in other U.S. Christian churches. Many people no longer come to church or identify as Christian — especially young people, and more especially women.

In the U.S., two-thirds of respondents say that it is important to have a leader at the national level who stands up for people with religious beliefs. Less than half of respondents believe that it is essential for their leader to have strong religious beliefs or have religious beliefs that are the same as their own.

A familiar face among Washington’s faith-based activists, Butler said she brings ‘a broad set of relationships that I think can help, very quickly, pull a broad coalition together’ in a foreshortened Harris campaign.

Phyllis Zagano writes: The Catholic Church is in a bad way when the Democratic Party in the United States brings more hope and joy to people — especially to women — than Pope Francis.

NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Tracy Dyson are both members of Houston-area Providence Baptist Church. They are also both astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Here's how the church and their congregants continue to worship, even from outer space.

"In thinking about the laws recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the freedom of those who pray, because those who truly pray always pray for all," Francis said after his Aug. 25 Angelus. The pope stated that "a person does not commit evil by praying" and urged Ukrainian leaders to "let those who want to pray be allowed to pray in what they consider their Church."

"Limiting the diaconate and priesthood to men is painful for many women in the church," Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese writes, "but if we cannot ordain women as deacons, there is no reason we have to ordain men." 
 

Italian priest Padre Pio was one of the most prayed-to saints in recent times. As Pio's generation ages, the church is turning to Italian teen Carlo Acutis, set to be canonized, to appeal to a new demographic.

Almost half of US Orthodox churches remained open during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to only 12% of all religious congregations.

Activists who have been protesting at the Democratic National Convention over the war in Gaza took time out to mourn and draw strength from their varying faiths.

"Many revered works of art come from spiritually flawed creators. From my perspective, condemning art, rather than debating how the Catholic Church may have allowed someone accused of abuse to avoid censure for so long, is a diversion at best," writes Virginia Raguin, a Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emerita at College of the Holy Cross.

US migrants are much more likely to have a religious identity than the American-born population.