I drove to our local bank this morning and dropped off our application for the Paycheck Protection Program, which is administered by the Small Business Administration to help businesses make payroll while their revenues decline significantly due to COVID-19. Our business is a church. I’m the
The coronavirus pandemic has raised a number of difficult questions concerning personal freedoms and public safety, with religion front and center. Should congregations continue to gather in person for worship and other social functions? Can the state restrict religious organizations from fully free functioning?
Although it is still three weeks until Mother’s Day, I am writing today about taking care of Mother Earth. This week marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, so it is a fitting time to think about taking care of our planet.
As churches across the country avoid in-person worship services, a historian and sociologist of religion in American life sees parallels to a previous pandemic. Historian John Schmalzbauer draws encouragement from the fact churches survived the 1918 influenza pandemic as the coronavirus outbreak continues.
The idea formed on a day when all the news headlines were dire. Days later, The Associated Press started its daily series “One Good Thing” to reflect the unheralded sacrifices made to benefit others that normally wouldn’t make a story, but maybe always deserved one.
A federal judge signaled that he believes there's a good chance that Kansas is violating religious freedom and free speech rights with a coronavirus-inspired 10-person limit on in-person attendance at religious services or activities and he blocked its enforcement against two churches that sued over
On a somber Sunday 25 years ago, the late Rev. Billy Graham shook off the flu to try and explain how a loving God could have allowed the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to occur. But Graham — America’s
At 28, Amy Downs was an unhappily married college dropout. She'd lost her faith. She weighed 355 pounds. Surviving the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was the perfect opportunity for a fresh start.
At Blue Valley Christian Church they like to say, “we are so far outside the box that we can’t see the box and don’t want to see the box.” After selling our building about six years ago, we are now located at an independent and
Across the country, black clergy say the coronavirus is touching — and sometimes taking — the faithful who until a month ago were accustomed to meeting weekly in their pews. Some are mourning losses in the highest echelons of their denomination. Others are counting the