Church

A new survey of 15,278 religious congregations across the United States confirms trends sociologists have documented for several decades: Congregational life across the country is shrinking. 

The brick foundation of one of the nation’s oldest Black churches has been unearthed at Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum in Virginia that continues to reckon with its past storytelling about the country’s origins and the role of Black Americans.

While many congregations have been back to worship for weeks and months, often masked and socially distant, some African American clergy continue to hold off on in-person services.

A top committee of the Southern Baptist Convention agreed Tuesday (Oct. 5) to open up legally protected records to investigators who will look into how it handled, or mishandled, cases of sexual abuse within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination over the past two decades.

Senior Editor Beau Underwood interviews Emanuel Cleaver III, pastor of St. James United Methodist Church in Kansas City, MO, for the latest installment of our “Behind the Pulpit” series intended to pull back the curtain on the minister’s life.

Amid debates within the Southern Baptist Convention over investigating clergy sexual abuse, a trustee of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission penned a letter attacking former ERLC President Russell Moore.

The president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, closed the annual session of his denomination this week with critiques of cultural conflicts and Christian Nationalism.

On Tuesday, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee called for a further week of deliberations with a special task force on sexual abuse after failing to agree on the ground rules for a third party review commissioned to study the denomination’s handling of abuse claims. 

Washington National Cathedral announced Thursday it has chosen contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall, renowned for his wide-ranging works depicting African American life, to design new stained-glass windows with themes of racial justice that will replace a set with Confederate imagery.

Rev. Timothy Stewart, the first international president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, has died, his denomination announced. The Bahamas pastor served three years of his four-year term and presided over the virtual annual session of the historically Black religious group in August.