Faith & Culture

WASHINGTON (RNS) —  Leith Anderson is a fan of the word "evangelical" and the Christians who claim that name. But he knows the term may have outlived its usefulness in a polarized country where evangelical has often become a synonym for conservative Republican.

Non-Christians in the U.S. are more likely than the national average to have a negative perception of evangelicals, according to a Barna Group report published Nov. 21. The top three descriptors: Narrow-minded, homophobic, and puritanical.

(RNS) — As Americans gear up for a long and bitterly contentious presidential election year, their message to religious leaders and institutions couldn't be clearer: Keep out.

Nashville-based LifeWay Research asked 1,000 Protestant pastors about their personal connections to the opioid epidemic and how their churches are looking to address the issue. Half (52 percent) knew someone directly in their church is dealing with an opioid addiction.

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Emmanuel Perez was about 15 years old when he decided the Catholic faith was not for him. He is representative of a shift over the last decade where the percentage of Latinos who identify as Catholic, has dropper 10%..

AUSTIN, Texas (BP) -- A network of Christian women's health centers in Texas offering the Gospel to all clients will begin providing contraceptives in March, 2020, to single women, according to the network's CEO, a Southern Baptist evangelical.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — After nine people belonging to a Mormon offshoot community were killed in Mexico this week, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a short statement expressing sympathy for the victims while clarifying that they didn't belong to the mainstream church.

MOSCOW, Idaho (RNS) — For many local residents, this town is just about perfect. With only 30 percent identifying as "religious" one congregation has been planning a spiritual takeover of the town for years that will transform both its politics and its soul.

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Paula White, a Pentecostal preacher and longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, has been tapped to head the White House's Faith and Opportunity Initiative, a successor to previous administrations' faith-based office that coordinates outreach to religious communities.

WASHINGTON (BP) -- A historian, an ethicist and a pastor -- all Baptists -- displayed a difference of opinion on the usefulness of the word "evangelical" and the state of evangelicalism in an Oct. 29 conversation at the Museum of the Bible.