Faith & Culture

(RNS) - In the shift across all health care professions, from volume-based to value-based care, the goal is to promote services led to positive outcomes. Chaplains, too, are increasingly being rated by a wide range of measures: better outcomes, lower costs, and higher patient satisfaction.

ECFA was founded 40 years ago to promote financial integrity in Christian ministries and claims nearly 2,400 members, But after its years-long failure to identify financial misdeeds at Chicago-area Harvest Bible Chapel, the organization itself faces scrutiny.

The Satanic Temple is what, on the internet, they call a “troll”: a spoof meant to raise hackles and call attention to potential loopholes in religious freedom laws designed to benefit the Christian right. Its most recent triumph was convincing the Internal Revenue Service that it is a bona fide religion.

(USA Today) — The owner of the life-size replica of Noah’s Ark in Northern Kentucky has sued its insurers for refusing to cover rain damage.

(RNS) — Most Protestant churchgoers feel they and their children are safe from abuse or harassment at their churches. But many also seem unsure whether new cases of abuse are yet to be revealed.

(RNS) — According to religious leaders, virtually no faith community has been spared violence. In response, faith leaders across the country are putting their heads together to help protect their congregations — and to do so, they’re increasingly crossing denominational lines.

Christian teens in the U.S. turn to their moms more than others when in need of guidance, advice or spiritual conversation, according to a Barna Group report published May 7.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis issued a groundbreaking law Thursday (May 9) requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-up by their superiors to church authorities.

(RNS) — Jean Vanier’s ministry to people with developmental disabilities began with a simple gesture: He invited three men who had spent the majority of their lives in a large institution to come and live with him.

NASHVILLE (BP) -- A significant rise in the number of adults looking to the Bible for answers this year gives the church a prime opportunity to draw more people to biblical truth, the American Bible Society (ABS) told Baptist Press.