Faith & Culture

DENVER (RNS) — Najeeba Syeed was all set to speak about Islam and peacemaking, something the associate professor of interreligious education at Claremont School of Theology had done many times before.

Then came the death threat.

WACO, Texas (RNS) —On the Sunday (Nov. 18) before Thanksgiving, poor people riding bicycles and pushing old grocery carts lined up — as they do every week — to eat and worship God underneath Interstate 35 as tractor-trailer rigs roared overhead.

For now, a patch of gravel between Baylor University and businesses such as CVS Pharmacy and In-N-Out Burger serves as the meeting place for Church Under the Bridge, which began with a handful of homeless people studying the Bible with pastor Jimmy Dorrell in 1992.

(RNS) — As many Americans gather with their loves ones for Thanksgiving, a timely new survey from Pew Research confirms what miles of traffic jams and airport lines suggest: Family is the No. 1 source to which Americans look for meaning, fulfillment and satisfaction in their lives.

(RNS) — “And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility!”

Those words, written by Stan Lee, appear in the momentous final panel of the first story to feature the Amazing Spider-Man, published in 1962’s "Amazing Fantasy #15."

(RNS) — Anyra Cano Valencia was having dinner with her husband, Carlos, and their family when an urgent knock came at their door.

The Valencias, pastors at Iglesia Bautista Victoria en Cristo in Fort Worth, Texas, opened the door to a desperate, overwhelmed congregant.

One hundred years ago this month, on November 7, 1918, William Franklin Graham Jr. was born in a farmhouse near Charlotte, N.C. Although he was on Gallup’s list of the most admired people in the world a record 61 times, he was known around the world as simply Billy Graham.

TORONTO (RNS) — With its theme of "The Promise of Inclusion, the Power of Love," and its focus on global understanding, the seventh Parliament of the World's Religions could hardly have picked a more inclusive spot than Toronto, Canada’s largest city. The more than 8,000 people expected from 80 countries in this weeklong gathering will hardly stand out in the polyglot crowds that coexist in Toronto's diverse neighborhoods.

MILWAUKEE (RNS) — When Milwaukee’s Greater Galilee Missionary Baptist Church started a credit union in 1965, its predominantly African-American members were often denied loans, lines of credit and other basic financial services from banks.

More than 50 years later, in what is still one of the most racially segregated cities in the country, “not much has changed,” said Gloria Neff, a credit union board member and small-business owner.

It’s that time of the year when hell is used as a common theme for entertainment and hell-themed haunted houses and horror movies pop up all over the country.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — A global summit of Catholic bishops on Saturday (Oct. 27) issued a powerful call for the inclusion of women in decision-making roles in the church “at all levels” and sought to welcome gay people and commit the church to a historic shift on fighting clergy sexual abuse.

But in the wide-ranging final document, approved late Saturday following a series of votes by 248 cardinals and bishops, the synod on young people did not open the door to the ordination of women.