Faith & Culture

Faith groups are quick to lend a hand when disaster strikes. But with organized religion fading, who will pick up the slack? Southern Baptists do lots of disaster relief, but where will that relief come from as the denomination shrinks?

As the number of laid-off workers and hungry Americans continues to rise, even as farmers are having trouble marketing their crops, the ancient practice of gleaning is having a moment — fueled in part by faith communities.

As religious services went online due to coronavirus, a paradox emerged: Worshipers were connected via the internet to a potentially wide community, but it felt like a more private affair. This is not the first time tensions between private worship and public expressions of religion have been felt.

The vast majority of U.S. Protestant churches say they are holding in-person services, but churchgoers have yet to attend in the numbers they did before the coronavirus pandemic struck.

As many churches have begun meeting again in person for worship, some require members to wear masks during services. That’s great for helping prevent the spread of COVID-19, but the masks make it hard for a preacher to read the room.

Donald Trump seems to have joined himself with conspiracy theorists on the Christian right early in his political career. The rhetoric of conspiracy, now used by Trump, was already foundational for many prominent figures of the Christian right.

Conflicts about professors at Baptist schools raise many important questions. What is the purpose of education? How much academic freedom should professors have in their scholarship and lectures? And who gets to decide what is “acceptable” for a professor to say?

Republican or Democrat, whether or not you social distance likely has more to do with whether you feel the U.S. is under threat from others not like you. That is why a group of academics say the powerful driver of the disagreement might be Christian nationalism.

Church finances have not been as impacted by the coronavirus pandemic as many feared months ago. But with many congregations still not meeting in person, concerns about the future remain.

After 38 years, the work of 53 translators is complete – a translation of the whole Bible into American Sign Language.