Nation

Mississippi lawmakers voted Sunday to surrender the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag, more than a century after white supremacist legislators adopted the design a generation after the South lost the Civil War.

Decades after influential developer J.C. Nichols kept Blacks, Jews, and other minorities out of subdivisions he built that transformed the Kansas City region, protests over the death of George Floyd might lead to his name being removed from one of the city’s most iconic sites.

President Donald Trump has renewed outreach efforts to conservative Christians this week, targeting his most dedicated supporters in the wake of lagging poll numbers.

Vice President Mike Pence launched a faith-centered tour in a conservative Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb on Tuesday, touting what he called the “great American comeback” as a couple of hundred attendees, most not wearing masks, cheered and chanted “USA!” and “four more years!”

Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally shot by a police officer, is to be remembered today at the church in Atlanta, Georgia, where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at the church and a Democratic candidate for Senate, will deliver the eulogy.

A Tennessee newspaper said Sunday it is investigating what its editor called a “horrific” full-page advertisement from a religious group that predicts a terrorist attack in Nashville next month.

With COVID-19 restrictions preventing an intended in-person rally in Washington D.C., at least a million supporters of the Poor People's Campaign reportedly tuned in Saturday (June 20) to watch a mix of live speeches and pre-recorded clips of liberal religious leaders calling for a "moral revolution."

Houses of worship across the nation are observing Juneteenth with Black Lives Matter demonstrations, anti-racist workshops, and virtual celebrations. Juneteenth honors the day in 1865 when enslaved black people in Galveston Bay, Texas, were notified by Union troops they were free by executive decree.

Faith groups are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision temporarily halting the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind an Obama-era program granting legal protection to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children. 

Among the religious right, many found the 6-3 majority opinion shielding LGBT people from employment discrimination, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, alarming. But some also saw an open door to gain back some ground in the future.