Nation

Pastor Michael Catt would like to resume onsite congregational activities at Sherwood Baptist Church in the unlikely COVID-19 hotspot of rural Albany, Ga., but he's too concerned with the safety of his congregation and the community to take the risk.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said she has reached a deal that could resolve a lawsuit brought by two churches challenging her order banning religious gatherings of more than 10 people to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

A suburban Indianapolis church held services on Sunday for the first time in more than a month, taking care to ensure that worshippers adhered to social-distancing best practices and limiting attendance to conform to the governor's coronavirus guidance.

A federal judge on Wednesday said he will deny a bid by three Southern California churches to hold in-person church services during the pandemic, saying that government's emergency powers trump what in normal times would be fundamental constitutional rights.

A federal judge signaled that he believes there's a good chance that Kansas is violating religious freedom and free speech rights with a coronavirus-inspired 10-person limit on in-person attendance at religious services or activities and he blocked its enforcement against two churches that sued over it.

On a somber Sunday 25 years ago, the late Rev. Billy Graham shook off the flu to try and explain how a loving God could have allowed the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to occur. But Graham — America’s pastor-in-chief — had no answer.

The Justice Department took the rare step on Tuesday of weighing in on the side of an independent Baptist church in Mississippi where local officials had tried to stop Holy Week services broadcast to congregants sitting in their cars in the parking lot.

Already heavy-laden with the turmoil of a global COVID-19 pandemic, residents in several Southern states suffered the added burden of a string of tornadoes Easter Sunday that killed at least 27 people, destroyed hundreds of homes and left more than a million in the dark.

As state and local officials across the country ban churches — like other groups — from holding gatherings of more than 10 people, and church services already sparking numerous coronavirus hotspots across the country, some politicians in Kansas have invoked Easter in a partisan fight over gubernatorial power.

Throughout polling history, Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to hold a positive view of the U.N., but the approval gap between parties has narrowed significantly in recent years. Currently more than half of all U.S. adults poll feel the U.N. is doing a poor job.