Nation

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (BP) -- Amid Northern California wildfires that have killed at least 13 people and burned more than 1,500 buildings since Oct. 8, Southern Baptist churches have begun ministering and California Southern Baptist Convention disaster relief crews are poised for relief work.

(RNS) — A mass shooting is a test for any religious institution, and a massacre like the one that left 58 dead and hundreds injured in Las Vegas, even more so.

Hope Church, a growing multi-ethnic congregation that attracts 3,000 people each weekend, says it’s up to the challenge.

A majority (79.4 percent) of the 689,800 current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients were born in Mexico, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data.

WASHINGTON (USA Today) — The long and winding road to the Supreme Court for President Trump's travel ban may require yet another detour as the White House prepares to revise or replace it.

Food insecurity in the U.S. declined for the fifth straight year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) annual report released last week.

Even so, more than 15 million households were food insecure in 2016.

(RNS) — The future of religion in America is young, non-Christian and technicolor.

Almost every Christian denomination in the U.S. shows signs of growing diversity as white Christians, once the majority in most mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations, give way to younger members, who tend to be of different races, according to a study released Wednesday (Sept. 6) by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Saturday, Aug. 12, was a deadly day in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a Unite the Right rally sparked violent confrontation and apparent domestic terrorism.

But a safe space amid the chaos was formed by the work of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective.

WASHINGTON (RNS) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, President Trump’s nominee for international religious freedom ambassador, describes religious freedom as “the choice of what you do with your own soul.”

If confirmed, the 60-year-old, two-term Republican governor, former U.S. senator and onetime presidential candidate would be the first politician confirmed as the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Previous ambassadors were religious or nonprofit leaders, and Brownback would follow a rabbi and a Protestant minister.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided on June 26 with a Missouri church seeking aid from taxpayers to improve its playground. The justices handed down the ruling in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer on the last day of its 2016-2017 session, overturning lower court decisions and creating an exception to the Missouri Constitution’s prohibition against funding houses of worship. Yet, due to a contentious footnote, both supporters and critics of the church’s argument believe future cases will determine the scope of the shift in church-state relations created by the case.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Evangelical Christian leaders are spearheading a campaign for criminal justice reform, calling for equitable punishment, alternatives to incarceration and a different take on the “tough on crime” language of the Trump administration.