Nation

U.S. support for stricter regulations on firearm sales now stands at 60 percent (a 5-point increase from 2016), according to Gallup survey data released on Oct. 16.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A man who'd been living in a Philadelphia church for nearly a year to avoid deportation to Mexico has walked free.

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.