News

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that religious schools can’t be excluded from a Maine program that offers tuition aid for private education, a decision that could ease religious organizations’ access to taxpayer money. The outcome could renew a push for school choice programs in states that have so far not directed taxpayer money to religious education.

We watched our Facebook page erupt on Friday as Jenna Ellis’s followers bombarded us with vitriol, name-calling, and wild conspiracy theories. When someone like Ellis criticizes our reporting, we’re probably doing something right. 

Robert D. Cornwall reviews Words of Love: A Healing Journey with the Ten Commandments by Eugenia Anne Gamble. This book reflects on the Commandments in a manner that is both deeply spiritual and personal and we see aspects that people often miss when they are read strictly as legal codes.

Thousands of clergy, union leaders, activists, and scholars rallied near the U.S. Capitol on Saturday at a march organized by the Poor People’s Campaign, calling on Congress to take action and address the plight of millions of Americans who struggle with poverty and low-income.

A state holiday in Texas since 1980, Juneteenth was on only eight states‘ official holiday calendars before the federal designation, with another nine adding it since last year. Faith leaders have long marked the holiday with interfaith marches and special church services.

Stephen Schneck, a prominent Catholic political activist and academic, has been appointed by President Joe Biden to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal government panel dedicated to protecting religious minorities and other persecuted groups abroad.

In this edition of A Public Witness, we investigate the New York Times’s history of stirring religious conversations. Then we examine the surprisingly narrow perspectives regularly offered in the opinion section of the “old gray lady.”

After approving a series of reforms meant to address sexual abuse in their denomination, Southern Baptists at their national meeting approved a resolution apologizing to abuse survivors and asking for forgiveness. They also called on legislatures to create laws that make pastoral sexual misconduct a specific crime and punish those who prey on church members.

Pope Francis has taken another step to reign in new religious groups in the Catholic Church after their unregulated proliferation in recent decades led to abuses in governance that allowed spiritual and sexual misconduct to go unchecked.

The election was one of the closely watched aspects of the two-day meeting, during which messengers, or delegates, addressed a sexual abuse investigation. Barber received 61% of the votes in the second round of voting at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday evening, defeating Florida pastor Tom Ascol in a runoff election.