News

Now that former President Jimmy Carter and his wife are vaccinated against COVID-19, they have returned to one of their favorite things: church. Maranatha Baptist Church in tiny Plains, Georgia, announced on its Facebook page Wednesday that the Carters were again attending worship in person.

As controversy continues after some prominent Southern Baptist pastors called U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris a “Jezebel” or said she was “going to hell,” new research shows that Harris and other women of color remain top targets for online attacks.

President Mahmoud Abbas has guaranteed that at least seven seats of a new legislative council will go to Christians in the elections in the occupied territories to be held May 22. The measure would give Christians an outsized representation on the council.

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush introduced legislation Monday to grant permanent residency to Alex Garcia, a Honduran immigrant who has spent more than three years inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation.

Popular Christian author Shauna Niequist has apologized for her silence following the allegations against her father, Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of suburban Chicago megachurch Willow Creek Community Church. 

Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear called out fellow Baptists who he said were sowing dissension and lies in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination at the meeting of the SBC’s Executive Committee on Monday. 

Most churches have found a way to continue meeting despite the ongoing pandemic, but fewer met in person in January as COVID-19 cases spiked across the country. A new study from Nashville-based Lifeway Research found 76% of U.S. Protestant pastors say their churches met in person in January.

Health officials in the nation’s capital are hoping that Black religious leaders will serve as community influencers to overcome what officials say is a persistent vaccine reluctance in the Black community. Several local ministers recently received their first vaccine shots.

Divisions over race, politics, gender, and LGBTQ issues are roiling America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, ahead of a meeting of its executive committee next week.

As states continue with the initial rollout of vaccines for COVID-19, the availability for pastors depends on their location as well as the definition of “essential.” Clergy are already eligible in some states, but not in others.