News

During the coronavirus crisis, Pope Francis has become a 21st century “prisoner of the Vatican” — as one of his predecessors was once known — robbed of the crowds, foreign travel, and visits to the peripheries that so defined and popularized his papacy.

Some Vermont religious leaders are asking the state to confront its role as a location where Black people were once held as slaves and remember those individuals — like Lavinia and Francis Parker, a mother and son enslaved by Ethan Allen’s daughter Lucy Caroline Allen Hitchcock.

With coronavirus restrictions limiting or preventing access to prisons, faith-based organizations have adapted and innovated during the pandemic to keep up their prison ministries and services.

Religious tourism has been significantly affected by the spread of the coronavirus, with 63.8% of travelers reducing their travel plans as a result. As COVID-19 evolved to become a global pandemic, governments across the globe closed sacred sites and temporarily banned religious travel.

Once Hurricane Laura passes and assessments are in, faith-based disaster-relief groups will be among the first to respond. Already, teams have been watching the storm and making plans all week.

Two significant, global religious bodies on Thursday (Aug. 27) called on Christians to band together to fight “sins” laid bare or aggravated by the pandemic, including racism and economic injustice.

Throughout Latin America, evangelical churches have flouted public health guidelines by holding in-person services, or have personally ministered to church members in homes and other settings. In at least two countries, evangelical pastors have died in alarming numbers during the pandemic.

After the massive explosion on Aug. 4 in Beirut, Lebanon, some mental health professionals have offered to help those grappling with the shock and trauma of a blast that devastated a people wearied by severe economic turmoil and the coronavirus pandemic and related hardship.

While millions of Americans watch the Republican National Convention, a smaller group of Republicans, former Republicans, and independents is tuning in to a counter-convention — one they hope might put the United States on what they consider a more principled path. 

Over the years, throngs of protesters — many of them people of faith — have assembled to remember the March on Washington. This year, the gatherings will both resemble and differ from the first one on Aug. 28, 1963.