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After a Southwest Baptist University professor and a student joined a legal effort Friday to block the new governing documents for their school in Bolivar, Missouri, SBU’s attorney responded Tuesday by claiming the school’s legal documents are beyond such legal scrutiny because the school is religious.

A southeastern Missouri preacher went on leave from his church and is seeking professional counseling after giving a sermon that chastised married women who “let themselves go” and held up former first lady Melania Trump as the pinnacle of feminine beauty.

The famed Bible study teacher said she no longer feels at home in the denomination that once saved her life. Moore’s criticism of the 45th president’s abusive behavior toward women and her advocacy for sexual abuse victims turned her from a beloved icon to a pariah in the denomination she loved all her life.

Before a judge heard arguments Friday (March 5) involving an effort by a former trustee of Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, to block the school’s new governing documents, a current professor and a current student filed to also intervene.

The Supreme Court is reviving a lawsuit brought by a Georgia college student who sued school officials after being prevented from distributing Christian literature on campus. Lower courts said the case was moot, but the Supreme Court disagreed.

A sweeping bill that would extend federal civil rights protections to LGBTQ people is a top priority of President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress. Yet as the Equality Act heads to the Senate, its prospects seem bleak — to a large extent because of opposition from conservative religious leaders.

Pope Francis urged Iraq’s Christians on Sunday to forgive the injustices against them by Muslim extremists and to rebuild as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the Islamic State group’s horrific reign.

Standing in the Assyrian Catholic cathedral in Baghdad where 50 worshippers, clergy, and policemen were killed in a 2010 terrorist attack, Pope Francis on Friday made an appeal for “forgiveness, reconciliation, and rebirth” in the struggling Middle Eastern nation.

Southwest Baptist University is urging a circuit court judge to approve its new governing documents and reject an effort by a former trustee to intervene. A Baptist layman filed a petition on Feb. 22 with the Circuit Court of Polk County in an effort to stop the approval of the school’s new governing documents.

Pope Francis arrived in Iraq on Friday in a first-ever papal visit to the country that is expected to raise awareness about the challenges facing Iraqi Christians, who are a dwindling minority in the nation.