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The idea formed on a day when all the news headlines were dire. Days later, The Associated Press started its daily series “One Good Thing” to reflect the unheralded sacrifices made to benefit others that normally wouldn’t make a story, but maybe always deserved one.

A federal judge signaled that he believes there's a good chance that Kansas is violating religious freedom and free speech rights with a coronavirus-inspired 10-person limit on in-person attendance at religious services or activities and he blocked its enforcement against two churches that sued over it.

On a somber Sunday 25 years ago, the late Rev. Billy Graham shook off the flu to try and explain how a loving God could have allowed the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to occur. But Graham — America’s pastor-in-chief — had no answer.

At 28, Amy Downs was an unhappily married college dropout. She'd lost her faith. She weighed 355 pounds. Surviving the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was the perfect opportunity for a fresh start. 

Across the country, black clergy say the coronavirus is touching — and sometimes taking — the faithful who until a month ago were accustomed to meeting weekly in their pews. Some are mourning losses in the highest echelons of their denomination. Others are counting the dead, sick and unemployed.

Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top ethicist, said he saw no problem with churches applying for government loans as part of the coronavirus relief legislation enacted last month.

Even before the global coronavirus pandemic, Baptists in the South American nation of Venezuela have faced years of economic struggles, lack of resources, political turmoil, and difficulty in travel. And as they’ve done during those other challenges, they’ve continued to minister amid the threat of coronavirus and the difficulties it has sparked.

On Tuesday (April 14), U.S. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would halt funding to the World Health Organization despite the global role of the WHO in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Trump’s move echoes political fights decades ago as the son of a Danish Baptist preacher transformed the health arm of the United Nations to adopt a social justice approach to health across the world.

A student at Liberty University has filed a class-action lawsuit against the school alleging that students were put at “severe physical risk” when the campus reopened in March despite the pandemic and accusing administrators of profiting from the health crisis by refusing to fully refund students.

The Justice Department took the rare step on Tuesday of weighing in on the side of an independent Baptist church in Mississippi where local officials had tried to stop Holy Week services broadcast to congregants sitting in their cars in the parking lot.