News

(RNS) — Della Reese, a onetime gospel singer and groundbreaking African-American talk show host later known for her lead role in the TV series “Touched by an Angel,” has died at age 86.

Religious bias was behind 21 percent of single-bias crimes in the U.S. in 2016, according to the FBI's 2016 Hate Crime Statistics released on Nov. 13.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Celebrating Mass with poor people in the splendor of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Francis on Sunday denounced those who dismiss poverty as "not my business" and defined indifference to the needy as a "great sin."

(RNS) — In 2015, Montreal-based artist Guy Laramée placed a large-format Bible from the 19th century upright with the spine open. Then, using a power grinder, he carved a landscape into the pages and painted along the curvatures, evoking the space of a cave whittled into a sheer mountainside.

ST LOUIS, MO.—The Missouri Baptist University Board of Trustees unanimously appointed Dr. Keith L. Ross as the University’s seventh president on Thursday (Nov. 11).

Minority groups currently make up more than three-quarters of the world's stateless population, according to a new United Nations report released on Nov. 3.

One of his most controversial statements of support for Roy Moore against recent allegations came from Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler, who declared, “There’s nothing immoral or illegal here… Maybe just a little unusual.”

Zeigler went on: “Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

Early Christians believed that Mary and Joseph did not have sex, but there was much more that was worth learning from that relationship.

AMES, Iowa (BP) -- The 2017 Baptist Convention of Iowa annual meeting was held in conjunction with a two-day "For the Church" micro conference in partnership with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

NASHVILLE (BP) -- The death toll continues to rise after the deadliest earthquake of 2017 shook the Iran-Iraq border late Sunday (Nov. 12).

More than 450 people have been killed and 7,000 injured in the 7.3-magnitude quake, with major aftershocks continuing to shake the region, extending into Turkey, Kuwait, Pakistan and Lebanon, according to CNN.

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (AP) — Hundreds of mourners crowded into the tiny town of Sutherland Springs for the first Sunday service since a gunman stormed the First Baptist Church a week earlier, killing more than two dozen people in the worst mass shooting in Texas history.