News

FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) -- Escalating health care costs, increased expenses for utilities and other higher education costs have prompted personnel cuts at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (RNS) — The funerals were yet to be held.

But one thing was already clear in this tiny Texas town of 600 a couple days after one of the worst mass shootings at an American church: First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs will be razed.

(RNS) “There is a hunger …”

That declaration, uttered by an old, crippled nun who has scrubbed away her life and her vocation in a convent’s basement laundry, sums up “The Ninth Hour,” the newest novel by National Book Award-winning author Alice McDermott.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia's top court has overturned a law that denied recognition and legal rights to followers of indigenous faiths in a surprise advance for religious freedom in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Important conversations are seldom easy to have. As a child transitions into adolescence, parents often dread “the talk.” Years later, roles shift and adult children are faced with starting another dreaded but critical discussion, one medical and legal professionals often call “the conversation.”

The Associated Press has compiled a list of fatal shootings occuring at U.S. houses of worship since 2012.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (BP) -- Sermons from Billy Graham's prolific international ministry will be broadcast on an ad hoc radio station 12 days surrounding the evangelist's 99th birthday (Nov. 7), the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) has announced.

SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas (AP) — A man dressed in black tactical-style gear and armed with an assault rifle opened fire inside a church in a small South Texas community on Sunday, killing 26 people and wounding about 20 in what the governor called the deadliest mass shooting in the state’s history. The dead ranged in age from 5 to 72 years old.

Efficient and effective integration of healthcare with other rehabilitative initiatives is essential to reducing recidivism, according a report from The Pew Charitable Trusts released on Oct. 18.

(RNS) — Three years ago the so-called Islamic State destroyed the mosque at the site of what many Muslims believe to be the tomb of Jonah, which for centuries drew Muslim and Christian pilgrims to Iraq's second-largest city.

Now that ISIS has been driven from Mosul, Muslim traditionalists say it is imperative to start reconstructing the Mosque of the Prophet Jonah, which had marked the site since the 12th century, along with the ruins of a seventh-century Christian church.