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After a fire destroyed Antioch Baptist Church in Ralls County, Mo., on Dec. 20, pastor Jack Emmite promised the congregation one thing: they would have a place to worship on Christmas Sunday. That place was Smith Funeral Home, which invited Antioch to hold services in their chapel.

(RNS) As confusion continued over President Donald Trump’s ban on refugees and travelers from seven Muslim countries, Catholic leaders from Iraq are warning that the policy change will hurt thousands of Iraqi Christians languishing in Middle East refugee camps.

“They would like to continue their lives in Europe, Canada, Australia or America,” Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil told a news conference in Rome on Monday (Jan. 30).

After President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and stopping visa-holders from seven nations, many Baptist leaders quickly criticized the action. Trump’s Jan. 27 order halted the admission of all refugees for 120 days, barred all Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocked all individuals from seven predominately Muslim nations from entering for 90 days. Although Trump claimed national security concerns to justify the order, refugees have been implicated in zero terrorist attacks in the U.S. since the Refugee Act of 1980 and the visa ban does not include any of the nations of the 9/11 hijackers.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on church-state issues that originated in Missouri. To learn more about the case, Word&Way editor Brian Kaylor interviewed Holly Hollman, general counsel and associate executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

In the book “Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms,” Old Testament scholar Glenn Pemberton notes the absence of laments in modern hymnals when compared to the biblical book of Psalms. Laments pepper the Psalms, accounting for 40 percent of the collection.

One of the most significant U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2017 could come in a case from Columbia, Mo., concerning the relationship between church and state.

Many experts scoff at the calculations used to pick “Blue Monday,” which would be January 16th this year. However, the seasonal concepts behind the idea — like colder weather, post-holiday letdown and less daylight — can often lead to people feeling down this time of year.

 Here are the ten most read pieces on the Word&Way website in 2016. Thanks for stopping by and we hope to see you around a lot in 2017!

Members of Antioch Baptist Church in Ralls County, Mo., lost their meeting place during the afternoon Dec. 20 when flames engulfed the facility.

The Missouri Baptist Convention filed motions on Dec. 2 asking the Circuit Court of Cole County to issue a ruling for the MBC in lawsuits against The Baptist Home and Missouri Baptist University.