Religion News Service

After a crackdown on unapproved churches, Christian leaders say the government's move encroaches on religious freedom and applies regulations unequally.

The shroud remains an object of faith, intrigue and controversy that reappears periodically in the public sphere, as it has in recent weeks. As a scholar of early Christianity, I have long been interested in why people are motivated to create objects like the shroud and also why people are drawn to revere them as authentic.

The recent Gospel seemed to reflect what is going on in the Catholic Church and in other U.S. Christian churches. Many people no longer come to church or identify as Christian — especially young people, and more especially women.

In the U.S., two-thirds of respondents say that it is important to have a leader at the national level who stands up for people with religious beliefs. Less than half of respondents believe that it is essential for their leader to have strong religious beliefs or have religious beliefs that are the same as their own.

A familiar face among Washington’s faith-based activists, Butler said she brings ‘a broad set of relationships that I think can help, very quickly, pull a broad coalition together’ in a foreshortened Harris campaign.

Phyllis Zagano writes: The Catholic Church is in a bad way when the Democratic Party in the United States brings more hope and joy to people — especially to women — than Pope Francis.

NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Tracy Dyson are both members of Houston-area Providence Baptist Church. They are also both astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Here's how the church and their congregants continue to worship, even from outer space.

"In thinking about the laws recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the freedom of those who pray, because those who truly pray always pray for all," Francis said after his Aug. 25 Angelus. The pope stated that "a person does not commit evil by praying" and urged Ukrainian leaders to "let those who want to pray be allowed to pray in what they consider their Church."

"Limiting the diaconate and priesthood to men is painful for many women in the church," Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese writes, "but if we cannot ordain women as deacons, there is no reason we have to ordain men." 
 

Italian priest Padre Pio was one of the most prayed-to saints in recent times. As Pio's generation ages, the church is turning to Italian teen Carlo Acutis, set to be canonized, to appeal to a new demographic.

Almost half of US Orthodox churches remained open during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to only 12% of all religious congregations.

Activists who have been protesting at the Democratic National Convention over the war in Gaza took time out to mourn and draw strength from their varying faiths.

"Many revered works of art come from spiritually flawed creators. From my perspective, condemning art, rather than debating how the Catholic Church may have allowed someone accused of abuse to avoid censure for so long, is a diversion at best," writes Virginia Raguin, a Distinguished Professor of Humanities Emerita at College of the Holy Cross.

US migrants are much more likely to have a religious identity than the American-born population.

There are two extremes when dealing with the role of religion in politics. One argues that God's views should be enforced by the state. The other argues that any law motivated by religion should be unconstitutional.

The rise in popularity of music from churches like Elevation, Hillsong and Bethel has helped launch a new kind of ecumenical movement.

Earlier this week, after months of protest by Philly Bike Action, a local association of cyclists, Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church decided to give up a city permit that allowed congregants to park on the street outside the building. Those temporary parking spots, which were valid on Sunday mornings, were located in what is otherwise a bike lane.

One of the meeting's top priorities was to explain how faith communities can better use federal funds for clean energy initiatives. 

Pope Francis is waiting for ‘the appropriate time’ to visit Ukraine, according to that country’s ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash.

By strategically using both radical forms of civil disobedience and more mainstream public actions, such as lobbying and state-sanctioned demonstrations, activists can grab the public’s attention while making less aggressive tactics seem much more acceptable.