Religion News Service

Scores of religious and civil rights organizations have asked U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request an evaluation by a U.N. expert of the scope of racism in the country.

In a shift that stands to impact religion and politics, survey data suggests that the percentage of Americans who don't affiliate with any religious tradition is roughly the same as those who identify as evangelical or Catholic.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended his department’s decision to drop the word “occupation” from its description of the Golan Heights and Palestinian territories.

A federal appeals court has ruled that the clergy housing allowance authorized by the Internal Revenue Service is constitutional.

A Dartmouth College professor who says he is a religious agnostic but whose work has focused on the links between science and the mysteries of creation is the winner of the 2019 Templeton Prize.

At a small tent on the edge of the U.N. campus, environmental activists from the world's faith traditions huddled on the sidelines of last week's March 11-15 meeting of some 5,000 environmental scientists, politicians and civil society.

The power granted us by new technologies doesn't give users the power to regulate themselves. Instead, the platforms' relative anonymity means that people say what they want, whenever they want, without repercussions.

Signs of the Times: Francis has successfully rebranded the Catholic Church, which had come to be regarded as a clerical institution that stressed rules and uniformity. If you wanted to be a good Catholic, you were given the catechism to memorize and told to follow the rules.

A new survey reveals that more U.S. Catholics are questioning whether they should remain in the church today than when news of the "Spotlight" child sex abuse scandal broke in the Boston Archdiocese in 2002.

A new report from the Public Religion Research Institute finds that strong majorities within all religious groups, including white evangelicals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, show sustained support for LGBT nondiscrimination policies.

The Catholic Church in Kenya has refuted claims that it has been condoning corruption and allowing corrupt politicians to donate what they have stolen from public coffers to the church.

While white evangelicals have garnered more attention than other faith groups over the past few decades, pollsters and political activists believe white Catholics and mainline Protestants could have an outsized impact in November 2020.

Anti-Semitic acts in France increased by 74 percent last year, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced last month, calling the spread of anti-Semitism a "poison" that "rots minds."

Fifty years after it held the world's first international conference examining the rise of atheism and secularism, the Vatican is joining forces with a British research initiative to host a conference on "Cultures of Unbelief."

"What are you giving up for Lent?" is a question Catholics direct at each other this time of year. "Giving up" usually applies to food, in keeping with the church’s ancient practice of fasting.

A special session of the United Methodist Church decided Feb. 26 to strengthen the denomination’s ban on the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ people.

A Southern Baptist working group urged a cautious approach in investigating churches linked to allegations of sex abuse but has agreed that three of 10 churches named by Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear in a report about sex abuse last week should be investigated.

On the last full day of the meeting in Rome on clergy sex abuse, a German cardinal and a Nigerian nun, each in his or her own way, explained that transparency was the only way for the Catholic Church to deal with the crisis. They spoke with bluntness unusual in meetings of bishops, practicing the transparency they preached.

While the Vatican's synod on clergy sexual abuse has grabbed headlines in much of the world, another meeting of bishops, slated for October 2019, is already making news in Brazil.

In a surprise, the plan recommended by the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops was rejected Feb. 25 by the denomination’s decision-making body.