The United Methodist Church General Conference convenes once every four years to make policy decisions and set the direction for the denomination.
Beginning May 10, 864 delegates, half of them clergy, will converge on the Oregon Convention Center in Portland for 10 days for the General Conference. More than 40 percent of those delegates will come from outside the U.S.
Londoners have elected the son of a Pakistani-born London bus driver as their mayor, making him the first Muslim to govern this city of 8.5 million residents. Sadiq Khan, a 45-year-old Labour Party member, trounced his opponent, the Conservative Party’s Zac Goldsmith, 41, a well-known writer on ecological affairs and son of one of Britain’s wealthiest Jewish businessmen.
A Gordon College philosophy professor is suing her employer for allegedly breaching her free speech rights and retaliating after she publicly criticized the Christian school for its policy of not hiring sexually active gays and lesbians.
A religious order covered up the sexual crimes of an Irish priest who abused more than 100 children, some as young as 6, according to a new report.
The failures of the Salvatorian order to act on the crimes of a priest named “Father A” were outlined in a report released May 4 by Ireland’s National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.
A new study from Barna paints a bleak picture of racial tension in the United States.
India is rejecting a U.S. panel’s charges that the religious freedom of minorities in the world’s largest democracy is being violated with tacit support from elements in the ruling party.
By contrast, leaders of the country’s Christian and Muslim minorities welcomed the findings of the report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, released on May 2 in Washington.
At Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Capitol, speakers warned of anti-Semitism as a problem of the millennia, and hate speech as a challenge that threatens present-day America.
Eight elderly survivors of the Holocaust — which took the lives of 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million Jewish children — lit six candles at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall on May 5 as a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum official told of the death camps they survived, and of those who had risked their lives to save them.
Pope Francis is calling on Catholics to play a part in the “rebirth” of a united Europe that opens its doors to refugees.
The Argentine pontiff, who has been critical of European countries’ handling of the migrant crisis, made the comments as he picked up the prestigious Charlemagne Prize. The award, named after the founder of the medieval Holy Roman Empire, is given for work done in the service of European integration.
I looked at the list of opportunities. New neighbor volunteers. Resettlement service volunteers. Adult literacy training. My introverted heart fluttered inside of me, wanting to help, and yet so aware of its own limitations.
In the end, I chose to work in the Refugee donation center. It felt like a cop-out, a suburban, guilt-assuaging kind of “volunteering” that had nothing to do with social justice or Kingdom work or the irresistible revolution.
And yet, perhaps, that’s not true. Perhaps the pursuit of justice is not something that requires me to sacrifice my introverted soul – but rather to lean into it.
1. Paid Leave Is Good for Babies, Women, Families, Businesses, and America. Here’s Why.
This Mother’s Day, how about skipping the flowers and giving new parents something they really need?
Russell Moore offers an important message in his New York Times op-ed: “If Jesus is alive — and I believe that he is — he will keep his promise and build his church. But he never promises to do that solely with white, suburban institutional evangelicalism. The question is whether evangelicals will be on the right side of Jesus.”
3. Toddlers Have Shot More People in the U.S. Than Muslim Terrorists Have This Year
Go home, America, you’re drunk. [For lots of reasons, if we’re being honest, but COME ON.]