President Obama

The Internal Revenue Service has reclassified one of the most famous Christian organizations, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

At the request of the Graham organization, the IRS changed its tax status from a nonprofit to an “association of churches,” The NonProfit Times reported on Sept. 26. The change was made last November.

The change means the 66-year-old Christian organization no longer has to file what the IRS calls Form 990, a public statement of its financial information, including salaries for top officials. It will continue to publish an annual financial report, available to the public on its website.

The Democratic National Convention kicked off Monday, and Hillary Clinton made history by officially being named the Democratic nominee for president. Sojourners Web and Multimedia Associate JP Keenan takes us behind the scenes and through the crowds as delegates across the country witness history.

President Obama’s comments come just as the world saw Sterling and Castile, both black men, killed by police officers over the course of two days. Sterling was shot early on July 5 while pinned down by cops outside a convenience store, an incident captured on video. Castile was shot July 6 while sitting in his car, and video taken after the shooting shows him moaning in pain and covered in blood as a police officer brandishes a gun outside the window.

President Barack Obama called the deadly shooting at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub early Sunday morning "an act of terror and an act of hate" in remarks Sunday afternoon. Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told reporters that 50 were killed and 53 injured in the shooting at Pulse Orlando, a gay club near the city's downtown.

In the United States, women earn 79 cents for every dollar that a man makes, but for female clergy the gap is higher. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2015 women of the cloth made 76 cents for every dollar that male pastors, priests, and ministers made. A few pennies here, a few pennies there — it may not sound like a lot, but a 14-cent gap amounts to a $12,000 difference in annual earnings.

“Let’s say they listen to the cops and get in the car,” Anthony Anderson’s character Dre said Feb. 24 on black-ish, referring to his kids, if they were to be arrested.

“Look what happened to Freddie Gray.”

Our Founders knew that religious liberty is essential not only to protect religion, but because religion helps strengthen our nation. From our Revolution to the abolition of slavery, from women’s rights to civil rights, men and women of faith have often helped move our nation closer to our founding ideals. This progress is part of what makes us a beacon to the world.

EARLY THIS YEAR, I was invited to the White House for an important meeting. A young couple entered at the same time I did, carrying their baby—which struck me as unusual for a meeting with leaders at the White House.

They introduced themselves and their 15-month-old daughter. Then the couple told me this: “Her 6-year-old sister was shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.”

Then I understood. They were there for the same meeting I was—President Obama’s announcement of new executive actions on background checks and other gun enforcement and safety issues.

The East Room of the White House was full of the victims and family members of victims of mass shootings, which occurred 372 times in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870. (As defined by the Mass Shooting Tracker, a mass shooting is any in which four or more people are shot.)

Many families that had lost children or parents were there. Former member of Congress Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, were there. Many remember the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Ariz., in which a man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia shot 19 people, including Rep. Giffords, six of whom were killed, including a 9-year-old girl.

IT WAS THE PEOPLE and the faces that most moved me—and moved the president. Much was made the next day of his emotional response. When he said, “Our unalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness—those rights were stripped from college kids in Blacksburg and Santa Barbara, and from high-schoolers in Columbine, and from first-graders in Newtown,” he had to wipe tears away from his eyes.

“Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” Obama said. “And by the way, it happens on the streets of Chicago every day.”

I have seldom seen President Obama so emotional. I know the hardest day of his presidency was when he had to go to Newtown to meet and talk to the families of the 26 students and teachers who had lost their lives to another mass shooter. And it is clear to me that Obama was responding as a dad who has two girls of his own.

In his last State of the Union address, President Obama made an impassioned case against religious bigotry and cast other key issues in moral terms.

He rejected “any politics that targets people because of race or religion.”

“This is not a matter of political correctness,” he said. “This is a matter of understanding just what it is that makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.”