reuters
President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on Tuesday at a jubilant celebration that featured singer Cyndi Lauper performing “True Colors” in front of thousands of supporters on the White House lawn.
President Joe Biden is establishing an inter-agency group to coordinate efforts to counter antisemitism, Islamophobia, and related forms of bias and discrimination, the White House said on Monday.
Ukraine’s top security officials have ordered punitive measures against seven senior clerics, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday, part of a crackdown on a branch of the Orthodox Church with longstanding ties to Moscow.

2022 Kennedy Center honorees including actor George Clooney, contemporary Christian and pop singer-songwriter Amy Grant, singer Gladys Knight, Cuban-born American composer, conductor and educator Tania Leon, U2 band members Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., Adam Clayton, pose for a group photo with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Kennedy Center board members during the reception for Kennedy Center honorees ahead of the official gala at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 3, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger
Brandi Carlile noted the U2 artists’ and Grant’s support for LGBTQ rights while representing their Christian faith to the world.

A protester waves an LGBTQ rights pride flag as activists gather outside the Supreme Court, where justices were set to hear arguments in a major case pitting LGBTQ rights against a claim that the constitutional right to free speech exempts artists from anti-discrimination laws in a dispute involving an evangelical Christian web designer who refuses to provide her services for same-sex marriages, in Washington, D.C., Dec. 5, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled sympathy on Monday toward an evangelical Christian web designer whose business refuses to provide services for same-sex marriages in a major case pitting LGBTQ rights against a claim that freedom of speech exempts artists from anti-discrimination laws
The Ukrainian government will draw up a law banning churches affiliated with Russia under moves described by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as necessary to prevent Moscow being able to “weaken Ukraine from within.”
The bill garnered the 60 votes required to limit debate before a final vote on its passage. It would serve as a legal backstop against any future Supreme Court action by requiring the federal government to recognize any marriage that was legal in the state it was performed.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear white supremacist Dylann Roof’s bid to overturn his conviction and death sentence for fatally shooting nine Black people in 2015 at a church in Charleston, S.C.
Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman didn’t recognize the man who banged on her door. Terrified, she called 911. She had reason to fear.
By the morning of Dec. 15, 2020, when she saw the stranger’s red sedan parked in her driveway, she had received hundreds of threats from supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Two weeks earlier, Trump’s campaign had falsely accused Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, of pulling fake ballots from suitcases at Atlanta's State Farm Arena to rig the 2020 election for Democrat Joe Biden.
Pope Francis was delighted when a young boy stormed onto the stage during his general audience on Wednesday, in which he addressed the topic of dialogue between young and old people.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, said on Friday that several of its entities were being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, after a report found the church had mishandled sex abuse claims and mistreated victims.
A judge sentenced Travis McMichael to life in prison on Aug. 8 for committing federal hate crimes in the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot while jogging through a mostly white Georgia neighborhood in a case that probed issues of racist violence and vigilantism in the United States.
Clergy members of five religions sued the state of Florida on Monday over a new law criminalizing most abortions in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy, saying the ban violates their religious freedom rights.
Pope Francis on Monday made good on a promise to apologize to Canada’s native people on their home land for the Church’s role in schools where Indigenous children were abused, branding forced cultural assimilation “evil” and a “disastrous error.”
The Vatican on Tuesday issued an overarching investments policy to ensure they are ethical, green, low-risk, and avoid weapons industries or health sectors involved in abortion, contraception, or embryonic stem cells.
Pope Francis said he wants to give women more top-level positions in the Holy See and disclosed that for the first time he would name women to a previously all-male Vatican committee that helps him select the world’s bishops.
Pope Francis said that while the Vatican’s secret and contested agreement with China on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops is not ideal, he hopes it can be renewed in October because the church takes the long view.
For years a vocal minority at Saint Nicholas’ parish in the middle-class Kyiv commuter town of Irpin resisted calls to split from their spiritual fathers in Moscow.
“That was an evil, racist, white supremacist,” Reverend Darius Pridgen said from the pulpit at True Bethel Baptist Church on Sunday. “He literally looked for a zip code that had the highest concentration of African Americans.”
Zen, a 90-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, was questioned for several hours on Wednesday at the Chai Wan Police Station close to his church residence, before being released on police bail.