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On Dec. 14, siblings Bekah, Caleb, and Joshua Liechty, collectively known as Girl Named Tom, became the first group to win NBC’s The Voice after 20 seasons of solo winners. In a blind audition, the siblings delighted the four celebrity coaches with their tight harmonies, but each of the three got a chance to shine throughout their performances. With the enthusiastic support of their coach, Kelly Clarkson, the trio presented new arrangements of beloved classic rock, country, and folk hits.
The Liechty siblings grew up attending Zion Mennonite Church in Archbold, Ohio, and brothers Caleb and Joshua are graduates of Goshen College, a Mennonite college. While Bekah and Joshua, who spoke with Sojourners, consider their faith identity to be “in exploration,” they continue to be rooted in Mennonite community.
A model wears a T-shirt available for purchase at Preemptive Love Coalition’s website. Image via preemptivelove.shop
Former employees at Preemptive Love Coalition, an international relief organization, have alleged that its leaders created an abusive environment. On Dec. 15, Ben Irwin, the organization’s former director of communications and public relations, wrote on Twitter and in subsequent posts to Medium, that Preemptive Love’s founders, Jeremy and Jessica Courtney, “abused, gaslit, threatened, and mistreated dozens of staff over the years.”
Rev. William Barber II, after being denied entry into the Hart Senate Office Building, leads a chant, saying, “We’re gonna be back!” in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 14, 2021. Miguel Petrosky/Sojourners.
Revs. William Barber II and Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign, held a press conference and protest in the front of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 14 to pressure Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to meet with and hear the concerns and demands from the West Virginian delegates and other members of the campaign.
The pair read from a letter citing the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46, calling on Manchin to pledge full support for the Build Back Better plan and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
A priest’s collar. Image via Godong/Alamy.
Last September, the Catholic Labor Network, a nonprofit dedicated to workers’ rights, trained six priests to perform “card checks” for workers looking to unionize. Since then, the priests have performed card checks for six local union efforts through UNITE HERE, a labor union that represents over 300,000 U.S. and Canadian workers in the hotel, food service, transportation, and other industries.
Blake Fox, 19, of Washington, listens to a live broadcast of the Supreme Court arguments in Carson v. Makin, a challenge to a Maine tuition assistance program that bars taxpayer money from being used to pay for religious instruction, in Washington, D.C., Dec. 8, 2021. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Conservative Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared ready to further expand public funding of religiously based entities, indicating sympathy toward a challenge by two Christian families to a Maine tuition assistance program that excludes private schools that promote religious beliefs.
The Catholic University of America in Washingtong, D.C. on July 11 2019. Photo: Mehdi Kasumov / Shutterstock.com
In the wake of controversy surrounding an icon at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus Law School, the school’s undergraduate student government passed a resolution Monday requesting university officials replace the painting with art that is “non-political and uncontroversial.”
Palestinian youth perform the traditional dance of Dabkeh near the Israeli barrier and a checkpoint that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem, in Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Nov. 25, 2021. REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma
A giant Christmas tree takes pride of place in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, between the Church of the Nativity and a mosque adorned with lights cascading down its walls.
But there is more to the Palestinian city than its biblical significance, say organisers of the Bethlehem Cultural Festival, which promotes other aspects of the place revered as the traditional birthplace of Jesus.
The Texas Capitol building. Photo by Michael Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune
The U.S. Department of Justice is throwing its weight into the legal fight over Texas’ newly drawn maps for Congress and the state House.
Pope Francis prepares to depart from the Athens International Airport, in Athens, Greece, December 6, 2021. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis
Pope Francis said on Monday he was willing to go to Moscow to meet Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill “brother to brother” in what would be the first trip by a pope to Russia.
“Mama” is displayed at The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, near St. Louis. Photo courtesy of Rev. Mike Angell.
The icon is on display in two locations — the Catholic University of America’s Columbus Law School in Washington, D.C., and at The Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion near St. Louis. In November, The Daily Signal, a conservative news outlet, published a story about the CUA edition of the painting. Since then Kelly Latimore has been receiving death threats.
Rev. Paul Obayi sits amid several artifacts that he recovered from various shrines and stored in his museum in Nsukka, Enugu Nigeria. Sept. 29, 2021. REUTERS/Temilade Adelaja
A Roman Catholic priest is collecting and saving hundreds of traditional pre-Christian religious artifacts in southeast Nigeria that new converts to Christianity had planned to burn.
The collection includes carvings of pagan deities and masks, some of them more than a century old and considered central to the pre-Christian religion of the Igbo people, who traditionally believed them to be sacred and to have supernatural powers.
Pope Francis looks on as he holds the weekly general audience at the Paul VI Audience Hall, at the Vatican, Nov. 24, 2021. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Pope Francis said on Monday that migrants were being exploited as “pawns” on a political chessboard in an apparent reference to the crisis at the Belarus border.
Thousands of migrants are stuck on the European Union’s eastern frontier in what the EU says is a crisis Minsk (Belarus’ capital city) engineered by distributing Belarusian visas in the Middle East, flying them in and letting them go to the border.
A woman reacts outside the Glynn County Courthouse after the jury reached a guilty verdict in the trial of William "Roddie" Bryan, Travis McMichael, and Gregory McMichael, charged with the February 2020 murder of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, in Brunswick, Ga., November 24, 2021. REUTERS/Marco Bello
A jury in Brunswick, Ga., found all three defendants guilty of murder Wednesday for chasing and killing Ahmaud Arbery while he was out on a run in February 2020. Faith leaders across the country showed gratitude for the verdict while noting the grief for Arbery’s family and the work of justice still to be done.
White nationalists participate in a torch-lit march on the grounds of the University of Virginia ahead of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Va., on August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
A federal jury in Charlottesville, Va., looking into the “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in 2017 found defendants liable in four out of six counts and awarded $25 million in damages, according to media reports on Tuesday.
The jury awarded the money to nine people who suffered injuries, the New York Times and the Associated Press reported.
Judge Bruce Schroeder listens during Kyle Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Nov. 19, 2021. Sean Krajacic/Pool via Reuters.
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty of homicide, attempted homicide, and reckless endangerment by a Wisconsin jury on Nov. 19, following a trial that lasted nearly two weeks.
Rittenhouse, then 17, shot and killed two people and injured a third in Kenosha, Wis., during August 2020 protests against police brutality and racism after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake in the back in the presence of three of his children, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
The defense team argued that Rittenhouse, now 18, traveled to the protests to provide medical aid and defend a used-car dealership from property damage; they argued that Rittenhouse only fired his weapon in self-defense.
“Kyle was a 17-year-old kid out there trying to help this community,” Mike Richards, Rittenhouse’s defense attorney, said in his closing statements.
The prosecuting attorney, Thomas Binger, told the jury, “This is a case in which a 17-year-old teenager killed two unarmed men and severely wounded a third person with an AR-15,” saying that Rittenhouse was not defending his home or family, and that Rittenhouse had stayed out past Kenosha’s citywide curfew.
Rittenhouse’s case elevated national conversations over self-defense, vigilantism, and gun access.
Julius Jones supporters and their signs on the second floor rotunda at the Oklahoma Capitol Wednesday, November 17, 2021. Doug Hoke/The Oklahoman via Reuters.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt accepted a recommendation from the state’s parole board on Thursday to grant Julius Jones clemency, sparing the life of the man who was set to be executed later that day. Jones was convicted of killing Paul Howell during a 1999 carjacking, but Jones maintained his innocence during the nearly two decades he spent on death row.
“After prayerful consideration and reviewing materials presented by all sides of this case, I have determined to commute Julius Jones’ sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” said Stitt in a statement issued on Thursday around noon in Oklahoma.
An advisory group to U.S. bishops urged the Catholic leaders on Tuesday to avoid making Communion “a tool for division” as debate resurfaces in Catholic circles over whether President Joe Biden’s support for abortion rights should disqualify him from receiving the sacrament.
Gathered in a Baltimore hotel ballroom, the bishops’ conference is scheduled to discuss a draft of a document clarifying the meaning of Holy Communion, a sacrament central to the faith.
The bishops have been divided over how explicitly the document should define the eligibility of prominent Catholics like Biden to receive Communion due to political stances that contradict church teaching.
A protester holds a sign with a quote from Pope Paul VI. Maria Oswalt via Unsplash.
Last week, Archbishop José H. Gomez assailed “new social justice movements” as “dangerous substitutes for religion.”
Gomez, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke to the Congress of Catholics and Public Life, an international conference held in Madrid, but his comments spread beyond the direct audience. His remarks focused on “the new social movements and ideologies” that he said were “seeded and prepared for many years in our universities and cultural institutions;” movements that were “unleashed” on society after George Floyd was killed in May 2020.
“In denying God, these new movements have lost the truth about the human person,” he said. “This explains their extremism, and their harsh, uncompromising, and unforgiving approach to politics.”
While the archbishop acknowledged that “racial and economic inequality are still deeply embedded in our society,” the comments seemed, to many, to be an effort to delegitimize social justice efforts within the church despite past and present commitments to social justice from Catholic leaders.
Sojourners asked Catholic leaders and thinkers across the United States why social justice is important to their faith. Here’s what they had to say.
In an increasingly polarized Congress, protections for pregnant workers via the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act may be an avenue for bipartisanship between conservative and progressive lawmakers and activists — especially for Christians.
“That’s the sort of thing that catches the attention of both those who are operating in worker justice, for women in particular … but also those who are concerned with the unborn,” said Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the Catholic Labor Network. “This [bill] is pro-worker, pro-family, and pro-life, and all of those are concerns for Catholics.”
Storm clouds roll in over the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., September 1, 2021. REUTERS/Tom Brenner.
Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared divided over a bid by a man sentenced to death to have his pastor lay hands on him during his execution in Texas in a case testing how far states must go to accommodate religious requests by condemned inmates.
The justices heard more than 90 minutes of oral arguments in John Henry Ramirez’s appeal after Texas officials refused his request to let his Christian pastor touch him and audibly pray as he dies from the lethal injection and lower courts refused to issue a stay of execution.
The court, which has wrestled in recent years over the religious rights of death row inmates, has a 6-3 conservative majority. Some of the conservative justices raised questions about the sincerity of Ramirez’s religious request and how siding with him might affect future cases. The court’s liberal justices appeared to sympathize with Ramirez, who was not contesting his guilt in the appeal.