News

The Supreme Court of the United States is seen in Washington, D.C., Aug. 29, 2020. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by President Donald Trump's campaign to block North Carolina's extension of the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in the latest voting case ahead of Tuesday's election.

Curtis Yee 10-28-2020

Photo courtesy of Loose the Chains.

“Nine times out of 10, we’ll just be greeting people and passing out water and snacks,” said Billy Michael Honor, who directs Loose the Chains, the faith engagement initiative of The New Georgia Project “But in the event that something does happen, it’s good to have people there who know how to lead people in situations of conflict or crisis.”

Cassie M. Chew 10-28-2020

Elijah Moss, Rev. Otis Moss Jr., and Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III are pictured filming for Otis' Dream. Image courtesy Otis Moss III.

In an effort to call faith-based communities to action during the 2020 election season, his grandson Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, shares his family’s story in the 14-minute film, Otis’ Dream.

Lexi McMenamin 10-28-2020

Chris has attended the same local church for five years. When services went remote due to the coronavirus pandemic, Chris and his partner noticed paid staff of the church sharing misinformation about hydroxychloroquine on social media. Chris hoped that the church leadership, including the pastor, would push back.

Miguel Petrosky 10-28-2020

A supporter of President Donald Trump wears a QAnon shirt after participating in a caravan convoy circuit in Adairsville, Ga., Sept. 5, 2020. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

Why does QAnon resonate with these evangelicals? Part of the answer is their strong political alignment with the president, but it’s also true that evangelicals have long organized around the issue of human trafficking. And according to the major anti-human trafficking organizations in the U.S., that axis of devotion and suceptibility due to political alignment is creating a nightmare for their work.

Mitchell Atencio 10-27-2020

Images: Shutterstock / Design: Candace Sanders

Faith communities across the U.S. are looking to help further democracy by ensuring that 100 percent of the eligible voters in their congregations turn out for the 2020 election. 

Gina Ciliberto 10-27-2020

Rev. Greg Lewis, assistant pastor at Saint Gabriel’s Church of God in Christ in Milwaukee and president and founder of Souls to the Polls. Photo courtesy of Souls to the Polls

Souls to the Polls has a big vision: energizing 100,000 Milwaukee residents to vote. To get there, the nonpartisan organization educates, registers, and transports voters to polling sites in Wisconsin, a battleground state with rising COVID-19 case numbers.

Bekah McNeel 10-27-2020

Sister Jane Ann Slater.  Image via screenshot from Our Lady of the Lake University video

As political groups across the country make their last appeals to Christian voters, often pointing to a narrow set of issues, Sister Jane Ann Slater, chancellor of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, wants the people of faith to think more broadly — looking at the total of what a candidate or ballot proposition brings to the community.

A voter casts his ballot next to a bottle of hand sanitizer on the first day of in-person voting in Wisconsin, U.S., October 20, 2020. REUTERS/Bing Guan

Siding with Wisconsin's Republican-led legislature, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court refused on Monday to allow an extension ordered by a federal judge in the deadline for returning mail-in ballots in the state, dealing a setback to Democrats.

Voters walk past a Trump sign as they wait to cast ballots in Wake Forest, N.C. Sharkshock / Shutterstock.com

Voter intimidation — harassing voters, spreading misinformation, or asking them about their citizenship — is never allowed under federal law. And many states prohibit explicit electioneering, such as handing out pamphlets endorsing a specific candidate. But when it comes to apparel, state laws and enforcement vary.

Lexi McMenamin 10-22-2020

Activists and students holding signs march on the streets of downtown Toronto during a climate change rally on Black Friday,  Nov. 29, 2019. Photo Ramona Diaconescu / Shutterstock.com

Addressing climate change is a faith-based obligation to “protect God’s creation,” say 81 percent of American religious voters surveyed in a poll released this morning from Climate Nexus and Yale and George Mason’s respective programs on climate change communications.

Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I arrive for an inter-religious prayer service in Rome, Italy, on October 20, 2020. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

"Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family," says Francis in a new film.

Voters at a polling station in Marietta, Georgia, on October 13, 2020. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

The Council on American-Islamic Relations of Minnesota has accused a private security company of violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by hiring ex-U.S. military Special Operations soldiers to patrol polling places. The company, Atlas Aegis, posted a job listing in early October looking for former Special Operations personnel to “[staff] security positions in Minnesota during the November Election and beyond to protect election polls.”

10-20-2020

Workers install one of 123 Vote by Mail Drop Boxes outside a public library, amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Los Angeles, California, U.S., September 11, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

With four weeks to go before Election Day, more than 4 million Americans already have voted, more than 50 times the 75,000 at this time in 2016, according to the United States Elections Project, which compiles early voting data.

Philadelphia City Hall is pictured as early voting for the 2020 election begins at a satellite voting location at City Hall in Philadelphia, Sept. 29, 2020. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski/FILE PHOTO

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed an extension of the deadline for mail-in absentee ballots in Pennsylvania for the Nov. 3 election, declining a Republican request to block a lower court's ruling that gave voters more time.

Gina Ciliberto 10-19-2020

Ashley Nealy waits in line to cast her ballot in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 12, 2020. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berr

According to new survey data released by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 57 percent of Americans ranked fairness of presidential elections as the top critical issue in the country when asked to choose from 14 issues ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to racial inequality.

Jenna Barnett 10-16-2020

Praise-band superspreaders, the Supreme Court, and God as Gardener.

Jordan Green 10-14-2020

During a hearing of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, empty seats commemorate the five activists killed on Nov. 3, 1979. Photo: RobinAKirk / CC BY 2.0

On Oct. 6, 2020,  the Greensboro City Council adopted a resolution of apology acknowledging that the 1979 Greensboro police department “failed to warn the marchers of their extensive foreknowledge of the racist, violent attack planned against the marchers by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party with the assistance of a paid GPD informant.”

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett arrives to continue the second day of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via REUTERS

President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett said on Tuesday at her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing she is not hostile to the Obamacare law, as Democrats have suggested, and declined to specify whether she believes landmark rulings legalizing abortion and gay marriage were properly decided.

10-10-2020

Rev. David Beckmann, president emeritus of Bread for the World, offers a word on world hunger in advance of the 2020 election.