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The announcement follows a stunning report on hundreds of sexual abuse and misconduct cases in the Southern Baptist Church.

A Muslim man was executed in Alabama on Thursday, as originally scheduled, after the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the execution, denying his request for an imam's presence in the execution chamber.

Attorneys for Domineque Ray, 42, had argued that Alabama's execution policy favored Christian inmates because a chaplain is allowed in the room, often kneeling next to the death row prisoner, and praying with the inmate if requested.

He pointed out that this is not a new problem, confirming that the Catholic Church knew about the abuses against nuns even if the public did not.

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden on Friday, President Trump announced that a deal had been reached to temporarily end the partial government shutdown.

Americans’ global warming concerns, Roma’s Yalitza Aparacio, clergy abuse survivors, Catholic curricula and Native Americans, sex robots, and more!

1. I’ve Talked to With Teenage Boys About Sexual Assault for 20 Years. This Is What They Still Don’t Know

“They struggle in the absence of information.”

2. The Malign Incompetence of the British Ruling Class

With Brexit, the chumocrats who drew borders from India to Ireland are getting a taste of their own medicine.

While accepting a Golden Globe last night, actress Regina King made “a vow” to hire “50 percent women” on every project she produces in the next two years.

1. The Border Wall Fight at the Center of the Government Shutdown, Explained

Steel slats, concrete, walls and fences: here’s what Trump actually wants to build, and what Congress might be willing to pay for.

2. Fashioning a New Congress: What This Freshman Class Wears to Work Matters More Than Ever

“They are unafraid to wear their identities on their sleeves, helping to mark a striking shift in how politicians—and specifically, women in politics—have traditionally been expected to present.”

4. ‘This Is Not a Crisis. This Is a Long-Term Disaster’

This year saw many of the president’s immigration-related campaign threats come to fruition. That came to a head in the late spring and early summer of 2018 as the administration implemented a policy of separating children from their parents at the border as they arrived to claim asylum. But, as Sojourners notes here, this crisis point was just one of many ongoing eruptions at our Southern border.

5. A Shared Theology of Sanctuary

Amid such horrors in immigration policy, churches throughout the country stepped up in a resurgence of the 1980s-era Sanctuary Movement. In addition to accompanying immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement appointments, training for interaction with ICE agents, and other active support measures, many churches — and synagogues and other houses of worship — are opening their sanctuaries to house people at risk of deportation.