obituary

“Jimmy Carter’s importance to faith and public life was reintroducing into the public square the principles that animated nineteenth-century evangelicals: concern for the poor, racial equality, peacemaking, human rights and equality for women,” Randall Balmer, professor of religion at Dartmouth told Sojourners. “He did so as an avowed and unapologetic Baptist, which means that he respected the First Amendment and the separation of church and state.”

The Maryland Democrat was first elected to office in 1996.

“In a town where powerful people are constantly trying to increase their name recognition and their brand, Doug Coe was the opposite of that,” said Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center. “He was a man who liked to work behind the scenes, who did not call attention to himself, who was a sort of a pastor to people in power.”

Tim LaHaye, the evangelical leader known for his conservative politics as well as the best-selling Left Behind series, has died at age 90, his ministry announced.

LaHaye died July 25 at a hospital in the San Diego area after recently suffering a stroke, his ministry said.

When boxing star Cassius Clay declared himself a member of the controversial Nation of Islam back in 1964 and demanded to be called by his new name, Muhammad Ali, he shocked the world of sports and rattled a nation already struggling with social unrest over civil rights and the Vietnam War.

But Ali’s conversion also launched a pilgrimage of faith that would take him from the fringes of Islam through its orthodox heart, and from a virtual pariah to a global ambassador for faith — his own and others — as the key to peace.

While Prince's musical and theatrical talent is widley regarded, many may not know Prince was a deeply spiritual and religious man. Here are things to know about his faith life:

1. Prince grew up Seventh-day Adventist.

Prince, who was born Prince Rogers Nelson in 1958 in Minneapolis, used to be Seventh-day Adventist. 

Antonin Scalia, leading figure of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, has died at age 79. He died, apparently of natural causes, while on vacation in Texas.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a quiet nun with a keen wit who led a very public life as a journalist and a longtime spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, died on April 28 after a tough battle with cancer.

She was 67 and passed away in a hospice in Albany next to the regional convent of the religious order she entered as a 17-year-old novice in 1964.

Walsh had moved to her native Albany from Washington last September after it was discovered that the cancer that had been in remission since 2010 had returned.

She was able to receive better care there and live out her days with other members of the Sisters of Mercy. She was transferred to the hospice on April 23 as her condition deteriorated.

“Sister Mary Ann,” as she was known to the many journalists she sparred and joked with and, with regularity, befriended, worked at the communications office of the American hierarchy for 20 years, retiring in the summer of 2014 just before she fell ill again.

She became director of media relations for the USCCB — the first woman to hold that position — after coordinating media for World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, which featured an enormously successful visit by then-Pope John Paul II.

Borg, a prominent liberal theologian and Bible scholar who for a generation helped shaped the intense debates about the historical Jesus and the veracity and meaning of the New Testament, died on Jan. 21. He was 72 and had been suffering from a prolonged illness, friends said.

Borg emerged as a major voice in biblical studies in the 1980s just as academics and theologians were bringing new energy to the so-called “quest for the historical Jesus,” the centuries-old effort to disentangle fact from myth in the Gospels.

Alongside scholars such as John Domonic Crossan, Borg was a leader in the Jesus Seminar, which brought a skeptical eye to the Scriptures and in particular to supernatural claims about Jesus’ miracles and his resurrection from the dead.

Like many of those critical scholars, Borg tended to view Jesus as a Jewish prophet and teacher, like many figures who emerged from the religious ferment of first-century Judaism.