Texas

Security measures adopted by Congregation Beth Israel in Houston have included installing surveillance cameras outside its premises. Credit: Briana Vargas for The Texas Tribune

On Jan. 15, a gunman held four hostages in a standoff that lasted around 11 hours at Colleyville’s Congregation Beth Israel, a synagogue northeast of Fort Worth not affiliated with Kutner’s. The FBI said Friday it is considering the incident a terrorist act and hate crime.

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 Bidens 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.

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 Ramirezs 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 Ramirezs religious request and how siding with him might affect future cases. The courts liberal justices appeared to sympathize with Ramirez, who was not contesting his guilt in the appeal.

A doctor walks past a poster showing images of the development of a human fetus at a fertility clinic in Rome on June 6, 2005. REUTERS/Alessia Pierdomenico

As a pastor I don’t ask, in this holy space of in between, when death is drawing near, theological questions about personhood or ensoulment. Neither do medical definitions of what marks life’s margins — heartbeats, breath, or brain function — occupy my concern. These are the gray edges of life.

Sandi Villarreal 9-08-2021

 The U.S flag and the Texas flag fly over the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

When the Supreme Court last week refused to block a new Texas law — which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” someone getting an abortion after six weeks — faith groups like Texas Right to Life and the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops applauded.

But Rev. Erika Forbes, a spiritual adviser and one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit to block S.B. 8, called the law “a direct assault” on the religious liberty of clergy.

Tammy Stallcup 8-16-2021

Students return to their first day of school at Napier Elementary School by walking down the red carpet in Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. Stephanie Amador / The Tennessean via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Editor’s note: On Sunday, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily blocked mask mandates in two of the state’s biggest counties, upholding Gov. Gregg Abbott’s executive order prohibiting them. As school begins across the country, some districts in Texas, Florida, and elsewhere are defying mask mandate bans, in some cases risking school funding. Teachers and administrators are preparing for a year of unknowns as the Delta variant rages among the unvaccinated.

Tammy Stallcup has been teaching junior high and middle school choir for 34 years in Texas public schools, primarily in Odessa. Now teaching near Fort Worth, Texas, she begins her 35th year this fall, and wrote this prayer for teachers.

Balloons are released during a funeral service for some victims of the Sutherland Springs Baptist church shooting, in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Nov. 15, 2017. REUTERS/Darren Abate

A federal judge found the U.S. government 60 percent responsible for a 2017 mass shooting that killed 26 people at a rural Texas church, where a former Air Force serviceman used firearms he should not have been allowed to purchase.

U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez ruled on Tuesday that the Air Force did not use reasonable care when it failed to record Devin Patrick Kelley's plea to domestic violence charges in a database used for background checks on firearms purchases.

He said the government bears "significant responsibility" for harm to victims of the Nov. 5, 2017 massacre at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX.

A map is cut out to look like a pac man with chomping, sharp teeth.

Illustration by Matt Chase

WHEN I WAS 8 years old, in June 1998, three white supremacists lynched James Byrd Jr., a Black man in Jasper, Texas. After offering him a ride in their truck, they beat him, desecrated him, chained him to their vehicle, dragged him to his dismemberment and eventual death, and deposited parts of his body in front of a Black church to be found on Sunday morning. I remember hearing about the murder on the evening news and having a newly personal sense of the geography of racial terror. As a child living in California, I could not locate Jasper on a map, but its name, and Byrd’s, were forever fixed in my mind.

Earlier this year, I realized that my great-grandmother was around that same age when, in May 1918, white supremacists lynched Mary Turner and a dozen other Black people, including the baby they cut out of Turner’s abdomen. I wonder if my great-grandmother, as a child, heard the news, and how it affected her. In her case, the lynchings happened not three states but three hours from where she lived in Georgia. Unlike in Byrd’s case, there were no charges, arrests, trials, or convictions of the known and suspected murderers behind these lynchings. I wonder if and how the killings—and the impunity allowing the lynchers freedom of movement—shaped her sense of the landscape.

In Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, geographer Katherine McKittrick writes that “Black matters are spatial matters.” McKittrick identifies the social production of space—how landscape is not a fixed background but is defined by relationships. Fugitivity, precarity, and possibilities of life and death are mapped realities that follow social relationships.

Marleny Almendarez, 38, with her niece Madelyne Hernandez, 3, and two boys, Aaron Hall, 11, and Matthew Hall, 14, outside their home in Dallas on Feb. 18, 2021. The family spent two nights at a mobile warming station to avoid the cold temperatures. Photo: Ben Torres for The Texas Tribune

Neighborhoods across the state — some lined with million dollar homes, others by more modest dwellings — went cold and dark for days as Texas struggled to keep the power on during a dangerous winter storm. But while the catastrophe wrought by unprecedented weather was shared by millions left shivering in their own homes, the suffering was not equally spread.

the Web Editors 11-02-2020

Pearl Wright and her granddaughter, Kayin Coward, 11, chant "count every vote" outside the federal courthouse in Houston, Nov. 2, 2020. REUTERS/Julio Cesar-Chavez

"It shouldn't be hard to vote in America in 2020, even with a pandemic."

Sam Cabral 3-03-2020

A Vote sign directs voters to an early polling station for the March 3 Super Tuesday primary in Santa Ana, Calif., Feb. 24, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By the end of Super Tuesday, nearly half of immigrants eligible to vote in the U.S. will have made their voices heard in the Democratic presidential primary.

Gov. Greg Abbott briefs reporters during a press conference on a Domestic Terrorism Task Force meeting held at the Capitol on Jan. 7.  Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

Gov. Greg Abbott informed the U.S. State Department that Texas will not participate in the refugee resettlement program this fiscal year. The decision comes after more than 40 governors, including several Republicans, have said they would opt in to the federal refugee resettlement program. Resettlement agencies needed written consent from states and local governments by Jan. 21. The deadline was imposed in a September executive order by the Trump Administration that requires written consent from states and local entities before they resettle refugees within their boundaries.

A gunman who opened fire in a Texas church, killing one person and leaving another in critical condition, died after parishioners at the Sunday morning service shot him in response, authorities said.

Patrick Murphy. Illustration by Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

Patrick Murphy's execution was again halted Thursday because Texas death row inmates' final access to spiritual advisors of their faith differs for Christians and Buddhists. Murphy, a 58-year-old Buddhist, is one of two surviving members of the infamous "Texas Seven," a group of escaped prisoners who committed multiple robberies and killed a police officer near Dallas in 2000 during more than a month on the run. Four others have already been executed, one killed himself when police caught up to them in Colorado, and one other remains on death row with Murphy.

Aaron E. Sanchez 3-04-2019

Photo by Ja'Corie Maxwell on Unsplash.

In that small town, we were told that we were in "God’s country." The physical and spiritual evidence that surrounded us made us all the more certain. If this was "God’s country," then this too was God’s community, God’s actions, God’s relationships. The community, its actions, its families, its relationships were sacred. Nearly every aspect of the community was transformed into some great action of the Kingdom. And we were reminded, almost as often, that The World was a threatening force trying to make its way in and it was our duty to keep it out.

Image via Katie Haugland Bowen/Creative Commons

San Antonio is about 63 percent Hispanic — the largest majority-Hispanic city in America — 30 percent white and 7 percent black. Helmke suggested the interfaith group ought to look more like the population itself.

the Web Editors 3-19-2018

Authorities maintain a cordon near the site of an incident reported as an explosion in southwest Austin, Texas, U.S. March 18, 2018. REUTERS/Tamir Kalifa

"With this tripwire, this changes things," Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Antonio division, said. "It's more sophisticated, it's not targeted to individuals ... a child could be walking down a sidewalk and hit something."

Image via Chris Mathews / RNS

The Disaster Recovery Reform Act, also known as H.R. 4460, was approved on Nov. 30 by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and will next move to the House floor for deliberation.

The bill received strong support from both sides of the aisle despite objections that using taxpayer funds to rebuild houses of worship would violate the separation of church and state. Proponents of the measure argue that religious groups, which are often at the forefront of disaster relief efforts, are being unfairly disadvantaged.

Jamie D. Aten 11-14-2017

Image via Rick Wilking/Reuters.

I’ve dedicated my career to helping churches prepare for disasters, including mass shootings. And I believe that responding to the Texas church mass shooting with an arms race does more to protect fear than it does to protect our churches. Here are three suggestions I want to offer the U.S. church now.


Brandy Jones prays in front of 26 crosses erected near the site of the shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland, Texas, U.S., November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
 

Our thoughts and prayers are fleeting breath.

If we just dream of what could be

And do not build community,

And do not seek to change our ways,

Our dreams of change are false displays.