HARTWELL, Ga. — At night, the worn sign looks like a beacon in the darkness out front of the modest, red-brick Mt. Hebron Baptist Church.

The tired, it reads. The poor. And huddled masses. Welcome home.

In this small town in the rural northeast corner of Georgia, it’s the kind of message that assures Teri Massey she is loved for being who she is — a message 180 degrees from the one she heard in the Baptist church where she spent her teens into her 40s, where her grandfather, father and brother all held leadership positions.

A few months ago, Brytni McNeil, a 34-year-old mother of five daughters, was flipping through a copy of a George Washington Carver biography listed in a homeschooling curriculum when she spotted some glaring inaccuracies.

Most notably, enslavers were referred to as “caregivers” who benevolently bestowed their last names on Black people.

“Those subtle lies that creep into material is how a child begins to develop their entire world view. That child grows up thinking, we have no culture, we didn’t even have names,” said McNeil, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “You’ll...

Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange -- a Black Catholic nun who founded the United States’ first African American religious congregation in Baltimore in 1829 -- has advanced another step toward sainthood.

Under a decree signed by Pope Francis on Thursday, Lange was recognized for her heroic virtue, and advanced in the cause of her beatification from being considered a servant of God to a “venerable servant.” The Catholic Church must now approve a miracle that is attributed to her, so she can be beatified.

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Oklahoma approved what would be the nation’s first religious charter school on Monday, handing a victory to Christian conservatives but opening the door to a constitutional battle over whether taxpayer dollars can directly fund religious schools.

The online school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, is to be run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, with religious teachings embedded in the curriculum.

But as a charter school — a type of public school that is independently managed — it would be funded by taxpayer...

Thousands of United Methodist congregations have been voting on whether to stay or quit one of the nation’s largest denominations amid intractable debates over theology and the role of LGBTQ people. There are stark differences over recognizing same-sex marriage and ordaining LGBTQ clergy.

But the dividing line isn’t just running between congregations. It’s running right through the pews of individual churches, separating people who had long worshipped together.

Those who come up on the short end of a disaffiliation vote face the dilemma of whether...

A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window that depicts a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women in New Testament scenes has stirred up questions about race, Rhode Island’s role in the slave trade and the place of women in 19th century New England society.

The window installed at the long-closed St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Warren in 1878 is the oldest known public example of stained glass on which Christ is depicted as a person of color that one expert has seen.

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The Texas Legislature has passed a bill that would allow schools to employ chaplains in addition to school counselors, with Republicans overriding objections by Democrats to send the proposal to the governor’s desk.

The bill will permit school districts to hire chaplains who, unlike school counselors, are not required to be certified by the State Board for Educator Certification. A version of the bill already sailed through the state Senate last month...

About 100 active and retired United Methodist bishops from across the globe are meeting this week in Chicago for the first time in person since the COVID-19 pandemic and since the launch one year ago of the Global Methodist Church, a conservative denomination formed for United Methodist churches looking to disaffiliate over LGBTQ ordination and marriage.

Bishop Thomas Bickerton told the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops it was time to pivot, as the denomination has been losing churches since a 2019 special session of its General Conference approved a disaffiliation...

The Satanic Temple is celebrating 10 years of existence with its SatanCon convention in Boston this weekend, but it's not what you probably think.

The organization is as much a theater of American satire as it is a place for believers.

The temple, not be confused with the Satanic Church, does not formally deify Satan as the personification of evil, but rather it sees him as a literary character, a necessary rebel, while mocking traditional religion and calling out government’s embrace of institutions like the Catholic Church, co-founder Malcolm Jarry said.

A U.S. bishop who helped draft the synthesis document for the North American continental phase of the ongoing process for the Synod of Bishops said he saw "notable differences" in this phase's virtual listening sessions, compared to input from the previous parish- and diocesan-level phase.

"Concerns about the direction of the synod were more pronounced," said Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, noting that among the concerns of those delegates, who were handpicked by bishops, were restrictions against the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, possible changes to Catholic doctrine,...

The management of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center has drawn criticism from a prominent archbishop — and some members of Congress — by choosing not to renew a contract for Franciscan priests to provide pastoral care, and instead hiring a secular firm to oversee provision of those services going forward.

For nearly two decades, priests from the Holy Name College Friary in Silver Spring, Maryland, had ministered to service members and veterans hospitalized at Walter Reed, a renowned medical facility in nearby Bethesda.

Walter Reed said it notified the...

For Seventh-day Adventist Christians, observing a day of rest and worship is central to their faith. Adventism is a Protestant denomination noted for its observance of the Sabbath and for the belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ.

“Seventh-day Adventists believe what some of us term the four Cs of salvation: Christ, his cross, his commandments and his coming again,” Pastor Allen Martin of Christian Fellowship Seventh-day Adventist Church in Brooklyn said.

At the church, sermons are rooted in the tradition of the Black church.

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Steven Newcomb, who is Shawnee and Lenape, recalls first writing to the pope in 1992 to ask him to revoke the papal bulls behind the Doctrine of Discovery.

That was Pope John Paul II. Two popes ago.

So when the Vatican released a statement last week saying it repudiated that doctrine — which, backed by a series of 15th-century papal bulls, justified the domination by European Christians of lands already inhabited by...

For the Rev. Irene Prince, discussions around reproductive choice start in Bible study. 

Prince, pastor of Mount Olive AME Church in Emporia, Kansas, has taught on the biblical concept of free will in connection with choice — a connection she hopes will move her congregation to “demonstrate the love of God” by being kinder and not passing judgment on how people decide to live their lives.

“We don’t have to be the keepers of behavior and the purveyors of what is supposed to be holy. That’s God’s realm. I have no heaven or hell to put anybody in,” said Prince,...

Since January 2019, Fr. Jim Connell of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has been urging state legislators around the country to repeal clergy-penitent privilege in mandatory reporting laws that exempt Catholic priests from notifying authorities of any sexual abuse they hear about in the confessional.

Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki has suspended Connell's faculties to hear confessions and grant absolution, citing his advocacy "for the removal of the legal protection of the confessional seal, suggesting there are situations where it is permissible to violate it." Listecki said...