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Last parent of a child killed in 1963 church bombing dies

January 3, 2022

Maxine McNair, the last living parent of any of the four Black girls killed in a 1963 Alabama church bombing, died Sunday. She was 93.

McNair’s family announced her death in a press release. A cause of death was not given.

McNair’s daughter, 11-year-old Denise McNair, was the youngest girl killed in the bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, the deadliest single attack of the civil rights movement. Also killed were three 14-year-olds: Addie Mae Collins, Carole Rosamond Robertson and Cynthia Dionne Wesley.

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Ex-boarding school for Native children owning up to its past

January 2, 2022

Middle schooler Rarity Cournoyer stood at the heart of the Red Cloud Indian School campus and chanted a prayer song firmly and solemnly in the Lakota language — in a place where past generations of students were punished for speaking their mother tongue.

Her classmates stood around her at a prayer circle designed with archetypes of Native American spirituality, with a circular sidewalk representing a traditional medicine wheel, crossed by sidewalks pointing to the four cardinal directions.

Lakota language teacher Amery Brave Heart walked quietly with a small bundle...

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Dogs and dharma: A prison ministry yields children's books teaching Buddhist lessons

January 4, 2022

Years before Albert Ramos finished his children’s book about an energetic pup who learns that dog toys don’t bring true happiness, he began by writing a letter.

In 2010, Ramos, five years into a life sentence for murder at Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina, mailed off his message to Venerable Thubten Chodron, founder and abbess of ...

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Schumer says he was targeted on Jan. 6 for his religion

January 6, 2022

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday recounted being evacuated from the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 attack, including a close brush with rioters who he was told made antisemitic remarks about him.

"I was within 30 feet of these nasty, racist, bigoted insurrectionists. Had someone had a gun, had two of them blocked off the door, who knows what would have happened. I was told later that one of them reportedly said, 'There's the big Jew. Let's get him,' " Schumer said...

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Orthodox Christians celebrate the end of the Christmas season

January 6, 2022

The Orthodox Christian community at St. Paul Eastern Orthodox Church in Tupelo will be celebrating Theophany, also known as the day in which Jesus was baptized, this Thursday, Jan. 6.

To commemorate this holy day, St. Paul Eastern Orthodox Church will have a blessing of the waters at Veterans Park on Sunday, Jan. 9. 

For many Christian denominations, this day symbolizes Epiphany which is recognized as the day the Magi arrived to the Christ Child. However, Orthodox Christians observe this January day differently.

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Judge grants pause on geothermal construction near sacred hot springs, rare toad habitat

January 4, 2022

A Nevada tribe succeeded Tuesday in getting a district judge to temporarily pause construction of a planned geothermal energy project near the Dixie Meadows Hot Springs, a site considered sacred to the tribe.

U.S District Judge Robert Clive Jones granted a 90-day pause that will temporarily prevent construction of the Dixie Meadows geothermal energy project, proposed by developer Ormat Technologies. 

The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe requested a halt on construction that was scheduled to start Jan. 6 while the...

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Goat heads and pagan rituals? Board of appeals rescinds permit for religious observance

January 5, 2022

By a 4-0 vote, the St. Mary’s County Board of Appeals on Dec. 16 rescinded a temporary permit that a county department had issued for a pagan observance.

The land use and growth management department approved the permit on June 3, 2021.

Deputy Director Harry Knight and alternate board member Ronald Payne Sr., who was filling in for board member Guy Bradley, recused themselves.

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The 'MAGA faction' could be a hindrance for multiracial congregations

January 4, 2022

One of the prized goals of evangelical and mainline churches in America today is to create multiethnic congregations. But the same political trends that are making life difficult for pastors also bode ill for multicultural churches.

New research published Jan. 3 in the Washington Post demonstrates that Donald Trump’s rise to power activated a “MAGA faction” that is uniquely “motivated by animus toward marginalized groups.”

Those marginalized people include African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims and the LGBTQ community.

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COVID-19 Pandemic Unmasks American Antisemitism

January 6, 2022

On a Sunday morning in early December, Austin resident Charles Kaufman received a small plastic bag containing some rocks and a folded document on his doorstep, a few feet away from the bundled-up newspaper usually delivered. The document was a flyer blaming Jews for the new surge of COVID-19, the same one that hundreds of homes across the country received over the past month.

“Maybe 100 or so people received it on my street, Jewish and non-Jewish,” Kaufman told The Media Line on Monday. “I was very familiar with that characterization and very well aware of it long before this...

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Settlement reached in religious freedom, solitary confinement suit

January 10, 2022

The ACLU of Virginia announced today that a settlement agreement has been reached in Burke v. Clarke, a federal lawsuit on behalf of Randy Burke, a practicing Rastafarian who was put in solitary confinement for over five years for refusing to cut his hair, even though it violated a tenet of his religion.

During his time in solitary confinement, Burke was also denied opportunities to practice his religion, including receiving religious services, religious items, and holiday meals.

Burke was originally incarcerated in the Virgin Islands and was...

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