Religion News Service

Members of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America taped 9.5 theses to the door of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Milwaukee as part of their churchwide assembly.

Invoking God and Christian love, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker railed against gun violence and racism in a speech on Aug. 7 at the site of a 2015 church shooting that left nine African American worshippers dead.

Immigration and gun violence are among the topics for discussion as leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gather this week in Milwaukee.

"At a time when we are facing the 'highest levels of displacement on record,' according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, we urge you to increase the refugee resettlement cap and to admit as many refugees as possible within that cap," the letter reads in part. 

With an executive order from Gov. Roy Cooper, North Carolina makes it 18 states plus the District of Columbia that have laws that ban conversion therapy of minors by licensed health care providers.

Signs of the Times: I am afraid that others may soon respond to mass shootings that same way I do, the same way we do to other gun violence — ignore it and move on. No matter how horrible something is, if it is repeated time and time again, we get accustomed to it.

The change marked a 180-degree turn for a ministry founded on fundamentalist Protestantism ministry founded on fundamentalist Protestantism that has separated Catholics and Protestants in this region of the South for generations.

As the nation marks the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans in Virginia — and Alabama has its bicentennial — a walk through Montgomery's streets reveals the legacy of slavery in America.

A who's who of black history figures worshiped and spoke at Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church — including abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth — when it was at earlier locations after its founding in 1796 or at its current neo-Gothic site on 137th Street in Harlem.

Signs of the Times: American Catholics are almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, which means the church can either self-destruct or bridge the partisan divide.

In 2013, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago held the single largest giving campaign in its history, bringing in pledges totaling $427 million.

With two biological children at home already, Noemi Amezcua, then not yet 30, asked her priest how she could get more involved in her community.

 A coalition of 430 human rights, civil rights, foreign policy and faith organizations has submitted a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging him to dismantle his department’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights.

Signs of the Times: The purpose of this memo is to inform you of an upcoming raid to arrest a woman living in New York City who we plan to send back to her country of origin, France.

Where humans go, faith seems to follow. It’s no less true of NASA’s first manned mission to land on the moon.

Trump administration officials announced a new alliance with U.S. partners focused on religious freedom.

Signs of the Times: In appointing seven women to the Vatican congregation that oversees religious orders July 9, Pope Francis achieved a double win. In one stroke, he has advanced both the role of women in the church and the reform of the Vatican Curia.

Leaders from three Abrahamic faiths shared their own stories of experiencing religious violence in the past year.

China, Iran and other countries that the U.S. considers the most egregious religious liberty violators aren’t invited to the State Department’s second summit on religious freedom this week.

The U.S. ambassador on religious freedom issues defended the State Department's second summit on global religious liberty against critics who say the first summit failed to accomplish much.