Religion News Service

The internet has been called "the world’s biggest sewer," where hate speech and fake news are polluting a global source of solid and valuable online information.

Australia's Parliament voted Thursday to allow same-sex marriage across the nation, following a bitter debate settled by a government survey of voters that strongly endorsed change.

Defying dire, worldwide warnings, President Donald Trump on Wednesday broke with decades of U.S. and international policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Why would a religious person get involved in lobbying on tax policy? Tax policy is not just a political issue; it is also a moral issue.

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries.

President Trump has signed presidential proclamations to shrink two Utah national monuments in a move that Native American tribal leaders, clergy, environmentalists and other opponents have described as the largest elimination of protective status for land in American history.

In a legal case with profound implications for LGBT rights and religion's place in public life, the opposing sides agree on this: It's not about the cake.

The Field Hospital: Five minutes from here, the landscape is all ash and ruin. But inside this small chapel, there is a kaleidoscope of stained-glass light and a single man sitting bathed in that light.

Margaret Archer has long been one of the world’s leading sociologists, recognized for her analysis of societal structure with awards and professorships.

The Mohammadia League of Islamic Scholars, the institute leading Morocco’s extensive campaign against violent Muslim extremism, is using social media to reach young Moroccans. 

As nearly 10,000 scholars of religion and the Bible shuttled among 300 sessions at a conference here last weekend, Donald Trump dominated the agenda.

In an address at Georgetown University, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego criticized both extremes in the fight over religious freedom and called for public consensus based on solidarity.

In the new Museum of the Bible is a room full of Bibles, color-coded to show the more than 2,000 languages into which the holy book has been at least partially translated — and the similar number for which translation has "not yet begun."

The head of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ anti-racism task force told his colleagues that racism “lives in a particular and pernicious way” in the United States.

The funerals were yet to be held. The eulogies were yet to be given. The bodies were yet to be buried.  But one thing was already clear: First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs will be razed.

Signs of the Times: Yesterday's papal loyalists are today's dissidents. Yesterday's dissenters are today's papal defenders. The true scandal in the church is not what one theologian or pope says, it is that we are not capable of dialoguing with each other. 

In 2007, the unthinkable happened at New Life Church in Colorado Springs.  A gunman opened fire outside the church, just as its midday service had dismissed. 

Signs of the Times: Like everyone else, the bishops support tax reform as long as it does not touch them. The popular definition of tax reform is anything that cuts my taxes and raises somebody else's.

Dressed in black tactical-style gear and armed with an assault weapon, 21-year-old Devin Kelley opened fire at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26 people and wounding about 20 others.

In the halal bakeries and markets that line Main Street, and in mosques that have been part of the community for decades, a familiar dread has taken hold after the latest terror attack in the U.S.