Religion News Service

The theological differences that led to the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago have dwindled since in both the United States and Western Europe.

American Catholic: "Some of the greatest Christians I know are people who don’t actually have a faith system that they believe in, but in their activity, in the way they conduct themselves, there is a goodness there.”

Nigerian clergy say at least 1,000 churches have been destroyed in the six-year insurgency, which the government declared crushed last year.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer attended an audience with Pope Francis Sunday as part of an annual meeting of the International Catholic Legislators Network.

Opponents of Trump significantly outnumber his supporters, and calls from Jews to other Jews to renounce the president have heightened tensions in synagogues, in the Jewish press and the wider Jewish world.

American Catholic: Steven Banon's ouster may have been a victory for a more inclusive America, but in the internal politics of the Republican Party it also signals the triumph of the corporate and interventionist wings of the party, which should scare the religious left. 

More comes to light. A journalist's inquiry to his diocese, not images from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville spurred a Virginia priest to confess he'd been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

American Catholic: The relationship between President Trump and the Catholic bishops has been more a marriage of convenience than a love affair. But already there have been some public spats.

Over the weekend, the battle over monuments to controversial figures extended to California, where a statue of a Catholic saint, Fr. Junipero Serra, was vandalized in Los Angeles.

Organizers of the March for Racial Justice, slated for the National Mall in late September, have apologized for scheduling the event on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews.

More than 4,000 religious leaders have signed a letter urging Congress to maintain the Johnson Amendment, a law barring pulpit politicking that President Trump has vowed to gut.

The release of the 2016 International Religious Freedom Report, in its 19th year, comes as Trump has been accused of exacerbating hostility toward Muslims and hesitating to condemn white supremacism and anti-Semitism within his own nation.

Archaeologists excavating in northern Israel believe they may have discovered the biblical city of Bethsaida, the hometown of three of Jesus’ apostles on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

President Donald Trump's evangelical Christian advisers are requesting a meeting with Pope Francis after a Vatican-approved magazine published a piece condemning the way some American evangelicals and Roman Catholics mix religion and politics.

The first gay marriage in an Anglican church in Britain took place Aug. 1, a day after Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby described the continuing squabbles over same-sex marriage in the worldwide Anglican Communion as “intractable.

Liberty Counsel is part of the Christian legal movement, a collection of advocacy groups working in the legal, public policy and public relations arenas to advance and protect conservative Christian moral values. 

Retired Bishop Thomas O'Brien is accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing the boy on several occasions at parishes in Phoenix and Goodyear from 1977 to 1982. The Diocese of Phoenix says O'Brien denies the allegation.