Here's what's happening on the church and culture front today...

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October 15, 2026

Inside the candlelit L.A. church where emo lovers analyze My Chemical Romance lyrics

October 15, 2026

Every Sunday, there are those who sit inside of Immanuel Presbyterian in Los Angeles for worship, but there are also those who linger outside. Most wear all black. The ones on Wilshire Boulevard hope for a peek inside the church, which was made famous by emo-rock band My Chemical Romance. (Abascal, Los Angeles Times)

October 15, 2026

Religious Groups Differ Widely in Their 2026 Midterm Preferences

October 15, 2026

White evangelical Protestant and White Catholic registered voters prefer Republican candidates over Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. Registered voters in every other religious group we can analyze either are split roughly evenly or favor Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. (Smith, Pew Research Center)

October 15, 2026

How surrogacy got dragged into the culture wars

October 15, 2026

First, they erased the word ‘woman’. Now, activists want ‘gestational carriers’ to rent out their wombs for those unable to carry a child. (Lampert, The Telegraph)

October 15, 2026

How a 72-Year-Old Pastor Became America’s Favorite Campus Evangelist

October 15, 2026

A grizzled champion of ancient wisdom and divine revelation, Knechtle (pronounced connect-lee) has in recent years become an improbable celebrity at college campuses across the country, popularity that coincides with a renewed interest in faith among young people. (Kuo, The Wall Street Journal)

October 15, 2026

News Archive:

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Inside the candlelit L.A. church where emo lovers analyze My Chemical Romance lyrics

First, they erased the word ‘woman’. Now, activists want ‘gestational carriers’ to rent out their wombs for those unable to carry a child. (Lampert, The Telegraph)

Cornell University has banned parties and social events at fraternities for the rest of the school year and will bring sexual assault investigators into its police unit, in response to a former student's allegation of gang rape in 2024. (Nadworny & Han, NPR)

Christopher Robin’s teddy bear appeared in a poem in Punch in 1924, under the name of Edward, but he was rechristened as Winnie after a bear at London Zoo. Milne’s first collection of stories about Pooh and his friends of disparate personality types, from the gloomily depressive to the manically bouncy, was published on October 14, 1926. (Kidd, The Telegraph)

From 2019 to 2022, the median net worth, or wealth, for American families surged 37% — the largest jump since the Fed began keeping track — as Americans received aid from the federal government while stock and home values soared. The Fed's latest survey results, which are released every three years, found that surge was not the start of a new trend. (Barber, USA Today)

Fewer than four in 10 college students believe freedom of speech is secure in the United States today, according to a new study from the Knight Foundation. It's a decade-low level that marks a significant decline since 2016, when nearly three-fourths of college students said the same. (Frank, USA Today)

The “Sunday scaries” have become such a fixture of Americans’ weekends that Merriam-Webster added the term to its online dictionary last month. Its definition: a feeling of anxiety or sadness one may feel when the weekend is almost over, either because the work/school week is about to begin, there is no more time for fun or relaxing weekend activities, or both. (Smith, The Wall Street Journal)

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who oversees the Catholic Church’s pastoral services to Catholics in the U.S. military, is condemning the proposed livestream of the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan. Broglio, in a statement Monday, also stipulated that any Catholic soldier assigned to the U.S. Army firing squad should ask to be excused from that duty, which he described as contrary to the teachings of the church. (AP News)

In July, a House of Commons research briefing noted the reporting of common health disorders was higher in women than men in every age category — and among those aged 17 to 19 it was twice as high in young women (31.6 per cent) as in young men (15.4 per cent). (Smith, The TImes)

Fewer than half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced answered prayers, divine healing or demonic attack, the American Bible Society (ABS) said in its latest State of the Bible release, with most expressing complacency, doubt or disbelief that such exist. (Chandler, Baptist Press)

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is joining evangelical faith leaders and others in condemning plans by the Pentagon to livestream the execution of the man who shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, with the Catholic prelate calling the military’s proposal a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” (Jenkins, Religion News Service)

Several dozen scientists from five countries, led by Professor Cenker Atila, an archaeologist at Sivas Cumhuriyet University in Turkey, have spent nearly 90 days on the formation this summer with drones, ground-penetrating radar and core drills, collecting about a thousand soil samples for laboratory analysis. What they have found is tantalising, but far from conclusive. (Hagan, The Times)

Already a polarizing political issue this fall, the AI industry’s latest challenge is emerging from the pulpit. Unlike recent generations of technology, the Christian community appears poised to put its stamp on AI early in an attempt to ensure it benefits all of humanity rather than a few tech billionaires. (Higgins, The Wall Street Journal)

Humans have believed in ghosts for thousands of years. Across cultures and centuries, people have told stories about the dead returning to the world of the living, whether as ancestor spirits or unsettling apparitions. But it wasn’t until the Middle Ages that shrouded figures became a familiar way of depicting spirits. (Bennington-Castro, History)

In 2026, partygoers are expected to follow celebrity trends and the most popular series characters, like JLo and Maverick from Amazon Prime's Off Campus, the recently deceased (and always iconic) Dolly Parton, and Bad Bunny's Super Bowl shrubs. (DeLoye, Mental Floss)

Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned from defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel that found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote international law as it comes under attack. (Dazio et al., AP News)

Suicide is a public health crisis for the country — but that crisis is becoming acute in the Black community. Black suicide rates are climbing, increasing more than 50% over about the past 10 years according to CDC data. (Martin, NPR)