The 2025 GCR Red List, released Jan. 7, is marketed as a “first-ever quantifiable and verifiable index” of incidents in five key areas, namely killings, building attacks, arrests, displacements and abductions & assaults from 2022-2024. The five countries deemed the top aggressors in each category drive the list: (Chandler, Baptist Press)
Read MoreMillions of Hindu devotees, mystics and holy men and women from all across India flocked to the northern city of Prayagraj on Monday to kickstart the Maha Kumbh festival, which is being touted as the world’s largest religious gathering. (Saaliq, AP News)
Read MoreChurches, synagogues and mosques become important touchstones in communities ravaged by disasters – now many here are also themselves victims of a disaster. (DeRose & Venture, NPR)
Read MoreA shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism. At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an alluring, charismatic movement that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy. (McCrummen, The Atlantic)
Read MoreA synagogue, a mosque, a Catholic parish and at least 7 Protestant churches are among the buildings destroyed by the wildfires raging in California.“We will need one another in the days ahead as we face these devastating losses. I am here for you, and I know our community will hold together, and love and support one another through whatever lies ahead.” (Smietana, Religion News Service)
Read MoreDavid Fincher’s chiller put Brad Pitt through hell, hid a sinister secret and almost ended very differently. Thirty years on, it still kills. (Larman, The Telegraph)
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