Five years after the coronavirus outbreak, many Americans say public behavior in the United States has changed for the worse, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Nearly half of U.S. adults (47%) say the way people behave in public these days is ruder than before the COVID-19 pandemic. (Schaeffer & Sakla, Pew Research Center)
Read MoreWhen the police arrived at the door of a pastor in Uttar Pradesh in February 2024, the first question they asked was “What religion do you belong to?” The police had received calls from Hindu right-wing groups claiming the pastor had lured locals to convert to Christianity, the pastor said. CT agreed not to use his name due to security concerns. The pastor told the police that he was a Christian, and they arrested him. (Sankar, Christianity Today)
Read MoreWhat if the big question surrounding the existence of aliens wasn’t whether they exist but why the U.S. government has been hiding this information from the American public for so long? And what if, in hiding that information, our own leaders were putting us in danger of annihilation? (Yuan, The Washington Post)
Read MoreColumbia University is fighting two wars at once. One rages publicly against President Trump, whose administration in recent days ordered the arrest of a student protester and canceled federal funds to the Ivy League school over allegations of antisemitism. The second conflict simmers behind the scenes: a faculty civil war that pits medical doctors and engineers against political scientists and humanities scholars over how to handle pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have disrupted campus life. (Belkin, The Wall Street Journal)
Read MoreAddressing a crowd of around three dozen largely evangelical Christians assembled at Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church on Tuesday morning (March 11) for a “Prayer Vigil for Foreign Aid,” the Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of the group Bread for the World, denounced the “broad, un-targeted cuts” recently implemented at the U.S. Agency for International Development as an assault on vulnerable populations all over the globe. (Jenkins, Religion News)
Read More“Each year Southern Baptist congregations share a few statistics about their church,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “Some fear this will be used to judge their church, but the reality is real value lies in what we learn from churches together. Looking at combinations of those responses and looking across time reveals how the context of ministry varies across the country and how churches of different types have different challenges.” (Earls, Baptist Press)
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