Adelle M. Banks
National Prayer Breakfast organizer and 'pastor to people in power' dies at age 88
Doug Coe, organizer of the annual National Prayer Breakfast and a spiritual guide to many politicians, died February 21 at age 88.
...Army now allows soldiers to wear turbans, beards, and headscarves
New army regulations will allow Sikh and Muslim soldiers to wear turbans, beards, and hijabs—the headscarves worn by some Muslim women—under most circumstances.
...Iconography classes draw non-Orthodox in search of spiritual images
For Lara Neri, painting icons is a kind of prayer.
...Pastor and business executive start company to help churches bridge digital divide
Boise Kimber, pastor of First Calvary Baptist Church in New Haven, Connecticut, saw his congregation pay more than $1,000 for a website, only to have the people they purchased it from disappear.<...
Religious groups rally around issues after election; new Jewish-Muslim partnership forms
On the day after the election, Mervat Aqqad’s seven-year-old son woke up and asked who got elected president.
...Few pastors asked to perform marriages for same-sex couples
A survey shows that since gay marriage was made legal in 2015, Protestant pastors have rarely been asked to officiate at such ceremonies.
...U.S. stamp to celebrate a Hindu holiday for the first time
Never before has a U.S. stamp celebrated anything Hindu.
But coming soon to a post office near you: a stamp marking the Hindu holiday of Diwali.
...Tim LaHaye, Left Behind creator, dies at 90
Tim LaHaye, a creator of the Left Behind series, who was once named the most influential American evangelical, died July 25 in the San Diego area at age 90 after a recent stroke.
...Yvonne Studevan, descendant of AME founder Richard Allen, among those celebrating denomination's 200th anniversary
Standing outside the historic Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Yvonne Studevan was full of pride as she saw her great-great-great-great-grandfather being honored wi...
Cathedral to remove glass Confederate flags
The Washington National Cathedral will replace depictions of the Confederate flag in its stained-glass windows with plain glass but maintain adjoining panes honoring Confederate generals for at l...
Baptist church efforts bridge racial divisions across denominations
Pastors Frederick Haynes and George Mason both lead Baptist churches in Dallas, but they did not meet until the not-guilty verdict in the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin brought them together ...
American Bible Society marks 200th birthday
c. 2016 Religion News Service
(RNS) Two hundred years ago, the American Bible Society was founded to distribute scriptures across the U.S. and the globe.
...Racial justice programming in many mainline churches focuses on privilege, power
Last year when the death of Freddie Gray and resulting unrest in Baltimore filled the news, Kathy Dwyer felt she had to do something.
...Southern Baptists' number of overseas missionaries drops by nearly 1,000
One out of five Southern Baptist missionaries overseas—or nearly 1,000 total—have volunteered to leave their posts to help the denomination’s mission board deal with its financial straits....