All posts tagged: Church

China’s Zion Church Story – OpentheWord.org

China’s Zion Church Story – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Two men praying together at a church in Beijing, China Credit: Sam Balye/unsplash.com China’s current communist tyrant, Xi Jinping, is learning an important lesson. When you persecute Christians, it produces an inverse reaction. Instead of stopping the faith, it actually causes it to grow. In October 2025, communist authorities arrested Ezra Jin, who was pastoring one of the largest underground churches in China. Jin, 56, was attending the prestigious Peking University, when thousands of Chinese students took the streets calling for democratic reform in 1989. It became know as the Tiananmen Square massacre resulting in the deaths of hundreds of students. After the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) brutal crack down, Jin questioned everything he had been taught. This led him to becoming a Christian and attending a Chinese seminary. As part of this, he also preached at CCP approved churches. These government-sanctioned churches are forced to mix Communist ideology with the Christian faith. This includes having the words of Mao Zedong, the world’s worst mass murderer, written on the church walls instead of Bible verses. …

Eli Lilly sues church leaders for alleged 0M ‘sham’ drug program

Eli Lilly sues church leaders for alleged $200M ‘sham’ drug program

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — A group of leaders in the Church of God in Christ have been accused in a lawsuit of defrauding a major pharmaceutical company out of more than $200 million in rebates for diabetes drugs. In a complaint filed Tuesday (May 19) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, lawyers for Eli Lilly and Company alleged that a cost-sharing program covering millions of members of COGIC, a Pentecostal denomination, was a “sham.” Instead of helping church members get access to Trulicity and other diabetes medications manufactured by Lilly, the program’s leaders worked with wholesalers to resell the drugs while collecting millions in rebates, the lawsuit claims. The complaint names COGIC Bishop Jerry Maynard Sr. of Nashville, along with his son and daughter, both COGIC pastors, as well as Elder Readus C. Smith III, the general secretary of health and business for the denomination, and several wholesalers. Most of the alleged fraud involved reimbursements submitted by DrugPlace, Inc., a pharmacy that shared office space with Community Health, a program run by the …

The growing divide between the Trump administration and the LDS Church

The growing divide between the Trump administration and the LDS Church

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — At least one conservative Christian voice was noticeably absent from the White House-backed “jubilee” event on Sunday (May 17) to rededicate America to God and conservative Christian values: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No Latter-day Saint or “Mormon” leaders were on the stage addressing the thousands in attendance. To me, that absence speaks volumes — especially since the majority of Latter-day Saints in the United States are Republicans. It’s not that the LDS Church hasn’t preached many of the same ideals that were being expounded from the MAGA pulpit. The idea that America is a special nation, uniquely chosen by God for a role in salvation history? We Mormons have embraced that for a long time now. It’s in the Book of Mormon, one of our primary works of Scripture. And it has been taught by former LDS Church presidents like Ezra Taft Benson and our current leader, Dallin Oaks — a former legal scholar and judge who considers the U.S. Constitution to be a divinely inspired document. The idea that …

After years fostering interfaith ties, San Diego mosque finds allies in grief

After years fostering interfaith ties, San Diego mosque finds allies in grief

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — For years before Monday’s deadly shooting, the Islamic Center of San Diego stood out as a place that welcomed anyone through its doors — Muslim or not. The mosque’s imam, Taha Hassane, spent decades cultivating relationships with clergy, neighbors and community activists from across the city.  Hassane told RNS in an interview he believes in showing up for others and “trying to make our society the best in terms of acceptance, tolerance.”  In the hours after the shooting that killed three members of the mosque, interfaith leaders and allies started crowding vigils to stand in solidarity with Hassane and his community. Their response to the tragedy, Muslim community members said, offered a strong rebuke to the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has escalated in recent months and has shadowed the mosque for decades.  The shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime, shattered what had long felt like a safe haven for worshippers and neighbors alike. But mosque leaders insist it will remain a place for everyone. At the first press conference hours after …

Only 4 in 100 under 35’s attend church regularly – new research reveals – Humanists UK

Only 4 in 100 under 35’s attend church regularly – new research reveals – Humanists UK

Published by Sam Flores

The gold-standard British Social Attitudes survey has revealed that only four in 100 under-35s attend Christian church regularly and that overall Church attendance in Britain continues to decline dramatically. These findings are supported by the Church of England’s own attendance figures. Humanists UK says the data is ‘another nail in the coffin for the myth of Christian revival’, shows that Britain is not a Christian country, and that religious institutions shouldn’t continue to be privileged in public life and national identity. In the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)’s latest British Social Attitudes survey, just 4% of those aged under 35 say they attend a Christian service at least once a week. The level of reported weekly attendance among those aged 70 and over is, at 9%, just half of that recorded in 2017.  There is further evidence to counter the report of a ‘quiet revival’ of Christianity, which was based on the now-retracted claims by the Bible Society that younger people are turning back to Christianity. The Bible Society retracted its report that there …

Black church leaders to march in Selma this weekend over Voting Rights Act ruling

Black church leaders to march in Selma this weekend over Voting Rights Act ruling

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Nearly 100 faith and voting rights leaders plan to gather in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, on Saturday (May 16) as part of a rally in protest of the recent Supreme Court decision that hollowed out a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The “All Roads Lead to the South” rally intends to launch a national movement to counter the ruling’s trickle-down effects on Black Americans’ political power, particularly in Southern states. Organizers expect nearly 5,000 people to attend.  The rally is in response to the April 29 court ruling, which declared Louisiana’s attempt to add a second Black-majority district on its congressional map unconstitutional — effectively gutting the landmark civil-rights era law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. State legislatures in Tennessee and Alabama have expeditiously redrawn congressional maps in the wake of the decision. The mobilization event, organized by Black Voters Matter, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, expects 75 buses of activists from Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and other Southern states, with the …

We traded church for wellness. Now, we’re paying for it.

We traded church for wellness. Now, we’re paying for it.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 37% of Americans now say religion is gaining influence in public life, the highest percentage since 2002, up 19 points in just two years. And no group is more alarmed than the spiritual-but-not-religious. Among the religiously unaffiliated, 46% view religion’s growing influence negatively, the survey found. That’s more than double the rate of the general public. Here’s the thing, though. I think we are partly to blame. We helped create a void in public life that is now being filled in ways we didn’t anticipate and frankly don’t like. I know because I’m one of the spiritual-but-not-religious Americans who have been trying to find alternatives to organized religion. I’m also a religion scholar and I study this stuff for a living: yoga studios, mindfulness apps, sound baths, ayahuasca retreats and the vague but sincere conviction that you can be deeply spiritual without identifying with any particular tradition. We’re not cynics. We’re seekers. We just decided to seek on our own terms. The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd has …

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: forget the church fete vibes, the brooch is now fashion’s badge of honour | Fashion

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: forget the church fete vibes, the brooch is now fashion’s badge of honour | Fashion

Published by Sam Flores

I have arrived in my brooch era about two decades ahead of schedule. I had brooches earmarked for a later life stage, accessories that would chime with The Archers, gardening, possibly solving the odd crime in the village, that sort of thing. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. But in an unexpected turn of events, I am already the correct age to wear a brooch. Not because I’m old, but because brooches have changed. They have cast off their church fete vibe and become cool. Zendaya wore a diamond serpent brooch pinned to the back of her white jacket to last year’s Met Gala. At a press conference before the recent Mexico City premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2, Meryl Streep added no fewer than six brooches to the lapel of her pillarbox red Dolce & Gabbana suit. Pedro Pascal wore a silk Chanel camellia the size of a sunflower to the Oscars. The brooch has escaped from Granny’s jewellery box, climbed out …

Georgian Orthodox Church elects new leader at fraught time for the influential institution

Georgian Orthodox Church elects new leader at fraught time for the influential institution

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Bishop Shio Mujiri will now be known as Patriarch Shio III, leading the Georgian Orthodox Church, one of the most prominent institutions in the country. He was enthroned in the 1,000-year-old Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, an ancient capital north of modern Tbilisi, on Tuesday morning (May 12), taking over one of Eastern Orthodoxy’s oldest churches after the death of one of its longest-serving leaders.  On Monday, Shio received 22 out of 39 votes from the Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church in Tbilisi’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, outpacing the two other hierarchs who had been shortlisted for the role after Patriarch Ilia II died in March. Shio will step into the shoes of a giant as Georgia faces one of the most politically tumultuous periods in its recent history.  The Georgian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian church bodies in the world, stretching back to the Apostle Andrew by tradition and by documentation at least as far back as the fifth century.  Shio, 57, who was born Elizbar Mujiri, became the 142nd …

AME Church Publishing House and Sunday School Union announces Henry Ossawa Tanner Prize for Art and Justice

AME Church Publishing House and Sunday School Union announces Henry Ossawa Tanner Prize for Art and Justice

Published by Sam Flores

Applications will open from July 1-November 1, 2026. NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The African Methodist Episcopal Church Publishing House and Sunday School Union announces the inaugural Henry Ossawa Tanner Prize for Art and Justice. The African Methodist Episcopal Church has from its founding understood art to be among the means by which a people preserve themselves and pass their history and traditions forward. This hour calls for the artist’s witness, which reaches the heart and the mind together and carries forward what a people most need to see and to re-member. Tanner was a son of African Methodism, born and reared inside its long struggle for the liberation and empowerment of the people it served. His father, Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner, was an early editor of The Christian Recorder and was elected to the episcopacy in 1888. His mother, Sarah Miller Tanner, is believed to have escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad as a child. Inspired by the 1856 Battle at Osawatomie, a direct action between a small band of free-staters led by abolitionist John Brown …