All posts tagged: churches

From churches and castles to wonderfully weird Portmeirion: exploring Wales’s north-west coast on foot and by train | Wales holidays

From churches and castles to wonderfully weird Portmeirion: exploring Wales’s north-west coast on foot and by train | Wales holidays

Published by Sam Flores

From the graveyard of St Michael’s in Ynys, Wales, the view was ravishing: the Italianate oddity of Portmeirion sparkled on the opposite shore; the peaks of Eryri (Snowdonia) rippled in the distance; and, within the River Dwyryd’s broad swirl, sat the tidal island of Ynys Gifftan. “No one’s lived there for years,” said a passerby pointing to the isle, “but it’s just been put up for sale – £350,000, if you fancy it.” I rather did, but sadly my modest savings don’t stretch that far. Wales’s “armpit”, geographically speaking – which is how some people refer to that chunk of Gwynedd where estuaries perspire into Cardigan Bay before it curves round the outstretched Llŷn peninsula – looked like a spectacular place to be marooned. I’d come here because I thought it might be a particularly good place for coastal exploring by rail and on foot. The Cambrian Line, which starts in Shrewsbury, runs west to the bay, before turning north along Gwynedd’s shore. Here, it’s accompanied by the Wales Coast Path and, launched in 2024, …

Africa is Catholicism’s future, but Pentecostal churches are growing faster

Africa is Catholicism’s future, but Pentecostal churches are growing faster

Published by Sam Flores

LUANDA, Angola — Christianity is flourishing in Africa. But what shape it will take for most believers is an open question. In the moments leading up to Pope Leo XIV’s arrival in the capital of Angola last month, the streets were buzzing with excitement as men and women sporting T-shirts emblazoned with his face prepared to welcome the man that Catholics regard as the Vicar of Christ, or the representative of Jesus on Earth. Source link

Elaborately decorated skeletons in Catholic churches across Bavaria take some visitors by surprise

Elaborately decorated skeletons in Catholic churches across Bavaria take some visitors by surprise

Published by Sam Flores

BAD STAFFELSTEIN, Germany (AP) — It is a sight that has sent shivers down the spines of many visitors: four complete skeletons draped in silk and brocade, adorned with precious stones, filigree gold, silver and lace that have been on display for centuries at the Catholic monastery church of Banz in southern Germany. The skeletons — known as Vincenzius, Valerius, Benedictus and Felix Benedictus — are the remains of so-called catacomb saints that were brought to the Benedictine monastery near the Bavarian town of Bad Staffelstein from Rome in the late 17th and 18th century. “It’s actually a little creepy,” whispered church custodian Anita Gottschlich as she looked at one of the skeletons. It seemed to be staring right back at her through its hollow eye sockets. “I notice that when older people come here who visited as children, they always look for the Holy Bodies, because they can still remember them,” she added, noting the enduring fascination the skeletons hold for people of all ages. While they may seem unfamiliar or even disturbing to …

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Black churches know exactly what to do.

The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Black churches know exactly what to do.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision on Wednesday (April 29) that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, making it nearly impossible to challenge racially discriminatory voting maps without proving intentional discrimination. Hours after the ruling, Florida’s Legislature approved a new congressional map, skewed in Republicans’ favor, and many experts are predicting a historic drop in Black representation in Congress — and much longer lines for Black voters.    None of this is surprising. The history of civil rights in America is one in which there is progress followed by retrenchment, expansion followed by restriction.    In 1870, the 15th Amendment promised that the right to vote could not be denied on account of race. Within a generation, that promise was hollowed out by poll taxes, literacy tests and racial terror. Nearly a century later, there was the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — recognizing that discrimination in voting was systemic and required federal oversight of states with histories of disenfranchisement. Black voter registration surged. Representation followed. And then, …

A priest vanished two years ago. South Sudan’s churches say he’s not alone.

A priest vanished two years ago. South Sudan’s churches say he’s not alone.

Published by Sam Flores

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Two years ago, a Catholic priest and his driver set out on one of the most dangerous roads in South Sudan and were never seen again. Now​, church leaders in the country say they want to know what happened to the two, and they’re putting a spotlight on the growing number of disappeared in the country.   “It’s ​a question of justice. We want the government to take its responsibility regarding the disappearance of these two. They are not alone; many people have also disappeared,” said Catholic Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of the Tombura-Yambio Diocese​ in South Sudan.  The Nagero-Tombura Road in South Sudan is a critical transit corridor that priests and pastors travel to bring the gospel to remote South Sudan communities, such as Western Equatoria. The road cuts through territory where armed men commit deadly robberies, kidnappings and other attacks.   It is on this road that the Rev. Luke Yugue Mbokusa, pastor of the Nazareth Nagero parish, and his driver, Michael Gbeko, disappeared without trace  while traveling from Nagero …

Many churches, synagogues and mosques are built around families – and they’re struggling to respond to rising singles

Many churches, synagogues and mosques are built around families – and they’re struggling to respond to rising singles

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — When a couple marry in a church, synagogue or mosque, the ceremony does more than sanctify a union. Often, it binds two families to an institution. For centuries, marriage and child-rearing have been among the main ways adults are integrated into congregational life. Couples who share the same faith tend to be more observant, and they often raise children within that tradition – bringing the next generation into congregational life. More marriages mean more families in pews and more children raised in the faith. That helps explain why the rise of single adults is so unsettling for many faith communities today. In the United States, 42% of adults were not married or living with a partner in 2023, up from 38% in 2000. This shift is unlikely to change soon: A quarter of 40-year-olds have never been married, and a third of Gen Z are projected to never marry. At the same time, the share of unmarried Americans who belong to a religious congregation has fallen well below that of married Americans. …

Worship attendance at churches up for the first time in decades, according to new report

Worship attendance at churches up for the first time in decades, according to new report

Published by Sam Flores

ATLANTA (RNS) — The past 25 years have been rough for American churches and other houses of worship. The median worship attendance dropped by more than half. Church closures and the rise of the nones — those who claim no religion — have grabbed all the headlines. And faith in institutions like organized religion has plummeted. Yet a new report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows signs of a shift — for the first time in two decades, attendance is up. More people are volunteering, and there also seems to be a renewed sense of optimism among pastors and other clergy. “The headline finding is cautious optimism,” Alison Norton, co-director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, told reporters at the annual conference of the Religion News Association, meeting in Atlanta. She added that the data showed a story of resilience and recalibration. “Across a range of indicators, there are signs of recovery and, in some cases, renewal,” the study’s authors wrote in a report released Friday (April 24), which surveyed a representative …

Canterbury archbishop to visit pope, a milestone for churches split on women clergy

Canterbury archbishop to visit pope, a milestone for churches split on women clergy

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally will travel to Rome this weekend to meet Pope Leo XIV — a visit she calls a pilgrimage, akin to the one she took to prepare for her installation at Canterbury. Her four-day visit, which will include an audience with the pope at the Vatican on Monday morning (April 27), will follow in the footsteps of countless other pilgrims when she visits the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. It will also follow past archbishops of Canterbury who have traveled to see the pope since 1966, encounters that reinvented ecumenical relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, as well as the wider Anglican Communion. But what will be remarkable about this visit is the optics: the sight of Mullally, the first woman archbishop of Canterbury, standing shoulder to shoulder and kneeling in prayer with the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, which still maintains a male-only priesthood. All the signs are that there will be undoubted warmth between the two church leaders. Three …

Some churches don’t preach a literal resurrection. Here’s how they celebrate Easter.

Some churches don’t preach a literal resurrection. Here’s how they celebrate Easter.

Published by Sam Flores

(RNS) — “I don’t have a belief in any form of resurrection,” declared the Rev. Duncan Littlefair, then-pastor of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to NBC’s Frank McGee on the “Today” show in April 1973. Wearing a white turtleneck and navy blazer, the pastor explained that he viewed the idea of Jesus’ physical resurrection as “absurd” and the notion of being saved only through Christ as a “totally provincial, Western view.” In the days that followed, both NBC and Fountain Street faced backlash as viewers caught wind of the pastor’s unconventional beliefs. But even in the 1970s, Fountain Street, a historic church founded in 1869 that had earned a reputation as a dogma-free activist outpost, wasn’t the only church where Jesus’ resurrection could be called into question. In 1961, the Unitarian Universalist Association had formed, a noncreedal tradition whose theological heritage saw Jesus as a moral exemplar, not God incarnate. These days, the landscape of noncreedal faith traditions has grown to encompass not just Unitarian Universalist congregations or historic, independent churches like Fountain …

There may not be a Christian revival, but Britain’s traditional churches aren’t doomed

There may not be a Christian revival, but Britain’s traditional churches aren’t doomed

Published by Sam Flores

In the same week that a new archbishop of Canterbury was installed, YouGov admitted that a poll suggesting there was a “quiet revival” of Christianity was a dud. It had been inflated by fraudulent results and should be ignored. To those of us who study the bigger picture of religion in Britain, this comes as no surprise. There are good reasons to doubt that Britain is experiencing a Christian revival today – but that does not mean it is dying out. Read more: Is there really a religious revival in England? Why I’m sceptical of a new report To understand what is happening in Britain, it is helpful to compare it with the US, which has has long been viewed as exceptionally religious in comparison. Recent evidence suggests something less clear-cut. In a major recent study, sociologist Christian Smith assembles the data. In the 1970s and ’80s, only around one in ten Americans identified as “nonreligious”. But from 1991, the proportion of people who identify as such has risen steeply, reaching 29% in 2021. Today, …