Godbeat pros are mourning one of their own: Richard Gustav Niebuhr, the 2010 recipient of the Religion News Association’s William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award, covered religion for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Making news this week: The Vatican says transgender people may be baptized — “the latest sign of Pope Francis’ conciliatory approach to LGBTQ+ Catholics,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca.
Meanwhile, there’s a new development in a high-profile sex abuse case involving The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Associated Press’ Michael Rezendes and Jason Dearen report.
An Arizona judge ruled that “church officials who knew that a church member was sexually abusing his daughter had no duty to report the abuse to police or social service agencies because the information was received during a spiritual confession,” AP notes. Yes, “clergy privilege” applies to traditions other than Roman Catholicism.
This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with this week’s elections and — looking ahead to next year’s voting — the latest GOP presidential debate.
What To Know: The Big Story
Five takeaways: “Voters across the country cast ballots to elect a governor in Kentucky, decide legislative control in Virginia and determine whether the Ohio state constitution should be changed to enshrine the right to have an abortion.
“These are all races and issues that faith voters care about, even though off-year elections get less attention in the U.S. than presidential and midterm congressional ones.”
So reports Clemente Lisi, who details “five things we learned from this year’s results and what they mean to faith voters.”
The fight goes on: “In the wake of a sound abortion rights victory in Ohio, some faith leaders are rejoicing, others mourn and all say their efforts to mobilize around abortion are far from over.”
Religion News Service’s Kathryn Post emphasizes that the abortion debate in Ohio is “not a simple clash between religious and secular voters.” It’s much more complex than that, as the RNS story explains.
A focus on Israel support: Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, five GOP candidates — not including Donald Trump — took the debate stage Wednesday night.
In the first debate since war erupted in the Middle East, the Republicans “appealed to Zionist evangelicals while condemning campus antisemitism,” Christianity Today’s Harvest Prude reports.
They “spent over an hour addressing the conflict and coming to Israel’s defense.”
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. ‘We are going crazy’: Washington Times religion writer Mark A. Kellner shares the story of an Israeli family whose loved one is being held hostage by Hamas.
“Yonatan and Ido Shamriz have met with legislators in the U.S. Capitol and addressed thousands of students at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, with the same message Wednesday: Secure the safe release of their younger brother Alon from Gaza,” Kellner writes.
2. ‘Christian Nashville-ism’: “The mix of religion, power, money and influence around Nashville and its suburbs makes it fertile ground for a Southern evangelical take on Christian nationalism,” Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana reports.
Smietana’s take on Williamson County follows an in-depth report last year by The Tennessean’s Liam Adams and Cole Villena on “the suburban ‘new frontier’ for American evangelical Christianity.” Of course, many of Nashville’s “suburbs” used to be small towns, with lots of churches.
CONTINUE READING: “Looking Back And Ahead: Takeaways From This Week's Voting And The GOP Debate” by Bobby Ross, Jr., at Religion Unplugged.