Good morning, Plug-in readers.
Among the news we’re watching: Jehovah’s Witnesses, a global denomination of 8.6 million, are resuming their large conventions for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, as Religion News Service’s Alejandra Molina reports.
Meanwhile, a real longshot has paid off in Las Vegas — aka Sin City, according to Crux’s John Lavenburg:
This temple to secular hedonism, where even the airport has slot machines, and where a 2020 study of the ratio of residents to restaurants found the answer to be the classically diabolical number of 666, became the first new Roman Catholic Archdiocese in America in 19 years.
Whoa, that’s some kind of lede!
This is our weekly roundup of the week’s top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We begin with a long-awaited trial in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
What To Know: The Big Story
Fight for killer’s life: As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s religion editor, Peter Smith was a key part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, which claimed 11 lives.
Now with The Associated Press, Smith is providing must-read coverage of the federal trial in the case that started this week:
Show of defiance: In compelling testimony Wednesday and again on Thursday, survivors recounted the fear they experienced and the heroism they witnessed during the attack. At several moments, Smith noted, witnesses “used the opportunity to educate the jury about their faith — a show of defiance before the man who tried to destroy them and who has expressed little emotion while seated at the defense table.”
Tracking antisemitic threats: The Tree of Life shooting “led to arguably the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to protect Jewish institutions in America.”
In a front-page piece for the New York Times this week, Campbell Robertson details the expansion of “the Secure Community Network, the closest thing to an official security agency for American Jewish institutions.”
Like Smith, Robertson is covering Bowers’ trial, as is the Wall Street Journal’s Kris Maher.