Sourced and dated. No invented facts. Stories on faith, culture, and religious liberty, verified before they run.
This week's top verified stories, plus a daily devotional, straight to your inbox.
A glacier collapse triggered flooding that has now killed more than 1,450 people in Nepal and neighboring Tibet, including hundreds from Christian congregations along the border, with thousands still missing more than a month later.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” · Psalm 46:1
The Fourth Circuit upheld an injunction blocking immigration arrests near churches and other houses of worship while a lawsuit over a 2025 policy change continues.
The Court ruled 9 to 0 that Wisconsin violated the First Amendment by denying a tax exemption to Catholic Charities because it serves people of all faiths.
The Justice Department issued updated religious liberty guidance incorporating recent Supreme Court rulings, following an earlier task force report on anti-Christian bias.
The Court agreed to hear a case over a Catholic preschool's exclusion from Colorado's universal preschool program, on the heels of a deadlocked religious charter school case.
The First Circuit partially upheld Maine's antidiscrimination rules as applied to a Catholic school in the state's tuition assistance program.
A Liberty University student is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a 2004 ruling that lets states deny college aid to students pursuing religious degrees.
A Travis County court ruled the state's judicial conduct commission cannot discipline a justice of the peace for declining to officiate same-sex weddings on religious grounds.
A Texas judge dismissed a proposed settlement that would have let churches endorse political candidates from the pulpit without losing their tax-exempt status.
The court ruled unanimously that judges cannot second-guess a church's own doctrine on what counts as a confidential confession, shielding clergy from the state's abuse-reporting law in those cases.
The justices agreed to decide whether an Ohio man can sue over a city's demand that he get a special-use permit before hosting a small religious gathering in his own home.
The Tenth Circuit unanimously ruled that former donors waited too long to sue over how their tithing was used, handing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints its last major win in a multi-state fraud fight.
A new World Relief and Open Doors US report says the United States resettled zero refugees from the world's 50 most oppressive countries for Christians in fiscal year 2026, a complete halt compared to prior years.
A new Justice Department legal opinion concludes that federal rules excluding faith based groups from government funding violate the Constitution, reversing a 2019 position.
Justices heard oral arguments over whether Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act entitles some women to a religious exemption from the state's near total abortion ban.
Chris Dier, Louisiana's 2020 Teacher of the Year, is petitioning the Supreme Court to rule that the state's law requiring Ten Commandments displays in every public school classroom violates the Establishment Clause.
Delegates at the RCA's General Synod adopted a statement declaring Christian Nationalism opposed to the gospel, joining a wider pattern of denominations taking an official position.
The Presbyterian Church in America voted down a proposal to allow women deacons and moved a partial report on Christian Nationalism forward for further study.
Commissioners voted to let congregations signal openness to LGBTQIA+ pastors and advanced a denomination-wide study on sexuality and family.
Dozens of Evangelical Presbyterian Church congregations are seeking dismissal after the denomination reaffirmed its position on same-sex attraction and ordination.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will create 55 new missions, bringing its total to 506, to keep pace with a growing number of missionaries.
SBC messengers voted 3 to 1 to strengthen the denomination's constitutional ban on women serving as pastors, elders, or preaching to the congregation.
The four-year-old denomination is meeting in Johannesburg this week to elect eight bishops, its first General Conference held on the African continent.
Delegates at the LCMS national convention approved a resolution urging congregations to teach on Christian martyrdom in light of recent attacks on believers.
The Diocese of Arlington is asking priests to read a message at every Mass the weekend before early voting begins, opposing two proposed state constitutional amendments on the November ballot.
The University of Valley Forge will suspend academic operations after this summer's semester, citing financial strain and a Middle States accreditor warning, and is helping its 589 students transfer elsewhere.
The Horizon Texas Conference is suing Highland Park United Methodist Church, alleging the Dallas megachurch quietly rewrote its governing documents to sever ties with the denomination without required approval.
The Southeastern Jurisdictional Conference voted to combine the North Georgia and South Georgia conferences into a single body of over 215,000 members, a consolidation driven by years of financial strain following a wave of congregational exits.
Franklin Graham's relief organization withdrew from a two-year, $300 million government disaster-response award, part of a broader $2 billion federal funding push to faith-based groups announced weeks earlier.
Fifty bishops and denominational leaders representing more than 21,000 Pentecostal congregations gathered in Washington to ask the Trump administration to extend Temporary Protected Status for Salvadorans and restore it for Haitians.
Biola University's Talbot School of Theology has acquired Phoenix Seminary, creating a second Talbot campus and one of the country's largest interdenominational seminaries.
The Diocese of Fall River has restricted Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies, from priestly ministry after allegations of code of conduct violations with adults.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held a groundbreaking ceremony for its fourth Colorado temple, to be built in the Flying Horse neighborhood of Colorado Springs.
The country's largest Protestant foster and adoption agency will only license foster families whose beliefs align with its Statement of Faith, reversing a 2021 policy.
A June 2025 Supreme Court ruling requiring schools to let parents opt kids out of religiously objectionable material is still being implemented in districts nationwide.
Families are challenging a California policy that strips funding from homeschoolers the moment their chosen curriculum turns out to be religious.
Three families argue a state scholarship rule forces them to set aside their religious convictions for a year before they can get help paying for Catholic school.
New federal guidance says states cannot remove children from their homes solely because parents decline to affirm a child's gender identity for religious reasons.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld a ruling giving a father final say over his daughter's religious upbringing after finding the church's teachings on the rapture had harmed her.
Three Houston-area mothers lost their bid to immediately block Ten Commandments posters from Texas classrooms, though their underlying lawsuit under the state's religious freedom law continues.
A Sunnyvale family says their district told teachers to resist honoring religious opt-out requests, dismissing last year's Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling as inapplicable in California.
In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, the DOJ accuses a Kansas City, Kansas school district of helping students socially transition at school while withholding that information from parents, including families with religious objections.
Dozens of legal briefs from state attorneys general, senators, and advocacy groups back California parents challenging a state law that bars schools from telling parents when a child socially transitions gender at school.
A Kirkland father filed a federal lawsuit alleging his school district repeatedly denied his religious objections to LGBTQ related lessons and pronoun requirements for his young son.
Krystle and Anthony Perry are asking the Supreme Court to review a ruling that upheld West Virginia's refusal to grant their daughter a religious exemption from school vaccine requirements.
A group of Wake County parents gave their school district fifteen days to guarantee religious accommodations related to a newly hired teacher or face a lawsuit.
Pastor Ezra Jin was released and reunited with family in the U.S. after a nationwide crackdown on his unregistered Chinese church, though several colleagues remain detained.
Iranian authorities have moved to confiscate a nearly 150-year-old Tehran church and evict the low-income Christian families living on its property.
Two Sudanese church leaders and several family members were kidnapped by armed groups and released within days, amid a wider surge in attacks on Christians in the region.
Gunmen attacked a farming community in Nigeria's Plateau State, killing at least 24 people, most of them women and children, in the latest of several attacks in the region this month.
Kevin Rideout, a missionary pilot who had lived in Niger for nearly two decades, was released after being kidnapped near his home last October.
Dr. Augustinos Samaan, sentenced to five years of hard labor for videos comparing Christianity and Islam, will get an appeal hearing after a trial his lawyers say they were shut out of.
Members of the Viv Ansanm gang coalition stormed an evangelical church in Kenscoff, Haiti, that was sheltering families displaced by earlier violence, killing 47 people and kidnapping more than 50.
Israel's military declared Taybeh, the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, closed to nonresidents through 2027 after a rise in fires, property damage, and intimidation by Israeli settlers.
Pastor David Tang of Wenzhou's unregistered Purpose Driven Church and six others disappeared after a cross-provincial police operation, with authorities refusing to disclose their whereabouts or the reason for their detention.
A Christian family in Chhattisgarh, India had their home's roof torn apart and their water and electricity cut off after refusing to take part in a Hindu reconversion ceremony.
Pastor Wang Sanyuan, 73, leader of a government-registered church in Shandong Province, has not been heard from since he was taken by authorities in March, and his family still has no word on his whereabouts or legal status.
Plateau State's governor ordered security agencies to arrest members of a group operating as Hisbah, an unauthorized Islamic enforcement patrol accused of harassing residents and demanding money in Jos North.
A new report from the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law documents 3,083 Christians killed and 400 churches attacked in Nigeria between January and August 2026, calling the pace of violence a genocide.
A 17-year-old Christian was severely beaten with iron rods and motorcycle chains after he confronted a group that had been harassing girls walking to church in a Christian neighborhood outside Lahore.
More than 200 armed militants attacked the mostly Catholic village of Ayilamo in Benue State, Nigeria, killing at least seven residents and four police officers in a battle that lasted through the night.
Police raided a house church shelter near Oran, Algeria, detaining all twelve Christians present under a law that criminalizes non-Muslim worship outside state approval.
Rev. Dal Thawn Tuang was killed by soldiers as he returned from church activities, the latest in a string of killings of Christian clergy by Myanmar's military junta.
Police broke up a private meeting of elders from China's Early Rain Covenant Church, detaining eleven, most of them in their seventies, before releasing most within days.
Samuel Arif, 26, was arrested in Lahore after a neighbor accused him of derogatory religious remarks toward his daughters, a charge that carries a mandatory death sentence under Pakistani law.
The Christian Medical and Dental Associations and a Colorado family practice filed a federal lawsuit arguing the state's anti-discrimination law forces doctors to provide gender transition procedures against their religious convictions.
The Second Circuit amended its ruling in a fired court officer's COVID vaccine exemption case, holding that employees do not have to prove their employer acted out of hostility toward their faith to win a failure to accommodate claim.
The EEOC says Apple refused a Virginia store employee's request for Friday sundown to Saturday sundown off to observe the Jewish Sabbath, then fired him after he complained about a manager's remarks about his faith.
The USCCB announced a new task force to study how the Catholic Church can help shape the moral development of artificial intelligence, and bishops pressed Congress for stronger safety rules.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent a letter to Idaho congregations urging members to speak out against a November ballot initiative that would add a state right to abortion.
More than 30 pastors joined Senator Josh Hawley in unveiling a declaration calling on Congress to ban the abortion drug mifepristone, saying state abortion laws alone cannot protect unborn life while mail order pills remain available.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes says a New Jersey school district barred its adult volunteers from student club meetings while still allowing outside mentors for secular clubs.
The Court turned down a New York mother's request to enroll her unvaccinated son in kindergarten while her religious exemption case continues, though two justices said they would have granted it.
A Stamford judge ended a four year legal fight from two mothers who argued Connecticut's 2021 repeal of religious vaccine exemptions violated the state's religious freedom law.
A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction letting a Jewish charter school foundation pursue state funding, ruling Oklahoma's ban on religious charter schools likely violates the First Amendment.
The federal agency settled a lawsuit by promising, indefinitely, not to bring gender identity discrimination claims against the Christian Employers Alliance or its more than 20,000 member businesses.
Triad National Security will pay $2.8 million after the EEOC found it denied employees religious and disability accommodations to its COVID 19 vaccine policy and retaliated against those who asked.
A seven year attorney general investigation found more than 270 clergy abused children across the Worcester, Springfield, and Fall River dioceses, mostly before 2002, and called for dioceses to release full records.
The Baltimore-Washington Conference filed a federal lawsuit against Calvary United Methodist Church in Martinsburg after the congregation declared it had separated from the denomination outside the normal process.
Pastor Craig Groeschel and athlete Tim Tebow stepped back from Life Surge events after a Mother Jones investigation alleged the Christian finance conferences pressured attendees into tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
A federal court entered final judgment letting Jessica Bates apply to adopt from foster care without being required to affirm a child's gender identity against her religious beliefs, ending a three year legal fight.
Moms for Liberty and two anonymous parents sued a New Jersey school district, arguing its policy letting counselors withhold a student's social gender transition from parents violates their religious and parental rights.
A six week trial over California's lawsuit against Heartbeat International and a chain of pregnancy centers wrapped with closing arguments, as the centers argue the state's case targets religious and protected speech.
A pastor on his way to Sunday service and eight other people were killed in a wave of weekend attacks across several villages in Plateau State, Nigeria, the latest in a string of assaults on the region's Christian communities.
Father Roman de la Cruz Hernandez, a parish priest in Hidalgo state, was found shot to death beside a highway, prompting Mexico's Catholic bishops to call for a swift and thorough investigation.
A Ukrainian man stabbed five people at a Benedictine abbey in southeastern Poland, killing a priest and wounding four others, in an attack Polish and Ukrainian leaders both condemned.