http://wwrn.org/WWRN provides the international academic and legal community with up-to-date religious news from around the worldenFri, 12 Jun 2026 23:34:55 +0000http://wwrn.org/articles/47446/Bob Mims ("The Salt Lake Tribune," January 18, 2018) A petition campaign demanding a halt to the LDS Church’s practice of closed-door, one-on-one interviews by bishops with children — sometimes including inquiries about sexual matters — had collected 11,493 signatures as of Thursday.http://wwrn.org/articles/47446/http://wwrn.org/articles/47445/Newsweek ("Cristina Maza," January 18, 2018) Five American Muslims filed a lawsuit against FBI Director Christopher Wray and other members of the government because they believe they were put on a terrorist watch list without due process.http://wwrn.org/articles/47445/http://wwrn.org/articles/47444/Niall Murray ("Irish Examiner," January 19, 2018) Future primary teachers are only taking on the role of religion teaching to get into jobs despite a lack of significant enthusiasm, new research suggests. The study by NUI Galway’s school of education found low levels of religious practice among initial teacher education (ITE) applicants.http://wwrn.org/articles/47444/http://wwrn.org/articles/47443/Adelle M. Banks ("RNS," January 19, 2018) Washington — Author Stephen Mansfield, who has written about the faith of former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, says the current occupant of the Oval Office has captured the “fundamental gripes” of evangelicals but misunderstands just how divided they are these days.http://wwrn.org/articles/47443/http://wwrn.org/articles/47442/Adelle M. Banks ("RNS," January 19, 2018) Christian evangelist Luis Palau, who has preached across the globe for five decades, says he has late-stage lung cancer. “Everything is ready and if the Lord wants to take me home in the next few months or two years or whatever it is, I’m ready,” Palau, 83, said in a video recorded with his sons Kevin and Andrew and uploaded to YouTube.http://wwrn.org/articles/47442/http://wwrn.org/articles/47441/("The Japan Times," January 19, 2018) The trials related to Aum Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult that executed the deadly sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, are close to ending after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a former cultist. The top court’s decision dated Thursday upheld a high court’s life sentence on Katsuya Takahashi, 59, who was accused of murder in the sarin attack.http://wwrn.org/articles/47441/http://wwrn.org/articles/47440/("The Guardian," January 19, 2018) The room is filled with the cries of 30 or more babies. Steven Olusola visits each cradle, peering into their eyes in search of illness. “They fall sick often because they never received any breastfeeding,” says Olusola, who founded Vine Heritage Home Foundation with his wife, Chinwe, 13 years ago.http://wwrn.org/articles/47440/http://wwrn.org/articles/47439/Julie Zauzmer ("The Washington Post," January 19, 2018) Atlanta — As he hands each person the Communion wafer, the priest watches his congregants walk back to their seats. They drop to their knees and bow their heads. Hands clasp. Around the church, a tear runs down a cheek, then another, then another. The priest knows the prayers behind the faces of these undocumented immigrants, whom it is his special mission to serve.http://wwrn.org/articles/47439/http://wwrn.org/articles/47438/Nicole Winfield & Christine Armario ("RNS," January 19, 2018) Puerto Maldonado, Peru — Pope Francis traveled deep into the Amazon rainforest demanding an end to the relentless exploitation of its timber, gas and gold and recognition of its indigenous peoples as the primary custodians to determine the future of “our common home.http://wwrn.org/articles/47438/http://wwrn.org/articles/47437/Michele Chabin ("RNS," January 18, 2018) Jerusalem – Inspired by sanctuary movements throughout history, a prominent rabbi in Israel has asked her peers to provide a safe haven for nearly 40,000 African sanctuary-seekers who could soon be deported by the government.http://wwrn.org/articles/47437/http://wwrn.org/articles/47436/Julian Morgans ("Vice," January 18, 2018) The man in the photo above is an artist named Luke Roberts. He’s standing beneath a piece of public artwork he built for the Brisbane City Council, which he says was designed to look like a UFO to symbolise the city’s migrant population. But after a pause he admits it also looks like a UFO because he believes extraterrestrials spawned the human race.http://wwrn.org/articles/47436/http://wwrn.org/articles/47435/Monique Parsons ("Religion & Politics," January 17, 2018) It was June 12, 2016, and a man named Omar Mateen had just opened fire inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding dozens more. Shireen Zaman reached for her phone.http://wwrn.org/articles/47435/http://wwrn.org/articles/47434/Sarah Pulliam Bailey ("The Washington Post," January 19, 2018) The Trump administration has announced new regulations and a new division responsible for handling complaints from health-care workers who do not want to perform a medical procedure like an abortion or assisted death because it violates their religious or moral beliefs, a move that seemed to renew past culture war battles over “conscience protections.http://wwrn.org/articles/47434/http://wwrn.org/articles/47433/Erick Erickson ("The Washington Post," January 19, 2018) The vulgarity President Trump reportedly used last week to describe certain countries in the developing world has gotten a lot of attention. Trump held a private, frank, blunt conversation with congressional leaders where he used a word others have used to describe places considered awful. For some in his base, it might please them.http://wwrn.org/articles/47433/http://wwrn.org/articles/47432/Jacob Lupfer ("RNS," January 18, 2018) On Friday (Jan. 19), nearly 45 years after the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, hundreds of thousands will rally in the streets of Washington. The annual March for Life is overwhelmingly composed of religious Americans. Initially conceived as a mostly Catholic event, the march has included significantly more Protestants in recent decades.http://wwrn.org/articles/47432/http://wwrn.org/articles/47431/Emma Featherston ("The Guardian," January 18, 2018) Harmony Nice is a 20-year old vlogger from Norwich. While she covers beauty on her YouTube channel, and her goth-inspired look is a hit on Instagram, it’s her potions, crystals and tarot cards that set her apart from your average YouTuber. Nice has been practising the Wicca religion for about four years and has been sharing her beliefs with her 300,000-plus subscribers for just over a year.http://wwrn.org/articles/47431/http://wwrn.org/articles/47430/Jack Jenkins ("RNS," January 19, 2018) Washington — In 2017, Kristen Day was one of relatively few women to attend both the record-breaking Women’s March, whose organizers voiced strong support for abortion rights, and the March for Life, an anti-abortion gathering a few days later.http://wwrn.org/articles/47430/http://wwrn.org/articles/47429/Emma Green ("The Atlantic," January 18, 2018) The first time Ashley McGuire had a baby, she and her husband had to wait 20 weeks to learn its sex. By her third, they found out at 10 weeks with a blood test. Technology has defined her pregnancies, she told me, from the apps that track weekly development to the ultrasounds that show the growing child.http://wwrn.org/articles/47429/http://wwrn.org/articles/47428/Yonat Shimron ("RNS," January 18, 2018) To hear it from the Trump administration, Muslim extremists pose the greatest risk to Americans today. Shortly after a judge blocked his ban on travelers from mostly Muslim countries, President Trump tweeted that “many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country.http://wwrn.org/articles/47428/http://wwrn.org/articles/47427/Rick Noack ("The Washington Post," January 19, 2018) It was supposed to be an apology tour, but the pope’s Chile visit drew unexpected ire Thursday after the head of the Catholic Church came to the support of Juan Barros, a bishop accused of covering up sexual abuse. The remarks came at the end of a visit that was intended to ease tensions between the church and victims of sexual abuse committed by a priest named Fernando Karadima.http://wwrn.org/articles/47427/http://wwrn.org/articles/47426/Sandra Jolley and Kristina Arriaga ("RNS," January 11, 2018) For most pastors, the beginning of a new year is filled with the promise of youth programs, baptisms, and marriages. Instead, Pastor Andrew Brunson — Presbyterian cleric in Turkey, American citizen, and pawn in an international game of hostage diplomacy — is spending it in a Turkish jail. Since he was detained in October 2016, his life has been arbitrarily suspended. Representing the U.S.http://wwrn.org/articles/47426/http://wwrn.org/articles/47425/Adelle M. Banks ("RNS," January 11, 2018) The suspension of a popular evangelical university chaplain has highlighted tensions over same-sex marriage in a growing Protestant denomination that forbids it but also takes pride in its willingness to allow congregants to hold opinions contrary to church doctrine. The Rev.http://wwrn.org/articles/47425/http://wwrn.org/articles/47424/("Al Jazeera," January 11, 2018) Amnesty International has reiterated a call for an independent investigation into rights abuses in Myanmar's Rakhine state after the country's army admitted its soldiers were involved in the murder of 10 Rohingya. The remains of the victims were found in December in a mass grave outside Inn Din, a village in the Maungdaw township.http://wwrn.org/articles/47424/http://wwrn.org/articles/47423/Yonat Shimron ("RNS," January 10, 2018) Call it the WikiLeaks of the religion world. A new website called FaithLeaks aims to bring transparency to the workings of religious congregations and denominations by publishing documents and data sets provided by anonymous sources.http://wwrn.org/articles/47423/http://wwrn.org/articles/47422/("Telesur," January 8, 2018) Pope Francis is the second head of Catholicism to begin a declassification process of Vatican documents. Pope Francis ratified Monday his intention of declassifying Vatican's archives on Uruguay's military dictatorship, a process promoted by Pope Francis for a year.http://wwrn.org/articles/47422/http://wwrn.org/articles/47421/Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra ("Christianity Today," January 10, 2018) For decades, North Korea has clearly been the world’s worst persecutor of Christians. But now, another nation nearly matches it. Open Doors released today its 2018 World Watch List (WWL), an annual ranking of the 50 countries where it is most dangerous to follow Jesus. Approximately 215 million Christians now experience high, very high, or extreme levels of persecution;http://wwrn.org/articles/47421/http://wwrn.org/articles/47420/Roxanne Stone ("RNS," January 10, 2018) America is currently experiencing a reckoning in terms of gender violence and harassment. Countless women have begun speaking out about the abuse they’ve endured from powerful men, and the #metoo movement has sparked an awareness of a prevalent problem that has often gone unreported or been willfully ignored. As Oprah Winfrey stated in her Golden Globes speech, “a new day is on the horizon.http://wwrn.org/articles/47420/http://wwrn.org/articles/47419/Richard Flory ("RNS," January 10, 2018) The popular view of California is of a liberal, godless region, a land of possibilities that is open to experimentation in all things. As novelist Wallace Stegner wrote in 1967, the California motto is: “Why not? It might work.” This is true even in an otherwise conventional field as religion, with perhaps the most illustrative example being that of the state’s megachurches.http://wwrn.org/articles/47419/http://wwrn.org/articles/47418/("World Watch Monitor," January 11, 2018) A Chinese priest has been missing from his home town in China’s eastern Zhejiang province since government officials took him away just after Christmas “for a brief chat”.http://wwrn.org/articles/47418/http://wwrn.org/articles/47417/Nicole Winfield (AP, January 11, 2018) Vatican City — Pope Francis will meet with two victims of Chile’s military dictatorship during his upcoming trip, and isn’t ruling out a private encounter with victims of clerical sex abuse, the Vatican said Thursday. Spokesman Greg Burke made the comments in announcing details of the Jan. 15-21 trip to Chile and Peru, Francis’ 22nd foreign trip and sixth to his home continent of South America.http://wwrn.org/articles/47417/