Religion News Service

To Americans who drop coins into the collection plate, write a check or perhaps text in their Sunday donation, the idea that the state would charge an annual tax to support their church can seem strange.

If there is any truth to the leaks concerning the Vatican's forthcoming proposal to reform the Curia, it is going to be a disappointment and a disaster.

Spencer Cullom undertook the yearslong process to become ordained in the United Methodist Church. She hoped that her denomination would drop its restrictions against LGBTQ clergy and allow her to follow that call. But she knew that might not happen.

Democratic White House hopefuls — from Elizabeth Warren to Pete Buttigieg — are already talking a lot about God. Turns out both conservatives and progressives have been listening, and they want to hear more.

The United Methodist Church’s top court has upheld much of the Traditional Plan approved earlier this year, continuing the global denomination’s ban on the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members.

A Roman Catholic bishop in Sudan has charged that the largely Arab and Islamic country's ongoing popular revolution will be hollow if it does not also deliver freedom of worship for non-Muslim faiths.

While Syro-Malabar Catholics number just 5.1 million out of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide, in Kerala, Syro-Malabar Catholics make up the majority of Christians. "Despite low credibility of religious leaders, people continue going to church," said Michael Tharakan, a researcher at the Kerala Council for Historical Research specializing in St. Thomas Christians.

While many younger Americans today are spiritually unaffiliated, aka "nones" — a quarter of all adults under the age of 30 in the United States say they don't identify with any religion or spiritual tradition, according to the Pew Center for Religion and Public Life — millennials are increasingly finding contemplative spirituality appealing.

Losing a cathedral just as Holy Week begins would be the biggest logistical nightmare a bishop could imagine. Where to hold all those liturgies, how to accommodate all those people?

Signs of the Times: As fire devastates the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the building is as much a symbol of the recent history of the Catholic Church in Europe as it once was a symbol of the church's power and cultural supremacy. 

The 850-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris appeared engulfed in smoke Monday evening (April 15).

Refugees fleeing Venezuela’s ongoing economic collapse are crossing the country’s borders to Colombia and Brazil, adding a new front in Latin America’s already critical migration situation, with thousands facing dangerous journeys to escape famine, poverty and political chaos.

State Sen. Charles Perry recently stood on the floor of the Texas Senate in Austin defending a bill that would let state license holders assert their religious beliefs when providing — or denying — certain services.

At dinnertime on a Tuesday night at Ford Hall, a four-story brownstone on West 114th Street in Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood, six residents, of 15, gather for the first dinner shift. Here, spirituality and social connection go hand in hand.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced April 4 that church members in same-sex marriages will no longer be considered apostates. The change also clears the way for their children to be baptized.

The appointment of Wilton Gregory as archbishop of Washington, D.C., is good news for the church, the city and the country.

Catholic theology affirms that confession is good for the soul, so it's a bit of paradox that the last thing the American Roman Catholic bishops or the Vatican want to do is publicly confess everything they know about clergy sex abuse.

Roman Catholic churches have increasingly come under attack in France, a country so long identified with Christianity that it used to be called "the eldest daughter of the church."

It's a simple, if radical, idea. And one that some critics of Richard Rohr, the 76-year-old Franciscan who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque 32 years ago, have described as "dangerous" and even "heretical."

Signs of the Times: When people were first confronted with the extent of Catholic priests' sexual abuse of children, they were angry. But when, in the early 2000s, they learned that their bishops knew about the abuse and did little to stop it, Catholics and even the wider public were outraged.