We are a nation of believers. Mostly. A Gallup poll last year found that 91 percent of Americans believed in God or some universal spirit. Yet a more recent poll by WIN-Gallup International and published by Religion News Service found that the number of Americans who say they are “religious” dropped from 73 percent in 2005 to 60 percent today. And in that poll, 5 percent of Americans said they are atheists, up from 1 percent in 2005.
On stage in a church on Detroit’s east side, Myra Morrison thrust her right fist down in front of her body and pulled it up slowly — as if she were yanking out her soul and delivering it to God. She was dressed in a white robe, wearing white paint on her face like a mask.
HICKORY, N.C. — The first reading comes from the Book of Kings, with an angel nudging an exhausted and distraught Elijah, telling him to get up and leave.
Inside the large meditation room, 10 children are circled around their teacher, alternatively squirming and listening as she explains the significance of the offerings on the altar behind her.
How Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith will affect the presidential campaign is among 2012’s biggest political enigmas: He doesn’t say much about it on the trail.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Although a devout Muslim, Ruby Sous hasn’t fasted during Ramadan in two years.
Catholic Charities of Kansas has launched a statewide campaign to promote the values and benefits of marriage.
When Lisa Edwards learned she had cervical cancer in 2009, she called the parish nurse.
Dean Smidderks doesn’t turn 78 until next month, but as far as he’s concerned he’s already received a birthday present beyond his wildest dreams.
HAWORTH, N.J. — A New Jersey priest is providing a rare, intensive look inside a Roman Catholic priesthood tarred and shaken by the child-sex-abuse scandals.
The Kansas Catholic Conference will rally for religious freedom on Friday in Topeka.
CHICAGO — The teen preacher addressed each person in the pew: the grandmother, the teenage usher, the unemployed father, the single mom.
The Kansas West, Kansas East and Nebraska United Methodist conferences will be incorporated into a single conference, based in Wichita, starting in January 2014.
When St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church was built in 1887, it was meant to be a sanctuary where German immigrants could attend mass in their native tongue. Now, it is home to about 700 families with European, Vietnamese and Hispanic roots.
AKRON, Ohio — Loretta Brown, like many grandmothers, has a lot of good advice.
After the last tourists leave the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City at nightfall, a little-known but centuries-old tradition unfolds at one of Christianity’s holiest sites.
Sister Simone Campbell doesn’t wear a habit.
In the video, the young man with the face of an altar boy speaks with quiet conviction for 67 minutes, looking a church congregation in the eye, glancing only occasionally at his notes, making his case that when it comes to homosexuality and the Bible, most people have it all wrong.
Jewish enrollment at Rutgers University’s flagship campus is estimated to have jumped by more than 20 percent last year, due in no small part to the growth of services on campus that are particularly appealing to Orthodox students, community leaders say.
Thousands of people have trod the dirt path leading to the shore of Pinto Lake County Park in the 20 years since a Watsonville, Calif., woman reported seeing a vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe in an oak tree there.
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