Monday's News & Ideas - 3/15/2021
- Year of COVID ministry
- Vatican won’t bless LGBTQ unions
- Vaccines are God’s plan
- Conspiracies & congregations
- Battle over ‘ministerial exception’
- What is ‘waldeinsamkeit’?
Faith leaders’ year of pandemic: grief, solace, resilience
Associated Press: The pandemic, said one assistant pastor, “has called us to rethink and re-imagine what our philosophy of ministering really is in the age of COVID.”
Vatican says Catholic Church can’t bless same-sex unions
NBC News: The formal response to a question on the topic said that the church should “welcome with respect and sensitivity persons with homosexual inclinations.”
‘Think of vaccines as part of God’s plan’: Clergy members urge the hesitant to get shots.*
The New York Times: Thousands of clergy members from a cross-section of faiths -- imams, rabbis, priests, swamis -- are trying to coax hesitant Americans to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Pastors are leaving their congregations after losing their churchgoers to QAnon
Business Insider: Pastors are trying to fight conspiracy theories and misinformation that have gripped churches.
From Massachusetts to Missouri, faith-based schools seek to shield governance under religious exemptions
Baptist News Global: The highest court in Massachusetts ruled this month that a social work professor at a nondenominational Christian college is not a “minister,” meaning she may proceed with a discrimination suit against the college.
The Spark
Waldeinsamkeit: Germany’s cherished forest tradition
Loosely translated as “solitude of the forest,” waldeinsamkeit is seeing a post-pandemic renaissance in Germany, the BBC says.
*access is limited for nonsubscribers
Want to get News & Ideas in your inbox every weekday?
Subscribe to our News & Ideas newsletter or receive our RSS feed in your RSS reader.
