Monday's News & Ideas - 9/11/2023

Three dozen NC churches have agreed to leave the UMC under approved plan
Religion News Service: After a judge dismissed their lawsuit, the 36 churches in the Western North Carolina Conference agreed to leave under the denomination’s exit plan. They will formally exit in November.

A miracle in Missouri? The nun who put her abbey on the map.*
The New York Times: Four years after her death, the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster has not decomposed, her fellow nuns said. Believers come from all over to see for themselves.

He was Mormon royalty. Now his lawsuit against the church is a rallying cry.*
The Washington Post: James Huntsman, a film distributor and father of five, has become an unlikely and high-profile critic of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at a time when members’ demands for transparency are rising and church growth rates are dramatically slowing.

Religious leaders without religion: How humanist, atheist and spiritual-but-not-religious chaplains tend to patients’ needs
The Conversation: How can you be a religious leader without religion? In reality, a growing number of chaplains are nonreligious: people who identify as atheist, agnostic, humanist or “spiritual but not religious.”

The search for a church that isn’t a church
NPR: America is getting less churchy. But is it getting any less spiritual?

The Spark

The 9/11 speech that was never delivered
The long-hidden drafts of Condoleezza Rice’s remarks offer a portrait of a lost world* — and some lessons for the present, says The Atlantic.

*access is limited for nonsubscribers