News & Ideas

Tuesday's News & Ideas - 4/20/2021

  • Immigrants leaving sanctuary
  • Racial audit of TEC
  • Classics & spirituality
  • Poland’s census & Catholicism
  • Religion favored by SCOTUS
  • Moratorium on police videos

Last North Carolina immigrant to take sanctuary at a church goes home
Religion News Service: Juana Luz Tobar Ortega was the first person to seek church sanctuary in North Carolina in 2017 and she is the last to leave.

Episcopal Church releases racial audit of leadership, citing nine patterns of racism in church culture
Episcopal News Service: The Episcopal Church publicly released a report on April 19 that assesses the racial makeup and perceptions of a broad sampling of the church’s leadership and summarizes how race influences internal church culture.

Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe*
The Washington Post: Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture, Cornel West and Jeremy Tate say.

Poland activists urge people to think before ticking Catholic box in census
The Guardian: Campaigners hope more accurate picture of country’s makeup will challenge government narrative of near-universal Catholicism.

Conservative justices aren’t alone in supporting religion at the Supreme Court
Deseret News: Liberal justices often join their more conservative colleagues in rulings favoring religious rights, according to a Deseret News analysis.

The Spark

It’s time for a moratorium on police shooting videos
We have enough proof. What’s the purpose of sharing these violent images anymore, other than to traumatize Black communities? Vox asks.

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