Wednesday’s News & Ideas - 10/29/2025

Latino pastors look to refit preaching and pastoral care to trauma of mass deportations
Religion News Service: Latino Christian leaders meeting in Southern California discussed how best to pastor congregations newly traumatized by the Trump mass deportation policy.

‘Exvangelical’ women are leaving their churches. But is it decline or renewal?
Religion News Service: Dissenting former evangelical Christian women are forging a path different from those who have left the church in the decades-long decline in institutional faith.

Swords into Plowshares: Jalane Schmidt on memory, public art, and Kara Walker’s “Unmanned Drone”
Religion Dispatches: The pile of bronze ingots is what remains of an ungainly Robert E. Lee statue that Drs. Jalane Schmidt and Andrea Douglas, professors at the University of Virginia and cofounders of the Swords into Plowshares project, fought for years to remove.

Romania opens world’s largest Orthodox church
DW: The construction of the largest Orthodox Christian church in the world took 15 years, with thousands flocking to the opening. It has an interior capacity for up to 5,000 worshippers.

Most Americans skeptical of paranormal phenomena
Religion Unplugged: Many U.S. homes may decorate with ghosts and witches for Halloween, but most U.S. adults are doubtful they actually exist.

The Spark

How ‘neurodivergent’ became a word for many types of minds
Since the pandemic, “neurodivergent” has made waves online, in the media and in academic studies to help talk about neurological differences more inclusively, NPR says.