(ANALYSIS) Taiwan’s international rating on freedom of religion is undisputedly very high. The 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom, published by the U.S. Department of State, also noted Taiwan’s constitutional protection of the freedom of religion as well as the diversity of religious beliefs, but questions are asked about how freely can one practice their religion.
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(ANALYSIS) Billboard commentator Xander Zellner recently noted: “Say your prayers: Christian music is making a serious comeback. On the Billboard Hot 100, dated May 10, two Christian songs are making waves: Brandon Lake's 'Hard Fought Hallelujah' ranks at No. 44 in its 11th week on the chart (after reaching No. 40) and Forrest Frank's 'Your Way's Better' jumps from No. 72 to No. 62 in its second week.”
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The use of artificial intelligence to “reanimate” the dead for a variety of purposes is quickly gaining traction. Over the past few years, we’ve been studying the moral implications of AI at the Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and we find these AI reanimations to be morally problematic.
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(ANALYSIS) Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s affiliation with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches drew attention again with a Pentagon prayer led by Hegseth and his pastor, Brooks Potteiger, in which they praised President Donald Trump, who they said was divinely appointed.
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(ANALYSIS) Whatever one’s position in a conflict, certain actions cannot be justified. Targeting civilians, destroying essential services, blocking aid, using civilian areas for military purposes or punishing entire populations for the acts of a few are all violations of international law and human conscience.
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(ANALYSIS) Described in the Bible as the first nation to attack the Israelites after the Exodus, the Amalekites came to symbolize a recurring evil: Not merely one that seeks to harm the Jewish people, but one bent on their erasure. Across the centuries, Jewish thinkers have mapped this archetype onto real-world threats. Some are asking: Should Iran be added to that list?
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(ANALYSIS) Most of my research is in Chinese religions, and I find it fascinating that popular video games — like many popular films before them — draw from the mythologies, cosmologies, unseen powers and heroic narratives found across the world’s religious traditions. Recent examples such as “Black Myth: Wukong” and “Raji: an Ancient Epic” draw explicitly from mythologies and religious narratives of China and India, respectively.
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(ANALYSIS) There’s a really big problem with just using religious attendance as a proxy for religiosity. It masks a way more interesting feature of American life — a never-attending person who identifies as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular is a completely different species compared to a never-attending person who still identifies with a religious tradition.
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(ANALYSIS) On June 11, 2025, a nongovernmental organization, Global Rights Compliance, published findings of their investigation into the issue of Western companies linked to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) critical minerals industry in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
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When Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, it wasn’t all that surprising when her Notre Dame Law School colleagues offered high praise for her work. Earlier, when she was nominated to the 7th Circuit in Chicago, every single member of that faculty signed an endorsement letter stating, in part: “Amy is a role model for all of us, and will be a model of the fair, impartial, and sympathetic judge."
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(ANALYSIS) One of the crucial services the Rev. Tony Marr provides as the leader of the Higher Ministries consulting firm is to connect young pastors — fresh out of seminaries and Bible colleges — with churches that need new leaders. There's a problem. Most of these churches seeking pastors have fewer than 150 members and are considered “small churches” in the Protestant marketplace.
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(ANALYSIS) Details are still emerging about Vance Boelter, the 57-year-old man accused of killing a Minnesota state politician and her husband and grievously injuring another state senator and his wife. But the more we learn about Boelter, the more likely it seems that Christian nationalism may have played a role in motivating the attack.
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(ANALYSIS) If we agree that on-screen depictions of Jesus that add things to Scripture aren’t automatically evil, then “The Chosen” actually comes out seeming like something of a miracle. It sticks pretty darn close to Scripture when it comes to Jesus’ own words and actions, mostly developing other characters. And what it does add to Jesus’ words is within the realm of typical Christian orthodoxy.
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(ANALYSIS) The central government’s gazette notification for India’s upcoming 2027 census omits the word “caste.” This, despite earlier public assurances that caste data would be collected. The absence of explicit mention has triggered accusations of deliberate evasion. Is the reluctance tied to the disruptive potential of a full caste enumeration—one that could unsettle the ideological foundations of Hindu nationalist politics?
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(ANALYSIS) All that and more underscores the significance of a long-awaited and definitive new biography, out now: “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet” (Yale University Press) by historian John G. Turner of George Mason University. It is the first biography to benefit from official publication of the 27-volume Joseph Smith Papers.
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(ANALYSIS) Compared to Europe, where many sainthood causes benefit from institutional support, funding and access to the Vatican, Africa faces unique challenges. Canonization is a complex and costly process. It requires documentation, verification of miracles and years of advocacy. Local dioceses may lack the resources to keep these causes moving forward. In the end, many African Catholics feel like their voices and stories have been left on the margins.
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(ANALYSIS) This is not about rejecting technology. This is about resisting moral drift. It’s about remembering that not every innovation is an acceptable invitation. The church should be discerning enough to see that just because crypto is legal doesn’t make it righteous. If God’s messengers hope to offer moral clarity, they can’t do so while pocketing digital currencies that may be soaked in sin.
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(ANALYSIS) To this day, there are no national memorials for the victims. Instead, triumphalist military monuments, many of them built in Tamil-majority areas, celebrate a victory in a war whose collateral damage amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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(ANALYSIS) This is not a moment for faith-based institutions to retreat or sanitize their convictions. It is a moment to reclaim their voice and affirm their rightful in shaping a public life capacious enough to hold true difference, including sacred difference. Religious freedom — grounded in conscience, practice and institutional distinctiveness — must remain a cornerstone of our shared civic life.
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