A small Catholic theater company, Saint Luke Productions, is in high demand telling the story of Augustus Tolton, America’s first Black Catholic priest, who was declared “venerable” – the first step to official sainthood – last year by Pope Francis.
Read More(REVIEW) Beyoncé released the musical and visual album “Black is King: The Gift” on July 31. It serves as an ode to “Blackness” and African spirituality, but in doing so idolizes Blackness in place of God with messages that listeners are also gods.
Read MoreMany Christians in America first think of Jesus as white, thanks to a widely reproduced Christ portrait from the 1940s. In the calls to tear down offensive statues, activists have called to “cancel white Jesus.” But the tradition of painting Jesus inaccurately isn’t just limited to America. Many images throughout art history have interpreted Jesus in a way that reflects their own culture.
Read MoreJeromyah Jones’ father was a painter, but his parents taught him more about the Bible than anything else, with the belief that a foundation in Scripture would allow him to be successful in any career he decided to pursue. This spiritual background helped Jones find his calling: to focus on the intersection of the Bible and black history, from the beginning of slavery in Africa to racial injustice in modern America.
Read More(REVIEW) The church was planned to open May 9 on the 75th anniversary of Russia’s “Victory Day” celebrating the Nazi surrender and end of WWII but postponed during the coronavirus pandemic. The church’s architecture resembles military missiles, iron steps are forged from melted German weapons, and figures like Stalin, responsible for murders of thousands of faithful and clergy, were originally planned to feature inside the sanctuary alongside saints.
Read MoreCombining Buddhism, Haiku poetry and meditative photography, Tyler Knott Gregson offers insight into coping with chaos, loss and isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic through his experiences struggling with autism. He shares his artwork and his journey with more than 350,000 Instagram followers, self-identified “Chasers of the Light.”
Read MoreWhen her physical reality was pushed to its limit, Sybil Archibald plumbed her inner world. She communicates what she discovered through art.
Read More“Apollo’s Fire: O Jerusalem!” a Grammy Award-winning ensemble, brings to the stage the musical roots of each of Jerusalem’s four quarters with poetry and sacred songs from the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Arab sections of Jerusalem’s Old City from the 13th to the 17th centuries.
Read MoreItaly’s lockdown to contain the coronavirus interrupted a Raphael show of more than 100 of the artist’s paintings and drawings. The exhibit ironically marks the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death by fever at the age of 37. A private tour of the Vatican Museum last week gave one of the last peeks into the now-closed Rafael show, among other treasures of the art world in Vatican City.
Read MoreNed Bustard is inspired by his Christian faith to create art and build a publishing company. An upcoming book will explore the modern art, and ancient faith, in the Vatican museums.
Read MoreHindu nationalists are trying to stop a Catholic parish’s proposed 114-feet-high granite Jesus statue atop a hill in rural South India, sparked by a large Christmas land donation from a Hindu politician. The archbishop of Bangalore sought the state chief minister’s intervention this week to continue the $1.5 million project.
Read MoreThe museum’s famed nativity creche, currently on display through January 6, features the baby Jesus with a radiant halo surrounded by figures that range in size from 12 to 15 inches in height.
Read More(OPINION) Kanye West says being a good person isn’t enough— that God calls for radical obedience. Fans are asking whether his switch to gospel music is here to stay or just good marketing.
Read MoreMulti Platinum Christian artist and actress Jaci Velasquez talked to Religion Unplugged about her struggles of family and faith in her new book, “When God Rescripts Your Life,” released Oct. 8.
Read MoreA 2013 mural of a breakdancing Jesus in street artist Banksy’s Bristol neighborhood in England was recently defaced with blue paint.
Read MoreThe Grammy-winning Cuban-born American artist says that a persistent voice always guided him to music. His memoir hit shelves this week.
Read MoreKashmiri classical music, which blends Sufi traditions from Persia with Indian classical music, is facing threat of extinction as fewer students have leisure or funds to study the art form and fewer maestros exist to teach them. Its musicians believe the genre could bring peace to the army-occupied region, following the ways of Sufi mystics who preached peace, tolerance, pluralism and universalism.
Read MoreRebuilding Notre Dame will be a painstaking task. Estimated to cost in the billions, the cathedral has also become a political pawn in a broader fight between traditionalists and secularists. In a country divided politically — the recent European election was another reminder of this — the fate of Notre Dame very much rests in the hands of the country’s warring lawmakers.
Read More(ART REVIEW) The exhibition shows the interactions of humans with Hindu gods like Shiva and the mischievous side of Krishna, with his lover Radha and stealing butter and the clothes of women bathing outside.
Read MoreThe annual pilgrimage is the 33rd day of Judaism's somber seven-week "counting" between Passover and Pentecost and marks the ceasing of a plague that killed 24,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva ( c. 50–135 CE), a sage martyred by the Romans during the genocidal persecution of the Emperor Hadrian.
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