A pastor who had been locked out of the church she was appointed to lead in June preached for the first time from its pulpit on October 31. The lockout was allegedly due to her gender.
“God is still worthy to be praised,” preached Ratona Stokes-Robinson, pastor of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Thorofare, New Jersey, just south of Philadelphia. “And for the rest of my life I promise, no matter what I go through, I come to serve the Lord.”
For-profit businesses with sincerely held religious beliefs are exempt from LGBTQ discrimination liability under a decision by a federal judge in Texas. The October 31 ruling came in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2020 landmark ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
When Michigan’s governor required churches to stop meeting in person on March 16 last year, Kenton Sanders, director of operations at Mars Hill Bible Church, quickly did some worrying math.
About 40 percent of donations to the church in Grandville, Michigan, came during in-person services that drew some 1,750 people weekly. With in-person services shutting down, donations would surely tumble. If that happened, the church would have to lay off some of its staff.
It’s hard to get around without a car in Northeast Ohio. Decades of neglect by the federal and state governments have resulted in endless cuts to transit service, which in turn have led to years of ridership decline.
Amid this transit death spiral, the state continues to pursue initiatives that encourage sprawl. Cleveland has lost 6 percent of its population since 2010, according to the 2020 Census. The declining tax base and government neglect have stranded low-income people who cannot afford to move elsewhere and need transit the most.
New Testament scholar and archaeologist Edgar M. Krentz died on October 31. He was 93.
Krentz was perhaps best known for his 1975 book The Historical-Critical Method, which provided an introduction to and survey of historical criticism as a means of biblical interpretation. He was also a longtime professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, teaching his last class in 2018 despite retiring 20 years earlier.
Krentz’s interest in the historical-critical method began in 1963.
Thema Bryant-Davis, an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has been elected as the 2023 president of the American Psychological Association. Bryant-Davis currently directs the Culture and Trauma Research Lab at Pepperdine University, along with the mental health ministry at First AME Church in South Los Angeles.
This summer, Donald Ottenhoff, a former Century senior editor, retired from his position as executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. Ottenhoff led the institute, located on the property of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, for 17 years.
Ottenhoff is credited with expanding the institute beyond its original residential scholars program where, beginning in 1968, scholars could come to the campus for either a year or a semester of independent study, prayer, and ecumenical dialogue.
Religions for Peace’s deputy secretary general, Kyoichi Sugino, has resigned his position to take on the role of president of Gakurin Seminary, a lay Buddhist training institution in Tokyo. Sugino served in leadership at Religions for Peace for 23 years, becoming deputy secretary general in 2011.
Efforts to win the return of 17 members of a US-based missionary group and a local driver stretched on in late October, as a violent gang demanded $1 million ransom per person.
The individuals kidnapped on October 16 included five children age eight months to 15 years, although authorities were not clear whether the ransom demand included them, a top Haitian official said. Sixteen of the abductees are Americans, and one is Canadian.
The Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries said it would hold a day of fasting and prayer for its missionaries.
The National Council of Churches has elected an all-female slate of officers for the first time in the ecumenical organization’s 71-year history.
Teresa Jefferson-Snorton, leader of the Fifth Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, on October 13 became chair of the organization, starting a two-year term along with the other officers.