(RNS) Nearly eight in 10 respondents who participated in a Christianity Today International survey said convicted sex offenders should be welcomed in church pews. The vast majority of survey participants — pastors, church leaders and staff members and active Christians — agreed to the idea so long as offenders who were released from prison were…

(RNS) Two federal courts have issued strong defenses of religious expression in two separate decisions, one involving a teenager’s nose piercing and the other a license plate. Ariana Iacono, a freshman at Clayton (N.C.) High School, was allowed to return to class on Friday (Oct. 8) after missing more than four weeks of school for…

(RNS) More than 160 North American Muslims from the U.S. and Canada have issued a “Defense of Free Speech” statement that affirms free speech and condemns those who threaten violence against people who criticize or mock Islam. The statement follows recent deadly riots in Afghanistan after a small number of American Christians threatened to burn…

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican’s top bioethics official expressed “perplexity” after the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded Monday (Oct. 4) to the inventor of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Bishop Ignazio Carrasco de Paula, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, praised British scientist Robert G. Edwards for opening a “new and important chapter in…

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