WASHINGTON (RNS) A New York minister will soon fill the Obama administration’s long-vacant position to oversee international religious freedom after the Senate voted to confirm the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook for the post. Thursday’s (April 14) voice vote positions Cook to become the first female and the first African-American in the post after a lengthy…

NEW YORK (RNS) The heady days of American congregational expansion are over. The nation’s largest Jewish group, the 1.5 million-member Union for Reform Judaism, is now confronting the same stagnant or even declining membership trends that have become routine for Catholic, mainline Protestant and even some evangelical churches. So when the URJ recently tapped Rabbi…

MOSCOW (RNS/ENInews) A Jehovah’s Witness on trial in Siberia was found innocent on Thursday (April 14) of charges of “inciting religious hatred and enmity,” in a case that was seen as a litmus test of Russian religious freedom. Aleksandr Kalistratov had been accused of distributing Jehovah’s Witnesses literature, which has been qualified as extremist in…

LONDON (RNS) Researchers at two of Britain’s top universities claim that church attendance in many Western nations is falling because people are living longer and therefore have less fear of death. The result, the studies say, is a “graying church.” In Britain, one in four older adults (65 or older) attends church, while just 11…

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