Great stories free us. Great stories move us to imagine beyond our petty self-preoccupations, beyond our living circumstances, beyond our destructive biases.

I like conflict about as much as I like this heat wave. I’ll do anything to avoid it.

A Spokane Valley youth pastor’s social media post went viral after he apologized for setting a rule at the summer camps he supervised that girls could only wear one-piece bathing suits.

Salem police arrested two men during a Tuesday evening protest in front of Planned Parenthood at 3825 Wolverine St. N.E.

Taylor Hall, an artist, activist and public speaker who assisted youth-driven activism against police brutality in her hometown of Indianapolis, will make an appearance at Spokane’s Bethel AME Church on Friday.

“Brush your teeth and say your prayers,” my father used to always say at bedtime when I was a child. I often pondered this, wondering what I was supposed to be praying to the Lord about and why.

Turbulent fire seasons are the result of drought conditions. We’re warned to be careful. But those warnings don’t prevent human-made fires even this early in the fire season in our region. I believe we’re also wallowing in a cultural drought our country hasn’t seen in many decades.

On an August day nine years ago, Sayed A. Hussaini was riding in a car from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, to the province of Ghazni, when the driver crashed into another car – one driven by a member of the Taliban.

Negativity seeps in and makes itself at home in my psyche. I don’t realize it’s happening until it becomes palpable, until I sense a sinking, dark feeling in my chest.

The university is buying their first Torah for the small community of Jewish students, faculty and staff members led by Rabbi Elizabeth Goldstein. 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Saudi Arabia announced Saturday this year’s hajj pilgrimage will be limited to no more than 60,000 people, all of them from within the kingdom, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

CHICAGO – An activist Roman Catholic priest cleared by an Archdiocese of Chicago investigation into claims that he sexually abused several boys decades ago returned to the pulpit of his longtime church on Sunday for the first time in five months.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis on Sunday expressed his pain over the discovery in Canada of the remains of 215 Indigenous students of church-run residential schools and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on “this sad affair.” But he didn’t offer the apology sought by the Canadian prime minister.

LAGOS, Nigeria — Temitope Balogun Joshua, one of Africa’s most popular televangelists who was known as T.B. Joshua, has died. He was 57.

MADISON, Wis. — The Rev. James Altman calls himself “a lowly priest” serving a blue-collar city in western Wisconsin. But when his bishop demanded his resignation – after a series of divisive remarks about politics and the pandemic – Altman refused to oblige and has since raised more than $640,000 from his conservative supporters to defend himself.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has invited representatives of Lebanon’s Christian community to the Vatican on July 1 for a day of prayer and reflection “about the worrisome situation in the country.”

On Tuesday night, the so-called “Church at Planned Parenthood” met along Indiana Avenue to protest abortion, as it has done scores of times in recent years.

Laments are unhealthy if there is too much “woe-is-me” without a conscious hope weaving its way through the prayer. Laments can be only empty tears if the praise is not undergirded by grief honestly, deeply expressed.

ROME – Cardinal George Pell is enjoying his first Roman spring since being exonerated of sex abuse charges in his native Australia: He receives visitors to his Vatican flat, sips midday Aperol spritzes at the outdoor cafe downstairs and keeps up religiously with news of a Holy See financial scandal that he suspected years ago.