For 14 years in a row, statistics for Southern Baptists, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, are still declining. In 2020, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) saw crucialcomponents falling, including membership, attendance, donations, and the total number of congregations.
On May 24, 2021, the central government-supervised Delhi Police Special Cell raided Twitter India's Delhi and Gurgaon offices concerning the social media outlet tagging BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra's tweet on "congress toolkit" as "manipulated media". As social media platforms are under fire from the central government to hand over rights of policing content, the freedom of speech in India takes another hit as the government unleashes police force on Twitter for not favouring the ruling party on its platform.
NBC News interviewed a handful of former students (or ex-interns) regarding a Christian leadership training program at Bethany Church in Baton Rouge, LA. These ex-interns attested that the program was abnormally brutal. They described their disturbing experiences.
On April 28th, 2020, Mubarak Bala (age 37), an Ex-Muslim atheist and President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was apprehended at his home and then taken to the northern state of Kano. There he faced blasphemy accusations from religious figures. Blasphemy is punishable by death in the region where sharia law is enforced on Muslims despite Nigeria’s own Constitution.
On April 23rd, at least 45 people were killed, and approximately 150 others were treated for injuries after a stampede crushed them at a religious festival in Israel. Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered in celebration at one of the most significant events in the country.
On the morning of Tuesday April 20th, the Canadian Province of Quebec announced plans to appeal a ruling which exempted minority teachers and some politicians from wearing religious attire or symbols.
The ruling, that supports much of a 2019 law, does not apply to teachers in Quebec's English-language school boards, as they hold special rights over education under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Montero Lamar Hill, a well-known rapper better known as Lil Nas X, created and recently released his “Satan Shoes” to solicit publicity by stirring up controversy.
On March 22nd, a West Yorkshire school teacher showed his students a cartoon image depicting the prophet Muhammad to illustrate a lesson within the school’s curriculum. Within three days, at least 50 demonstrators gathered outside of Batley Grammar School to protest the teacher’s actions.
On March 14th, the Vatican office that manages doctrine announced that the Catholic Church is not authorized to bless same-sex unions.
A former priest in Argentina, Andrés Gioeni, formally disavowed his Catholicism after the Vatican’s decree. In recent years, Gioeni became an LGBTQ activist lobbying for a more open Catholic Church. He has blessed same-sex unions in Argentina, where Pope Francis was born and initially became part of the Catholic Church.