A lawsuit against a Hindu organization based in New Jersey has been amended with more plaintiffs and more respondents spanning five states. The case against Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), a Hindu organization based in New Jersey, now includes temples in California, Illinois, Texas, and Georgia.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) began tracking vandalism and other forms of attacks on Catholic sites across the country. Aaron Weldon of the Office of Religious Liberty of the USCCB said the attacks on the historic Catholic sites were “the impetus for us to start monitoring these sorts of events.”
On October 31, US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled that businesses that hold religious beliefs are exempt from LGBTQ discrimination liability. O’Connor held that Braidwood Management Inc. is exempted from the LGBTQ anti-bias protections under the first amendment and Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
A 2021 survey published on November 1, by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) revealed the extreme opposition that the majority of Evangelicals have towards religious diversity. The 2021 American Values Survey conducted by the PRRI from September 16 to 29, 2021, included 2,508 American respondents. The survey's result showed a growing number of Americans, both religious and non-religious, support religious diversity.
On Tuesday, November 2, The Guardian published an article detailing their investigation into an ultra-conservative evangelical church in Moscow, Idaho. Christ Church of Moscow is known for its ultra-conservative ideologies. The Guardian reported that Christ Church’s leadership has openly announced their desire to establish a theocracy.
On October 13, Wednesday, the Diocese of Brooklyn fired Matthew LaBanca, the music director of the Corpus Christi Church parish in Queens, New York. A statement released by the diocese said that LaBanca did not comply with church teachings as a requirement for being a minister.
A March 2021 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed that most adult US Americans support the separation of church and state. With 69% of the respondents agreeing that the federal government should never declare any state religion. At the same time, 67% agree that the US Constitution was written by humans and reflects their vision, not necessarily God’s vision.
On October 13, a lawsuit filed in Washington DC accuses the US federal government of financing organizations that discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals from becoming foster parents. The complaint stated that Kelly Easter was declined twice from becoming a foster parent for a migrant child by a federal foster care program.
Esther Callejas, a 24-year old mother of two from Arizona, fatally shot her two children in the morning of September 27, 2021. Phoenix police Sgt. Ann Justus said in a statement that Callejas shot her children because she wanted them “to go to heaven.”
The MIT Technology Review obtained a Facebook internal data-research report in 2019. According to the report from 2019 running up to 2020, the top pages that create content for Christian and African American audiences were run by troll farms. The separate pages creating different ranges were managed by the same troll farms based in Kosovo and Macedonia.
