Leonardo Blair

Latest

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  May 26, 2020

  COGIC, churches hit hard by coronavirus say they won’t reopen as disease not yet contained

  Despite a call from President Donald Trump that governors reopen houses of worship “right now,” churches whose predominantly black and Hispanic congregations have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic say they will remain closed because the virus has not yet been contained.

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  May 22, 2020

  Black conservatives skewer Joe Biden for suggesting blacks who vote for Trump over him ‘ain’t black’

  Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden was being skewered by black Americans and others online Friday after he suggested in an interview with a prominent black New York City radio host that if he struggled to vote for him over President Donald Trump he “ain’t black.”

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  May 22, 2020

  President Trump warns of broken America if churches aren’t reopened

  President Donald Trump says he wants churches to reopen as quickly as possible as they are so important to the “psyche” he believes if they remained closed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic “you’ll break the country.”

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  May 22, 2020

  Unless families get more support, religions in America could face continuing decline: AEI fellow

  Unless families get more support and fertility rates are increased among the faithful, religious communities in America could continue on a path toward “terminal decline,” says economist and researcher Lyman Stone.

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  May 21, 2020

  Pastor, father of 7 killed in crash months after telling church if ‘I’m not here, I want y’all to carry on’

  A beloved Mississippi pastor and father of seven was killed in a grisly crash last Friday, just months after indicating multiple times to his church and his mother that if he were to die he wanted them to “carry on.”

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  May 21, 2020

  NIH head Francis Collins wins $1.3M Templeton Prize for his witness to faith and science

  U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, a devout Christian geneticist, is the 2020 winner of the Templeton Prize, a financial award of $1.3 million that honors his storied career of using science to advocate for the “integration of faith and reason.”

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  May 21, 2020

  Texas mayor tells council member women can’t pray at city meetings because Bible forbids it

  Eric Hogue, the mayor of Wylie, a small city just north of Dallas, Texas, is now under fire for telling a member of the city council that women should not be allowed to pray at public meetings because the Bible forbids it.

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  May 21, 2020

  For small churches hit by pandemic, Churches Helping Churches Challenge is a ‘blessing’

  When the coronavirus pandemic forced the shutdown of his 35-member Ark of Safety Christian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in March, Senior Pastor Kevin Cropper said it also took a big hit financially.

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  May 20, 2020

  Hobby Lobby sues auction house Christie’s alleging deceptive sale of ‘Gilgamesh Dream Tablet’

  Arts-and-craft retailer Hobby Lobby, led by billionaire evangelical Steve Green, has filed a lawsuit against renowned British auction house Christie’s for deceiving the company about the legality of the sale of a rare cuneiform tablet it acquired for display in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

• 
  May 19, 2020

  Pastor dies from coronavirus after laying hands on infected followers, declaring them healed

  Frankline Ndifor, a popular self-styled prophet and former presidential candidate in Cameroon, died from the coronavirus Saturday after laying hands on dozens of his infected followers and pronouncing them healed from the disease. He was 39.