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Every dispatch, brief and reflection, newest first. The Watchman, The Advocate and The Discerner in one place.

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Oklahoma's Top Court Barred a Catholic Charter School. A Federal Judge Cleared the Way for a Jewish One.

A federal judge ordered Oklahoma on Thursday to stop shutting a Jewish charter school out of its program for being religious, the rule that sank a Catholic school in 2024. Some of the sharpest objections come from Oklahoma Jews. The principle protects the school you would never choose, too.

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Colombo Jailed Fifteen for the Easter Bombings. The Church Says Whoever Ordered Them Is Not in the Dock.

Three judges in Colombo convicted fifteen men on Tuesday for helping the Easter Sunday 2019 bombers, who killed 279 people in three churches and three hotels. The Archdiocese welcomed the verdict and called it one part of the case. The former spy chief in custody has not been tried.

Fifty Clerics Signed a Peace Accord in Abuja. Six Weeks Later Gunmen Killed a Pastor Walking to Church.

Fifty Clerics Signed a Peace Accord in Abuja. Six Weeks Later Gunmen Killed a Pastor Walking to Church.

I have signed things I did not expect to change anything. In August more than fifty Christian and Muslim leaders signed a peace accord in Abuja, and the killing did not pause for the ink to dry. What a signature can and cannot do in Nigeria, and why I have decided to take it.

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Xi Freed One Pastor in July After Trump Asked. He Landed at Andrews Wednesday With Eight Still Inside.

Trump met Xi on the tarmac at Andrews on Wednesday. Ezra Jin walked out of detention in July because Trump asked for him in May. A federal commission has put eight more names in front of the President, and the full slate of talks begins Thursday morning.

Everyone Will Call This the Week Washington Freed Pastors to Endorse From the Pulpit. Read the Order Being Appealed. The Judge Never Reached the First Amendment, and the Rule He Applied Is What Protects You From the Next Administration.

Everyone Will Call This the Week Washington Freed Pastors to Endorse From the Pulpit. Read the Order Being Appealed. The Judge Never Reached the First Amendment, and the Rule He Applied Is What Protects You From the Next Administration.

The IRS cannot hand a court power by agreeing to lose. That rule cuts both ways, and that is the point.

I Have Checked My Watch During the Missions Slot at Church. The Man Who Spent Twenty Five Years Filling That Slot Died on Saturday, and the Thing He Was Trying to Close Was the Distance Between His Chair and Mine.

I Have Checked My Watch During the Missions Slot at Church. The Man Who Spent Twenty Five Years Filling That Slot Died on Saturday, and the Thing He Was Trying to Close Was the Distance Between His Chair and Mine.

He spent twenty five years carrying what he had seen back into rooms like the one I was sitting in, checking my watch.

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The State Won by Amending Its Own Religious Freedom Act While the Case Was Pending, and the Speaker Said Why.

On September 14 a Stamford judge dismissed the last claim against Connecticut's repeal of the religious exemption from school vaccines. The state won because the legislature amended its own religious freedom act in April, mid case, after the Attorney General said it might lose.