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News Stories

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

Engraving in black ink on cream paper with a single crimson accent, the Discerner desk image

I Have Initialed Boxes I Did Not Read to Get Something I Wanted. Oregon Asked a Widow With Five Children to Initial One She Did Not Believe Before It Would Let Her Love a Sixth. On September 9 the State Signed Instead. Read Paragraph Five.

Oregon told a widowed mother of five she could adopt no child unless she agreed to words she did not believe. On September 9 the state signed a two page order. Paragraph five is the part worth reading.

Engraving of a Nigerian village road at night, black ink on cream paper with a single crimson accent

They Waited for the Bus Door to Open at Dungus Junction. Nine Died on the Road to Jos, Four More Are Named in Mangu, and the Conductor, Four Days Into the Job, Hid While They Emptied His Pockets.

Nine died when gunmen fired on a bus at Dungus Junction, Kuru, on Sunday night. Four more are named in Mangu. The conductor, four days into the job, hid while they took his phone.

Everyone Will Call This the Graham Family's Ambassador. Read the Statute. The Chair Has Been Empty for Twenty Months, Xi Lands in Eight Days, and the Job Was Never to Free Prisoners. It Was to Make Sure Someone in the Room Asks.

Everyone Will Call This the Graham Family's Ambassador. Read the Statute. The Chair Has Been Empty for Twenty Months, Xi Lands in Eight Days, and the Job Was Never to Free Prisoners. It Was to Make Sure Someone in the Room Asks.

Cissie Graham Lynch is nominated to an office empty since January 2025. The statute says what it can and cannot do, and Xi Jinping arrives before any vote.

Engraving: five elderly people in padded jackets stand in the cold at night outside a blank concrete building, one holding a folded coat, one leaning on a cane, a single crimson scarf

Thirty Police Came for a Reading Group in Chengdu on Friday Afternoon. They Took Eleven People, Most of Them Past Sixty, One of Them With a Single Lung. The Charge, When It Came, Was Ten Days for Preaching.

Eleven Early Rain members, most past sixty, taken from a Friday reading group in Chengdu. Nine out by Saturday. Two elders got ten days, no judge, for preaching.

I Have Sat Through Funerals Where the Fight Was Over the Hymns. In a Village in Chhattisgarh the Fight Was Over Whose God Got the Body, and It Ended With Ganga Water on the Living.

I Have Sat Through Funerals Where the Fight Was Over the Hymns. In a Village in Chhattisgarh the Fight Was Over Whose God Got the Body, and It Ended With Ganga Water on the Living.

The worst argument I have witnessed at a funeral was about a hymn. One side of the family wanted the old one, the other side wanted the new one, and the pastor, wiser than any of us, had both played and let the organ absorb the grievance. Nobody's

Engraving of a lone man walking away along an empty road beside a long blank wall topped with wire, a strip of crimson cloth on the bundle under his arm

Pastor Lian Xuliang Walked Out of a Xi'an Detention Center on September 5, Four Years After the Police Took Him. Nobody Has Said Why. Nobody Has Said Whether His Father Is Still Inside.

The police came for the Church of Abundance on August 17, 2022. They took the founding pastor, Lian Changnian. They took his son Lian Xuliang, ordained the autumn before. They took a preacher named Fu Juan. Two days later the city's civil affairs bureau declared a congregation that

Everyone Will Call This the Day Washington Agreed to Pay for Worship. Read the Opinion. It Is Nearly Forty Pages About Whether a Federal Clerk May Decide What Counts as Worship.

Everyone Will Call This the Day Washington Agreed to Pay for Worship. Read the Opinion. It Is Nearly Forty Pages About Whether a Federal Clerk May Decide What Counts as Worship.

The Justice Department told HHS the old bar on spending grant money for sectarian worship, instruction or proselytization violates the Free Exercise Clause. What the opinion holds, what it concedes, and why a memo is not a ruling.