In a decision hailed by some as a victory for tribal rights and ecological preservation, the Ninth Circuit on Thursday upheld voiding 40-year lease extensions for geothermal energy production on 26 plots of California land deemed sacred by Native Americans.
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The Justice Department Thursday sued a suburb of Detroit for refusing to allow a Muslim organization to build a mosque.
Read moreThe city of Phoenix can’t force a local calligraphy business to make custom wedding invitations for same-sex couples, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday.
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A Catholic hospital sued for refusing to help a terminally ill patient end his life asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit Wednesday night.
Read moreA Southern California ministry whose leaders are charged with using deadbolt locks to detain homeless residents and making them turn over panhandling money was no fly by night operation. Imperial Valley Ministries was known in the remote desert region for decades of work helping drug addicts turn their lives around.
Read moreA dozen leaders of Imperial Valley Ministries, including the former pastor, were charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with subjecting dozens of mostly homeless people to forced labor, surrender welfare benefits and panhandle up to nine hours a day, six days a week, for the financial benefit of church leaders, federal prosecutors said in San Diego.
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Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. said Tuesday that he’s asking the FBI to investigate what he called a “criminal” smear campaign orchestrated against him by several disgruntled former board members and employees.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most ancient and well-preserved religious materials known, and researchers announced Friday their discovery of how the documents managed to survive thousands of years.
Read moreA Texas teenager who was booted from his school’s science team because the school district said a sacred braid he’s been growing since infancy violates its dress code won an injunction Thursday allowing him to participate in extracurricular activities.
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Pope Francis on Friday told tens of thousands of faithful at a packed stadium not to resort to “vengeance” as he wound up a visit to Mozambique, ravaged by a 16-year civil war and now the target of jihadist attacks.
Read morePope Francis acknowledged his growing opposition within the conservative right wing of the U.S. Catholic Church and said in offhand remarks aboard the papal plane Wednesday that it is “an honor if the Americans attack me.”
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A Catholic school in Tennessee has removed the Harry Potter books from its library after the school’s priest decided they could cause a reader to conjure up evil spirits.
Read moreSpain’s brutal fascist dictator Francisco Franco was buried inside a massive basilica shortly after he died in 1975, but the presence of his tomb at the heart of this massive monument outside Madrid honoring victims of the Spanish Civil War is the subject of one of this country’s most acrimonious political dramas.
Read moreA dramatic late-night call from an Australian judge to a plane bound for Sri Lanka has temporarily spared a family of four — including two Aussie-born toddlers — from deportation and fueled a political firestorm Down Under.
Read moreCatholic sex abuse survivors in Mississippi and Wisconsin on Thursday demanded that federal authorities investigate allegations from three black Mississippi men who say they were molested by Franciscan friars during the mid-1990s, when they were as young as 9 years old.
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A growing majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade due in part to a broadening consensus on abortion rights among Democrats and less agreement among Republicans, the Pew Research Center reported Thursday.
Read moreThe leading agency tasked with connecting people living on the streets of Los Angeles to shelter and services has failed to meet important goals and has become an inefficient reactive force to the homeless crisis, according to an audit released Wednesday.
Read moreIs the Book of Mormon the word of God? That is not a question for an American court of law to answer, attorneys for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Tuesday in a motion to dismiss a federal conspiracy lawsuit against the church.
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Federal officials served a violation notice Wednesday to a Vermont hospital that it says forced a nurse to participate in an elective abortion despite her moral objections.
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French police are hunting for robbers who have stolen bronze bells from the steeples of listed Provencal churches in the dead of night over the past month.
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