Parents of students who were banned from handing out Bibles during lunch at a Pennsylvania high school reached an agreement with the school district Monday that changes language in the student handbook.

The students at Cumberland County High School in Mechanicsburg, Pa., said in January the principal was preventing them from handing out Bibles during any moment of the school day, including during lunch. 

The Independence Law Center then filed suit on behalf of the parents of the students, claiming the school’s policy was a violation of constitutionally protected free speech. The students are part of a group called the Christians in Action Club, or Bible Club.

A federal judge issued an injunction against the school district in February, allowing the students to hand out Bibles.

Under the agreement reached between the parents and the Mechanicsburg Area School District, the district agreed to delete a portion of the student handbook that banned any speech that “seek[s] to establish the supremacy of a particular religious denomination, sect or point of view.”

The district also agreed to pay the parents’ attorney fees. The judge signed off on the agreement.  

The Independence Law Center and school attorneys worked together to rewrite the school policy, according to a press release. 

“When students enter a government school, they do not shed their…

President Donald Trump has directed his staff to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terror group, a move that would impose severe travel and economic sanctions on partners and others who associate with the group.

The plan was first reported April 30 by the New York Times which noted that the policy dictate followed an April 9 White House visit by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The sanctions imposed would reportedly punish those who fund the group or provide banking services, and ban members or those with ties to the group from entering the United States.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed the Trump administration is preparing such a designation.

“The president has consulted with his national security team and leaders in the region who share his concern, and this designation is working its way through the internal process,” Sanders said in a statement to the Times.

According to the published report, el-Sisi urged Trump to take action against one of his political adversaries. El-Sisi was elected president in 2014, a year after leading a coup against former president Mohamed Morsi, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood. Some observers say the terror designation would give el-Sisi more latitude in cracking down on the organization. 

While the move would benefit el-Sisi, such a declaration could be tricky since membership in the Muslim…

After being thrown from a third story balcony at the Mall of America earlier this month, five-year-old Landen Hoffman is awake and responsive.

As Christian Headlines previously reported, after Hoffman was thrown 40 feet from a balcony on April 12, doctors feared he would suffer from severe brain damage. 

Despite the fact that the boy broke his legs and arms, an MRI revealed this week that the five-year-old has no brain damage. 

According to CBN News, the family’s lawyer R. Stephen Tillitt shared that Hoffman is awake and responsive and is no longer considered to be in “critical condition.”

In a statement on a GoFundMe page set up for the family, the family praised God for Hoffman’s miraculous diagnosis. 

They wrote, “All praise, glory and honor to God! He saved our son’s life and is healing him in the most miraculous ways.”

The statement continued, “We are so elated to let you know that our son is now alert and conscious and is no longer in critical condition! We are now turning our focus to additional surgeries, healing, rehabilitation and eventually a return home, which we hope will happen by June.”

The family also thanked the nearly 29,000 people from around the world who at the time of this writing had donated more than $1 million towards Hoffman’s recovery. 

The family wrote, “We want to…

Tim Wise, an anti-racism activist and author, spoke at Harvard University’s “Decade of Dialogue” event last week, criticizing President Donald Trump of “always” being a racist.

Wise was speaking at the university’s annual diversity conference hosted by the faculty of arts and sciences. The conference is aimed at providing a “retrospective look at diversity and inclusion, a discussion of current issues, and practical guidance on how we can move toward greater inclusion and belonging at Harvard,” according to the website.

Wise said since the 2016 election that “the deep divisions that were always there [in American society] are more apparent.”

“Think about some of the things that have changed since ’01,” he said. “‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was still policy. You had presidential candidates who wouldn’t have dreamt of talking about marriage equality. We weren’t talking about transphobia. How did that happen in 17 years?” 

“Because of the work of advocates throughout society pushing to change the narrative.”

According to CBN News, Wise has drawn criticism for his comments in the past. In 2012, he tweeted that “people who believe in a God of hell/damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of public square. In 2015, he posted on Facebook that Christians should be “locked up” for believing what he called a “fairy…

A new government-funded study says the rate of suicides among youth ages 10-17 increased nearly 30 percent during the month following the release of Netflix’s suicide-themed show, 13 Reasons Why.

The show first aired on Netflix March 31, 2017, telling the fictional story of a teen girl who kills herself.  

The new study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, discovered a 28.9 percent increase in the suicide rate in April 2017 among those ages 10-17. 

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, funded the study.  

“The results of this study should raise awareness that young people are particularly vulnerable to the media,” said study author Lisa Horowitz, a clinical scientist in the National Institute of Mental Health’s intramural research program. “All disciplines, including the media, need to take good care to be constructive and thoughtful about topics that intersect with public health crises.”

The number of deaths by suicide recorded in April 2017 “was greater than the number seen in any single month during the five-year period examined by the researchers,” the government news release said.

The increase, the news release said, was “primarily driven by significant increases in suicide in young males.”…

One week after publishing a column saying Jesus likely was Palestinian, The New York Times admitted it made a mistake.

The Times posted a correction April 27, blaming the mistake on an edit. 

“Because of an editing error, an article last Saturday referred incorrectly to Jesus’s background,” the correction said. “While he lived in an area that later came to be known as Palestine, Jesus was a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.”

A week earlier, The Times ran a column by journalist Eric V Copage about Jesus’ color and heritage. The column included this sentence: “Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin.” That line has been changed to read: “But Jesus, a Jew born in Bethlehem, presumably had the complexion of a Middle Eastern man.”

The flub in The New York Times column occurred the day before Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota re-tweeted a tweet claiming Jesus was Palestinian. Omar is Muslim. 

The tweet by Islamic scholar Omar Suleiman she re-tweeted read, “I was once asked by a relative who is a Palestinian Christian why the Christian right in America largely supports their oppression. ‘Don’t they know we’re Christian too? Do they even consider us human? Don’t they know Jesus was a Palestinian?’”

Omar’s re-tweet sparked a backlash on social media. That included a response from Michael Dickson,…