49 people were killed Friday when several people opened fire in two New Zealand mosques.

According to the BBC, 49 people were killed and 20 injured in mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch in New Zealand Friday.

Attackers entered the houses of worship during Friday prayer services resulting in the deadliest shooting in New Zealand’s history.

According to USA Today, four people have been taken into custody, including one shooter – a 28-year-old Australian citizen – who live streamed the massacre on Facebook. 

Police are urging people not to watch the “extremely distressing” video as social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Reddit work to remove all footage of the event posted to their platforms. 

The BBC reports that three men and one woman were detained, one of whom – a man in his late twenties – has already been charged with murder for his role in the mass shootings. Police Commissioner Mike Bush also confirmed that additional firearms and explosives were also recovered when the believed shooters were detained. 

As for the shooters’ motivation, USA Today reports that a manifesto was posted to social media by one of the shooters listing white-nationalists and declaring anti-immigrant ideology.

According to Euro News, many of those in the mosques were refugees and migrants…

Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, proposed a bill Thursday that would let physician assistants and nurses perform abortions, saying such a change in law is needed to broaden the access to “reproductive health care.”

The bill, LD 1261, would allow an advanced practice registered nurse or a physician assistant perform abortions. Under current Maine law, only doctors can perform abortions. 

The law would increase the number of abortion clinics in the state from three to 18, according to supporters. 

“Every woman in Maine should be able to access reproductive health care when and where she needs it, regardless of her zip code,” Gov. Janet Mills said. “Allowing advanced nurse practitioners and physician assistants to perform medication-administered abortions, which are already permitted in other states, will ensure Maine women, especially in rural areas of our state, can access reproductive health care services. It is time to remedy this inequity that negatively impacts too many Maine women.”

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood have pushed for such a change to the law, according to the Bangor Daily News.

Already, eight states permit medical personnel other than doctors to perform abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Carroll Conley, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, opposes the bill. 

“We just feel…

March 15, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Following the arrest of 44 worshipers from house church meetings in southwestern China in February, police in Chengdu this month arrested a married couple from the church and beat them during interrogation, the church reported.

The couple, identified as Liu and his wife Xing, of Early Rain Covenant Church, were visiting Christian friends when police from Chengdu Shuyuan Police Station on March 2 detained them and took them to Taisheng Road Police Station for interrogation, according to the church, whose pastor along with more than 100 others was arrested in a Dec. 9 raid.

“At 2 p.m., while being interrogated, they were personally humiliated, abused, and violently beaten by seven to eight police officers from the Chengdu Taisheng Road Police Station,” the church’s March 2 statement on Facebook reads. “They were detained for nearly eight hours. After being beaten by police officers from the Taisheng Road Police Station, sister Xing and her husband were escorted by an unidentified person back to their home.”

The unexplained violence was one of the latest instances of persecution of the church in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. After church pastor Wang Yi and his wife, Jiang Rong, were incarcerated in the Dec. 9 raid, authorities on Feb. 24 detained 44 Early Rain members meeting for worship in several…

(RNS) — A Southern Baptist publishing executive recently revealed that she was a victim of alleged abuse for more than a decade from another Baptist leader.

In an online statement posted Friday (March 8), Jennifer Lyell, director of the books ministry at LifeWay Christian Resources, alleged that she was the victim of a now-resigned professor at the flagship seminary of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The alleged sexual misconduct and abuse of power started during a mission trip when Lyell was a seminary student and continued for years. She said that she feared coming forward out of concern that revealing what happened would cause “collateral damage.”

“That collateral damage was the reason that the abuse had continued for so long,” she wrote. “The reason that a professor was able to continue grooming and taking advantage of his student was because I became like part of his family.”

After coming forward last year to her boss and the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., she said, both took swift action to address her allegations and to provide care for her. Her alleged abuser resigned from the seminary as well as from a nonprofit ministry he had founded and from a trustee role with the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board.

Lyell said she experienced “the best of what…

More Catholics are questioning their membership and participation in the church after heavily publicized sexual abuse scandals. Thirty-seven percent of Catholics in the United States say they have been questioning whether or not they would stay in the church after details of the abuse and cover-up became public. 

Gallup interviewed 581 U.S. Catholics from January 21-27 and February 12-28. This was the first time they had asked U.S. Catholics about their commitment to the church since The Boston Globe’s reports of abuse in the Boston area and the lengths leaders at all levels went to so they could keep the abuse quiet.

In 2002, twenty-two percent of U.S. Catholics said yes to the question, “As a result of the recent news about sexual abuse of young people by priests, have you, personally, questioned whether you would remain in the Catholic church, or not?” That number rose by fifteen percent in 2019. In 2002, seventy-six percent of U.S. Catholics said they had not considered leaving, while it dropped to sixty-two percent in 2019. 

In reporting their findings, Gallup said it was “unclear whether Catholics who are questioning their church membership will actually decide to leave the church. Many Catholics may consider leaving the church but ultimately decide not to do so, or they may have no intention of leaving but simply be responding to this…