(RNS) — People who identify as highly spiritual are more likely to say it’s important to make a difference in their communities and contribute to the greater good, a broad new study on American spirituality finds.

The study, “What Does Spirituality Mean to Us?,” found that 86 percent of Americans identify as spiritual to some extent. It also found that the more people define their spirituality through connection — to a higher power or to humanity at large — the more likely they are to volunteer, donate and vote.

Funded by the Kalamazoo, Michigan, Fetzer Institute, whose mission is to build a spiritual foundation for a loving world, the study included a nationally representative survey of 3,609 people, as well as 16 focus groups that met in 2018 and 2019. All the research was done before the coronavirus pandemic. (Fetzer is a past funder of Religion News Service projects.)

“What the Fetzer study has uncovered is how much people are talking about connection when they talk about spirituality — connection between the inner and outer world and with others in community,” said Omar M. McRoberts, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and an adviser to the study. “Spirituality is not a solipsistic endeavor where it’s just about individual experience or elevation.”

Still, only 45% of respondents said spirituality influences their political views; 36% said…

(RNS) — It’s known in the United Methodist Church as the “Cross and Flame.”

But the denomination’s logo — two red flames intertwined with a thin, black cross — means something else to the Rev. Edlen Cowley, pastor of Fellowship United Methodist Church near Dallas.

It reminds Cowley, who is Black, of the first burning cross he saw.

He was 10 years old, riding in the car with his family from Marshall, Texas, where his dad pastored Miles Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, to Shreveport, Louisiana. His mother pointed it out, burning alongside the freeway, explaining that the symbol was meant to instill fear in Black people.

“No longer should we be represented by an image that was devised to evoke fear in the minds of so many,” Cowley wrote this summer for United Methodist News Service.

Now one of the United Methodist Church’s regional conferences has taken up the call to replace the denomination’s logo because of its association for many with the racist imagery of a burning cross.

The North Texas Annual Conference voted 558-176 at its annual meeting last weekend (Sept. 19) to send legislation to the 2021 General Conference, the denomination’s global decision-making body, to begin the process for changing that logo.

“If the logo itself has become a stumbling block to part of the population we’re trying to reach, then it’s time for a…

The biblical story of Jesus saving the woman caught in adultery has been twisted and given a new ending in a Chinese textbook, with Jesus killing the woman and telling her that He, too, is a sinner, according to a new report.

The textbook, published by the government-run University of Electronic Science and Technology Press, is used to teach “professional ethics and law” in vocational schools, according to Union of Catholic Asian News, which first reported the controversy.

In the original biblical story in John 8, Jesus goes to the temple courts, where the teachers of the law and the Pharisees bring him a woman caught in adultery and ask Christ if she should be stoned. Jesus writes on the ground and then tells them, “Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” After the woman’s accusers leave, Jesus tells her, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

It’s a story of grace and mercy.

The Chinese textbook, though, changes the ending, according to UCA News. The textbook says, “When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, ‘I, too, am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.’”

A Catholic parishioner uploaded a copy of the textbook story to social media.

“I want everyone to know that the Chinese Communist Party has always tried to distort…

An estimated 17,000 babies have survived abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Roe v. Wade decision more than 40 years ago, an expert on the issue says.

Melissa Ohden, who survived an abortion as a baby and founded the Abortion Survivors Network, revealed the statistic Wednesday and said America “has been so impacted” by the “abortion agenda” that “stories like mine” and others are “pushed under the rug by the media and everyone else.”

Ohden made the comments during the virtual Values Voter Summit.

All total, she said, an estimated 17,155 babies have survived an abortion in the United States.

“That number is … the estimated abortion survivors since Roe vs. Wade, simply based on a number that the CDC threw out a long time ago saying that they estimated about one child a day surviving an abortion. Take that throughout the course of Roe versus Wade [and it’s] 17,155.”

Ohden’s comments came the same day President Trump said he would issue an executive order protecting babies who survive an abortion. Legislation that would require medical care for such infants has failed in Congress.

“People seem to think that this legislation is not necessary and [an] executive order isn’t necessary, but I’m here to tell you that it is,” she said.

Abortion survivor @melissaohden gives reaction to the Executive Order President

On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr delivered a speech addressing the common misrepresentation of the phrase “separation of church and state” at the 16th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. The event was held virtually due to the pandemic.

“Militant secularists have long seized on [the “separation of church and state”] slogan as a facile justification for attempting to drive religion from the public square and to exclude religious people from bringing a religious perspective to bear on conversations about the common good,” Barr said.

According to Fox News, Barr also noted a decline of “traditional morality” as “actively hostile” people call for the support of removing religion from state entities.

The attorney general argued that the removal of religion and “striking increases in urban violence, drug abuse and broken families” are directly correlated.

“Problems like these have fed the rise of an ever more powerful central government, one that increasingly saps individual initiative, coopts civil society, crowds out religious institutions and ultimately reduces citizens to wards of the state,” Barr said.

Barr also addressed “three important victories for religious freedom” concerning recent Supreme Court cases, including a July decision that allows employers to opt-out of the Affordable Care Act’s birth…

A Christian student group, Business Leaders in Christ, was reportedly deregistered and essentially kicked off the University of Iowa campus and put on a religious watchlist for requiring its leaders to sign a statement of faith that did not affirm the LGBTQ community.

According to CBN News, Vice President and Senior Counsel for Becket Law Firm Eric Baxter, who is representing the group, said that the university discriminated against Business Leaders in Christ because they did not affirm homosexual marriage and other LGBT hot button issues.

According to Baxter, once they complained to the university, the school doubled down and proceeded to deregister several other religious groups after asking them to outline their beliefs. The only group that was allowed to stay on campus was the one religious group that supported homosexuality. Baxter is arguing that the group was also given preferential treatment.

“That was textbook discrimination and in violation of our clients’ first amendment rights,” Baxter told CBN News.

Reportedly, the student who started the other group was disgruntled with Business Leaders in Christ and started his own group requiring leaders to affirm homosexuality in the statement of faith.

Baxter says they have asked the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to hold these officials accountable for what they did, including forcing the religious groups to either change their statements…

During the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Wednesday, President Trump announced that he will be signing the Born Alive Executive Order that will ensure medical treatment for infants who survive attempted abortions.

“Today, I am announcing that I will be signing the born alive executive order to assure that all precious babies born alive, no matter their circumstances, receive the medical care that they deserve. This is our sacrosanct moral duty,” Trump said in a pre-recorded video appearance at the event.

He added that his administration will provide increased federal funding for neonatal research, CBN News reports.

At the time of this writing, the full text of the Born Alive Executive Act has yet to be released.

A bill bearing the same name had previously been introduced to Congress multiple times but has yet to pass through both houses.

According to the Catholic News Agency, the proposed bill required that babies who survive failed abortions must be given medical care just as if they had been born prematurely under different conditions.

Following Trump’s announcement, Jeanne Mancini, president of the pro-life March for Life, lauded the president for his actions.

“President Trump once again has stepped up for life,” Mancini said. “His actions today provide necessary legal protections for some of the most vulnerable in society: survivors of failed…

In a new study published in the journal Nature, neuroscientists Adam B. Weinberger, Natalie M. Gallagher, Zachary J. Warren, Gwendolyn A. English, Fathali M. Moghaddam and Adam E. Green at the University of Georgetown have found that the ability to see patterns in visual cues correlates strongly with belief in God, meaning people who are more apt to see order in visual data are also more likely to state there is a God/order to the universe.

The study took American Christians and Afghans from unspecified religions and tested them using a visual pattern test designed to gauge intuition. They found that all people who professed a belief in God were more apt to recognize patterns in the experiment. This could mean that people who are more apt to notice patterns can see God at work easier than those who cannot. According to The Christian Post:

“They pressed a button for each of the moving dots but some participants in the study — the ones who registered the strongest implicit learning ability — began to subconsciously learn the patterns hidden in the sequence. They pressed the button for dots before they appeared. Even the best implicit learners in the study did not know that the dots formed patterns, which demonstrated that the learning had happened at an unconscious level.”

One of the researchers, Adam Green, was interviewed by The Christian Post concerning the study and,…