Beginning next January, Cubans will be able to travel in and out of their island nation more easily—with just their passport and a visa from their destination country, instead of first needing to obtain permission from their government.

According to Wayne Pederson, president and CEO of HCJB Global, the change will facilitate "a circular flow of Americans and Cubans to meet not only with their families, but with their Christian family as well."

Roland Warren will join Care Net as president and CEO, the national pro-life organization has announced.

Warren formerly spent more than 10 years as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) and served on the Fatherhood Task Force of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. His work attempted to address the growing "fatherhood crisis" in the United States.

Update (April 18): The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Snow College has settled its lawsuit with Solid Rock Christian Club, which sued the school last winter claiming "that the school's policy unconstitutionally treated student groups affiliated with religious institutions differently than other student groups."

As part of the settlement, the school revised its tiered club status system that denied certain privileges to some groups based on tier status.
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Update (Feb. 21): Following conflicts over the club status of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on university campuses, the Virginia state legislature approved a bill that would protect religious and political student organizations from discrimination by school officials.

The bill also states:

A religious or political student organization may determine that ordering the organization's internal affairs, selecting the organization's leaders and members, defining the organization's doctrines, and resolving the organization's disputes are in furtherance of the organization's religious or political mission and that only persons committed to that mission should conduct such activities.

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Folks: I have accepted an offer to become a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the Honors College at Baylor U. Excited! Nervous!

— Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) October 24, 2012

Alan Jacobs, almost certainly Wheaton College's most public public intellectual, will be at Wheaton College no more, he announced on Twitter last night.

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — A “miracle herbal cure” recently attracted more than 4 million pilgrims to the home of retired Tanzanian pastor Ambilikile Mwasapile.

Now church leaders in neighboring Kenya are pressing their government to scientifically test herbal medicines that are used by millions to manage and treat diseases, saying the nontraditional therapies could be putting patients' health at risk.

The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 federal law that defines marriage as being between one man and one woman.

The decision follows the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against DOMA in May. But what's new is language noting the separation of civil marriage from religious marriage.

Update (May 8, 2013): A Texas state judge has determined that religiously themed banners displayed by cheerleaders at Kountze High School in Texas are constitutionally permissible. According to the Associated Press, "In a copy of the ruling obtained by Beaumont station KFDM, [judge Steve] Thomas determined that no law 'prohibits cheerleaders from using religious-themed banners at school sporting events.'"

The lawsuit, which became a high-profile case last fall, was scheduled to go to trial later this summer, but this summary judgment ends the case.
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When Kountze High School in Texas banned cheerleaders from using Bible verses on their banners, the ban sparked a national debate about students' freedom of religion and free speech rights. For now, though, cheerleaders will be free to wave their banners, according to a ruling by Hardin County District Judge Steve Thomas.

Yesterday, Thomas extended a temporary injunction against the school district's ban on religiously themed banners, saying that the ban appeared to violate the cheerleaders' free speech rights.

Updated (Jan. 15): The pending lawsuit against SGM has been updated with more names and charges.

Sovereign Grace Ministries (SGM), a network of Reformed church plants in 21 countries still dealing with the aftermath of an internal investigation of founder and president C. J. Mahaney's leadership, now faces allegations that its president and board chairman, among other leaders, covered up child sex abuse by church members.

Three female plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Wednesday "allege a conspiracy spanning more than two decades to conceal sexual abuse committed by church members" throughout the 1980s and 1990s, according to the Associated Press. Mahaney and board president John Loftness, along with six other leaders, are named as defendants for allegedly failing to report incidents of abuse to law enforcement, encouraging parents to not report them, and "mislead[ing] law enforcement into believing the parents had 'forgiven' those who preyed on their children."

An established interfaith group is in danger of disintegrating as major American Jewish groups and prominent mainline Protestant churches differ over U.S. aid for Israel--a long-standing argument that the group was established, in part, to diffuse.

Leaders of Reform and Conservative Judaism, the American Jewish Committee, and other Jewish groups sent a letter Wednesday (Oct. 17) to their Christian counterparts on the Christian-Jewish Roundtable saying they would not be attending a long-planned Oct. 22-23 meeting.

At issue is an Oct. 8 letter that many Christian leaders--from the National Council of Churches, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other denominations--sent to Congress, asking that U.S. aid to Israel be re-evaluated in light of the Jewish state’s alleged human rights violations.

Israel has long been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, almost all of which is military aid and contracts, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“As Christian leaders in the United States, it is our moral responsibility to question the continuation of unconditional U.S. financial assistance to the government of Israel,” the letter from the Christian leaders read, criticizing Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

“Realizing a just and lasting peace will require this accountability, as continued U.S. military assistance to Israel--offered without conditions or accountability--will only serve to sustain the status quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.”

The Jewish groups withdrew from the planned October meeting and are now asking the Christian members of the roundtable for a different meeting: to discuss the letter and “reset the framework for ongoing dialogue.”

“There is no question in our minds that this is an unbalanced demonization of Israel completely lacking in context,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, the interfaith director at the American Jewish Committee.

“It pretends that Palestinian human rights violations do not exist, but above all, our concern is that when the world currently is focused on the Iranian nuclear threat, Christian leaders have chosen to mount another political attack on Israel,” Marans said.

Marans said he isn’t sure whether the eight-year-old roundtable will survive the congressional letter flap. “The current conversation with some Christian leaders is unacceptable and needs to change,” he said.

Representatives from the NCC, Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Methodist Church did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Tuesday (Oct. 16) said recent decisions by two regional bodies to allow ordained female pastors were "serious mistakes," and women who are ordained won't be recognized--at least for now.

"They directly challenge two world Church decisions on the matter of ordination," reads a statement, passed by a 264-25 vote during the Annual Council meeting in Silver Spring, Md. "They create doubts about the importance of collective decision-making as a basic feature of denominational life."

Update (Jan. 24): Reuters reports that about one-third of Uruguay's doctors are refusing to perform abortions in accordance with the new law.

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(Editor's note: Time magazine has reported on the regional significance of Uruguay's new law.)

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In predominantly Catholic Latin America, laws permitting abortion are gaining ground.

Both Uruguay and Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, recently voted to approve bills legalizing some forms of abortion. The bills passed legislatures by one-vote margins in each country.

Update (Feb. 19): AsiaNews notes that a second Muslim-Christian ticket is poised to win another important political post in Indonesia. According to the article, "Voters appear drawn to tickets that include moderate Muslim and Christian candidates, hoping that they might bring good government in places where officials have tended to pursue their own personal or business interests."

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Yesterday Jakarta, capital of the world's most-populous Muslim country, officially installed its new leadership—including deputy governor Basuki Tjahaja, a Christian with Chinese origins.

But the inauguration, originally scheduled for Oct. 7, has not taken place without opposition. Government sources cited an administrative delay last week when they rescheduled the event, but Asia News reports that the delay was "due to protests by extremists who want non-Muslims banned from all key positions of responsibility."

Adding credence to this theory: the discovery yesterday of two policemen murdered as they investigated the bombing of a Christian politician's home.

BP - Representatives from nine state legislatures have announced the formation of state-level religious freedom caucuses in a new nationwide effort to combat religious discrimination.

Ron Sider, founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), announced yesterday (Tues, Oct. 16) that he will retire in June 2013. His replacement: a "consensus model" leadership team of two co-directors.

Sider, who founded ESA in 1973, is most known for his ground-breaking 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. CT ranked the book No. 7 on its list of the Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.

The Tennessean is reporting that LifeWay Christian Resources will not sell its Glorieta Conference Center to Olivet University amid concerns that the school's founder and spiritual leader heads a movement that teaches he is a new Christ.

(This post has been updated to include the official statement from The King's College board of trustees.)

Dinesh D'Souza, president of The King's College and a well-known evangelical author, faces questions from his board over his relationship with a woman he introduced as his fiancee in late September, according to World magazine.

The problem? D'Souza, who has experienced a "meteoric rise in the evangelical world," is still married to his wife of 20 years, Dixie.

Update (February 5): According to Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) index, approximately two-thirds of the country's 742,000-person population is "sufficiently happy." Yet, Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), is speaking out against the GNH, arguing that the country should turn its attention to the religious freedom violations occurring against Christians.

GNH is based on four "pillars": sustainable development, cultural values, natural environment and good governance. Formally, Bhutan guarantees religious freedom to its citizens, but anti-conversion laws and policies banning religions other than Buddhism have been on the rise since 2010, making it increasingly hard to be a Christian in Bhutan.

Meanwhile, Asia News also reports that Bible sales among non-Christians in neighboring Nepal have doubled.
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On Sunday, a car struck and killed Wycliffe Bible Translators senior vice president Forrest Flaniken while he was riding his bicycle in Avalon Park, Florida. Flaniken, who had worked with Wycliffe for almost 22 years, was 53.

(RNS) Billy Graham offered to "do all I can to help” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a Thursday (Oct. 11) meeting at the evangelist's North Carolina home.

Conservative Christians in Russia have started using crosses to replace Apple's iconic "bitten apple" logo, a move that could cause problems for Apple product sales as the mostly Orthodox nation's parliament weighs a blasphemy ban.

More than 1,500 pastors explicitly broke the law last Sunday by endorsing political candidates from the pulpit. Amid a tense election year, their participation in the annual protest "could hold more sway than in previous years," CNN reports.

European Baptist leaders recently voted overwhelmingly to move Europe's only international Baptist seminary from Prague to Amsterdam given declining donor support and the rise of national Baptist seminaries that offer similar degrees.

Following the exoneration of Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl who made international headlines after she was falsely accusing of blaspheming the Qur'an, Pakistan appeared ready to discuss—and potentially weaken—its anti-blasphemy laws.

But that window of opportunity slammed shut on Sept. 11, when a portion of the Islamic world erupted in outrage over the anti-Islam Internet video “Innocence of Muslims,” which portrays Muhammad as a womanizer and false prophet.

(RNS) A majority of Protestant pastors plan to vote for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, according to a new survey, but nearly a quarter are still undecided less than a month from Election Day.

Just 17 percent of Protestant pastors said they would vote to re-elect President Obama, with 57 percent favoring Romney and 22 percent undecided, according to a survey conducted by LifeWay Research.

The Nobel Assembly has awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, researchers who discovered a way to develop stem cells from adult skin cells—thus removing the need to use and destroy human embryos.

Of the 23,000 inmates in Canadian federal prisons, 57 percent identify themselves as Christians. But following a government-issued cut to chaplain contracts this week, nearly 100 percent of remaining chaplains in those prisons will be Christian.

(Editor's note: Open Doors research has confirmed that Christians were targeted in the killings.)

Nigerian police have arrested the "masterminds of the gruesome massacre" at a state university in Mubi, Adamawa state. The shooting killed 46 students, many of whom were Christians.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against 16 immigrants who claimed that religious-worker visa rules violated their religious freedoms.

The court rejected a challenge to immigration policies that require religious workers to follow a different process from those with employment-based visas when applying to become legal permanent residents (LPR). The ruling upheld a 2011 decision in the case.

The board of trustees at Princeton Theological Seminary has named Craig Barnes as the school's seventh president.

Shouwang Church, one of China's largest "house churches," continues to refuse official registration in spite of increasing pressure from the Chinese government.

The state government of Karnataka, near Banaglore, India, will not allow a Catholic organization to remain on 45 acres of land where it has worked for 30 years.

The Sumanahalli Society will be left with only five acres for its ministry, which currently utilizes 50 buildings and works with 400 people who are otherwise outcasts from Indian society: lepers, HIV patients, disabled, orphans and street kids, and juvenile delinquents.

After seven years of litigation, two Illinois pharmacists who object on religious grounds to filling prescriptions for emergency contraceptives have had their objections upheld by a state appellate court.

A North Carolina federal district court has found that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) did not discriminate against Kimberly McCallum, formerly the only African-American employee in the group's Global Ministries office, in terminating her employment as an administrative assistant.

Until February, a Montana state law prohibiting ministers and preachers from political speech had never been enforced since its creation in 1913. But after the statute was used to arrest Assemblies of God minister Calvin Zastrow, a Montana judge issued a permanent injunction against enforcing the policy.

Update (Mar. 6): An Egyptian court has convicted two boys, Rzik Nagy, 10, and Mina Farag, 9, of blasphemy against the Qur'an.

Luckily, this case has a silver lining: In spite of the conviction, the boys only were "remanded...to the custody of their parents" because of their young age.
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Abortion activist Theodore Shulman will serve 41 months in federal prison for threatening to kill Priests for Life director Frank Pavone and Princeton University's Robert George in 2010. Shulman pleaded guilty to "one count of transmitting a threat to injure another person" in May.

In the latest case of vandalism against a Christian building in Israel, police suspect Jewish extremists of spray painting the words "price tag", along with other offensive phrases, on the Monastery of St. Francis, located near Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Just two weeks after Kenyan churches filed suit against their government for failing to protect them from religiously motivated violence by al Shabaab, the rebel group is suspected of attacking a church in Nairobi with grenades.

Update (May 9, 2013): Seven months after it filed suit, Tyndale House Publishers has secured its injunction against the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Affordable Care Act's (ACA) contraceptive mandate.

Baptist Press reports that the victory is due to the Obama Administration's "own partial retreat in the case." The government had appealed an injunction granted to Tyndale by a lower court judge in November but recently asked that the appeal be dismissed. The judge dismissed the appeal, which means that Tyndale will not be forced to comply with the contraceptive mandate while its case moves forward.

But the government's motivation is difficult to discern, Religion Clause suggests.
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The number of lawsuits facing the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Affordable Care Act (ACA) keeps growing.

Tyndale House Publishers, a Bible publishing house, filed suit against the government yesterday, arguing that the Obama administration's contraceptive mandate violates the owners' right to free exercise of religion.

Ever since the Kentucky Supreme Court issued an injunction against Medi-Share in 2011, the Christians-only healthcare ministry has continued to operate in the Bluegrass State. State lawyers pressed for a contempt of court charge this summer. Now a judge has ordered Medi-Share's work in Kentucky to a halt.

The Associated Press reports that Franklin County Circuit judge Thomas Wingate ruled yesterday that the Florida-based organization run by Christian Care Ministry must acquire approval from the Kentucky Department of Insurance before it can continue operations in the state.

A federal judge struck down a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Saturday, ruling that the newly implemented HHS contraception mandate does not infringe upon a Catholic business owner's First Amendment rights.