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The arrival of a child into a religious community usually sets off a flurry of activity. Someone usually organizes a meal delivery. A pastor might visit the hospital. Older parents often reach out with words of advice to the younger, sleep-deprived new parents. But when that child is born with a severe or chronic medical condition, families need more than the church can give, said Matt Steinhauer, a retired minister with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, former insurance broker, and the parent of a son with Down syndrome.

In the year 2050, when today’s 3-year-olds will be 30-year-olds, climate scientists expect the height of the slowly unfolding climate disaster to have arrived. The specifics vary slightly, but most experts warn that some regions will face extreme drought while others are entirely flooded with sea level rise. Dangerous heat and humidity — as some regions of the U.S. have faced this summer — combined with poor air quality will make it dangerous to be outside for a growing portion of the year in many places.

Then, when the heat went out, so did the reluctance to put an end to the parish’s dependence on fossil fuels. The parish installed an all-electric heat pump system, replaced functioning gas-powered appliances with electric versions and installed a third solar array. By 2021, St. Martin’s had become carbon neutral and was certified by Interfaith Power & Light as a “cool congregation.”

Dutch military police arrested 25 people nonviolently protesting against nuclear weapons and carbon dioxide emissions at Volkel Air Base about 80 miles south of Amsterdam on Aug. 8 and 9, according to Dutch News and Nukewatch.

A federal jury on Wednesday voted to sentence Robert Bowers to death for killing 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, the New York Times reported.

Joshua was one of the star students in his Sunday school class at a Black Baptist church he and his family attended; his teacher raved about Joshua’s helpfulness and engagement. But when it came to preschool, Joshua’s parents were perplexed.

“Every day the preschool teacher has something negative to say about [him,]” Joshua’s father later told researchers.

For the 49 years that Roe v. Wade protected legal abortion across the country, religious groups, including Catholic bishops and conservative evangelicals, became some of its loudest and best-known opponents. And when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, many Christians claimed it as both a political and spiritual victory.

Musician Derek Webb, who started out with the band Caedmon’s Call in the 1990s, has “spent a career gnawing on the hand that feeds me in the evangelical Christian world,” he told Sojourners. From his time in Caedmon’s Call to his work as a solo artist for the past 20 years, Webb has outlined a winding and vulnerable journey of doubt, love, grief, and freedom. Most recently, Webb has been reckoning with his evangelical past, writing what he calls his “first Christian and Gospel album in a decade.”

As congregations age and shrink across the U.S., churches find their sizable buildings often become underutilized. The solution might be found in addressing the child care crisis.