Religion News Service

As NFL players prepare to take the field for the last Sunday of the regular season, the Rev. William Barber II, prominent pastor and activist, offered a prayer for NFL players and Damar Hamlin, the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety who went into cardiac arrest after making a tackle in Cincinnati Monday night (Jan. 2).

As RNS reporters look ahead to 2023, they expect, on the whole, to cover the fallout of these shifts, including the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising influence of Christian nationalism. They also predict the emergence of new and experimental forms of spirituality — hello, psychedelics — as the religious landscape in America continues to shift toward disaffiliation and religious pluralism.

Benedict XVI, the first pope to resign in 600 years, paved the way into the new millennium, but struggled to reconcile his traditional Catholic views with a world that he considered to be ‘under the dictatorship of relativism.’

On Dec. 20, the Taliban government suspended higher education for women, marking another low for the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the government is officially known. Its leaders vacillated for more than a year about allowing girls to resume their education but has now dashed the hope, aspiration and ambition of millions of women in the country. 

Elizabeth II of England, Britain’s longest-serving monarch and official head of the Church of England, died Thursday (Sept. 8) at Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96.

‘We worship God by caring for creation,’ the report reads.

Hint: It’s complicated (just kidding, it's really not).