By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service As the Southern Baptist Convention recently weighed changing its name, denominational leaders were bombarded with suggestions. Hundreds of them. Most suggestions avoided the word “Southern” but one hinted at the denomination’s regional flavor: Baptist Ultimate Bible Believing Alliance, or BUBBA. In the end, …

R. Skyler Oberst, a student at Eastern Washington University, recently returned to Spokane after interning for the Pluralism Project at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where he worked closely with Diana Eck and other faith leaders. He wanted nothing to do with religious diversity, until one day he saw attackers …

Daya Goldschlag was born and raised in the Bronx in a Russian-Hungarian-Italian Jewish family. When she was 19 years old she spent almost a year hitchhiking around Europe and the Middle East including Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Israel. “It opened my culturally-sheltered eyes to see how differently people’s lives …

A federal court on Wednesday struck down a Washington state rule that requires pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill even if it violates their religious beliefs. Religious liberty advocates cheered the decision. They have decried the 2007 state regulation as a violation of pharmacists' First Amendment rights, which guarantee freedom …

By Tracy Simmons SpokaneFAVS.com I’m all about deadlines, which is probably why I didn’t decide until this morning what I was going to do for Lent. Last year I gave up Dr. Pepper. Resisting from carbonated water and artificial flavoring, though, didn’t exactly create more space for God in my …

Call if Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras – whatever you want. Whatever you call it, tonight, on the eve of Lent, many Christians will feast on pancakes. Why pancakes, you ask? Because it's tradition. Nowadays most people give up something like chocolate or meat during Lent, but once upon …