FāVS News News and Commentary about Religion and Ethics in Eastern Washington and North Idaho
First night ofHanukkahis tonight. May youroil last the week. Christianity is thelargest religious community in the world, with 2.2 billion adherents, and the United States counts the most Christians of any country, with 247 million believers, thePew Forumreports. Yet in the birthplace ofJesus, the Middle East, Christians are a demographic blip and shrinking. Such are the vagaries of history. British Prime MinisterDavid Cameronis stillgetting propsfor saying that “Britain is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” For good measure he said thatreturning to Christian values would solve all the nation’s problems, from the riots last summer to the financial collapse to the threat of Islamic extremism. Islam clocks in as the world’s second largest religion, with about 1.6 billion followers, just under one-quarter of the globe’s population. Read full post here.
Tracy Simmons is an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and digital entrepreneurship. In her approximate 20 years on the religion beat, Simmons has tucked a notepad in her pocket and found some of her favorite stories aboard cargo ships in New Jersey, on a police chase in Albuquerque, in dusty Texas church bell towers, on the streets of New York and in tent cities in Haiti. Simmons has worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut and Washington. She is the executive director of SpokaneFāVS.com, a digital journalism start-up covering religion news and commentary in Spokane, Washington. She also writes for The Spokesman-Review and national publications. She is a Scholarly Assistant Professor of Journalism at Washington State University.
