News & Ideas

Friday's News & Ideas - 6/26/2020

  • Defender of faith -- and Trump
  • Christian colleges cut faculty
  • Religious liberty still protected
  • Chaplains and a "tsunami" of grief
  • How Jesus became white
  • Look straight at the sun -- on video

The temptation of Kayleigh McEnany*
The Atlantic: How an ardent defender of faith -- and Donald Trump -- came to think of the press as her enemy.

Dozens of Christian college faculty eliminated in spring budget cuts
Christianity Today: For evangelical schools, declining enrollment poses a greater challenge than COVID-19.
Harvard Business Review: How to help a colleague who’s been laid off

The law protects religious liberty far more than many people think
Reason: Conservative legal commentator and experienced religious liberties litigator David French explains why.

Hospital chaplains grapple with COVID-19's 'tsunami' of grief
HuffPost: Six chaplains share stories from the spiritual front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

How Jesus became white -- and why it’s time to cancel that
Religion News Service: Warner E. Sallman’s “Head of Christ” painting, which has been reproduced a billion times, came to define what the central figure of Christianity looked like for generations.

The Spark

Watch a 10-year time lapse of the sun from NASA’s SDO
As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – SDO – has been watching the sun non-stop for over a decade. From its orbit in space, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images, which has enabled countless discoveries about our closest star. It's also really mesmerizing to watch.

*access is limited for nonsubscribers

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Lilly logo

Lilly Endowment Inc. announces Exploring Christian Practices Initiative

The Exploring Christian Practices Initiative aims to multiply opportunities and increase access to settings that help individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds explore and engage in Christian practices to address their spiritual interests and questions, find and build community with others, nourish their religious lives and grow in faith. 

In this open and competitive initiative, the Endowment invites charitable organizations to submit proposals for grants of up to $2.5 million each that may be used for up to a five-year period to develop new and/or enhance existing programs that present promising strategies for advancing the aim of the initiative and provide compelling and thoughtful responses to its guiding questions. The Endowment anticipates awarding approximately 60 grants and announcing grant awards in December 2026.

The Endowment will host four virtual information sessions (February 17, 19, 24, and 25) to discuss the Exploring Christian Practices guidelines for submitting a proposal. An Interest Form and Letter of Interest are due March 25, 2026. Complete proposals are due May 18, 2026.

Learn More and register for information sessions