On an online forum for parents concerned about their teenagers’ sudden change in sexuality, one mother confesses: “I am desperate. My 14-year-old daughter just told me that she is trans. These past weeks have felt like a hundred years.”

When Fabiane Maria de Jesus stopped to buy bananas on her way home from church on a May afternoon in the Brazilian resort town of Guarujá, the wife and mother of two didn’t know it would be one of the last acts of her life.

As she walked home, de Jesus tucked her Bible under one arm and offered a banana to a boy in the street. Within moments, a gang of locals descended on her, beating de Jesus to death. A crowd gathered to watch. She was 33.

A Whirled Views roundup of U.S. religious news and views.

Un-great awakening 

The spiritual decline of many colleges and universities with religious beginnings isn’t a new development, but I was reminded of it again when I wrote about pro-life efforts at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

The university has been independent from the Methodist Church since 1937, but it still bears the name of John Wesley—one of founders of Methodism and an important figure in the Great Awakening. 

From the pulpit of the historic Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., offered a decidedly unfriendly assessment of President Donald Trump during an NAACP event on New Year’s Day: “Americans elected an authoritarian, an anti-immigrant, racist strongman to the nation’s highest office.”

Johnson wasn’t finished.

This week’s Whirled Views offers a roundup of religious news and views from around the United States.

Choosing my religion 

When newly elected Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., took her congressional oath of office on Jan. 3, she raised her right hand high and placed the other hand firmly on a law book. The book contained copies of the Arizona and U.S. constitutions. 

Sinema wasn’t the only freshman in the 116th Congress taking an oath on something other than the Bible. Texts included the Quran, a Buddhist sutra, and the Hindu Vedas.

Ryan Bomberger isn’t unaccustomed to criticism when it comes to talking about race or abortion. As president of the pro-life Radiance Foundation, he meets hard pushback against his blunt media campaigns spotlighting the tragically high abortion rate in the African-American community.

It’s not that abortion is a minority problem: A Pew Research Center survey in 2018 reported that 60 percent of black adults and 61 percent of white adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Forty-nine percent of Hispanics agreed.

As 2019 began, the 110 newly elected members of Congress arrived in Washington, D.C., to less of a fresh slate than a fresh slew of problems: A partial government shutdown trudged into its second week, with each party blaming the other for the impasse.