At a breakfast gathering in St. Louis on the first morning of a special meeting of the United Methodist Church (UMC) in February, Jerry Kulah set the table for the events of the next few days.

The UMC delegate had traveled all the way from Liberia to participate in the international meeting that would decide whether Methodists insist their clergy uphold Biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality or allow churches to decide for themselves.

On the second Sunday in March, as millions of Venezuelans were waking up to the fourth day of the biggest blackout in the nation’s history, Pastor Samuel Olson was thinking about morning worship at his Caracas church. “We hope to have one service,” he wrote in a text. “That will depend on the conditions.”

In a country already collapsing, conditions were dire.

When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign in Brooklyn, N.Y., he noted that his father was a Polish immigrant who fled Europe’s poverty and anti-Semitism. It’s a good thing, said Sanders, because most of his father’s Jewish family was wiped out by Nazis during the Holocaust.

That statement came just days before Sanders was one of at least two other Democratic presidential candidates publicly defending Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., after her series of remarks that many considered anti-Semitic.

When Malcolm Yarnell read the Houston Chronicle’s devastating investigation into sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches in mid-February, he grieved for the survivors and received an unexpected phone call from his mother: “I need to talk to you.”

Yarnell, a professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, has also been a Southern Baptist minister for decades. Shortly after his ordination, his mother left the Baptist church and became a Roman Catholic.

As Southern Baptists headed to church on Sunday, Feb. 10, the Houston Chronicle published a major investigation into devastating patterns of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist congregations.

The findings: Since 1998, some 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced sexual misconduct allegations involving more than 700 victims. More than 200 offenders have been convicted or have taken plea deals. Nearly 100 remain in prison. Others have returned to Southern Baptist pulpits.

A canceled event at South City Church (PCA) in St. Louis, Mo., brought renewed attention to ongoing friction among Presbyterians in the city also home to Covenant Theological Seminary—the denominational seminary of the Presbyterian Church in America.

In January, South City Church leaders had agreed to allow an event to take place on its campus that was sponsored by an organization called Faith for Justice. The MLK Day-related gathering was set to include speaker Jay-Marie Hill, a lesbian and an activist for transgenderism. 

In one of the most remarkable moments in Latin America’s modern history, thousands of Venezuelans packed a public square in Caracas on Jan. 23 and exulted as Juan Guaidó took the oath of presidency, declaring dictator Nicolás Maduro’s power illegitimate.

U.S. officials quickly declared support for the new leadership and urged Maduro to relinquish his brutal grip on a country suffering from one of the most severe economic and humanitarian crises in the world.