The Columbian

Churches & Religion

Student murals cover up hate on wall of Seattle synagogue

December 9, 2023, 6:04am Churches & Religion

This past spring, Rabbi Daniel Weiner confronted hateful graffiti on his Capitol Hill synagogue, Temple De Hirsch Sinai — again. Read story

Kyong Son Toyofuku, left, her goddaughter Yunra Huh, center, and husband, Lance Toyofuku, right, walk into St. Philomena Church on July 18 during a tour of Kalaupapa, Hawaii. The church was expanded and used by St. Damien and his parishioners in the 1800s while he lived with and cared for leprosy patients banished to Kalaupapa.

Catholic pilgrims yearn to visit Kalaupapa

December 9, 2023, 6:00am Churches & Religion

Kalaupapa beckoned to Kyong Son Toyofuku. She had long prayed to visit the hard-to-reach Hawaiian peninsula, trapped by its deep-green, sheer sea cliffs and rugged, black rock shores that glisten under the Pacific’s pristine waters. Read story

Rabbi Shmulik Greenberg leads the crowd as they celebrate the beginning of Hanukkah with the lighting of the menorah Thursday evening at Esther Short Park in downtown Vancouver.

Celebrating Light over Darkness: Chabad Jewish Center of Clark County hosts lighting of menorah

December 7, 2023, 7:20pm Churches & Religion

The Chabad Jewish Center of Clark County hosted Thursday evening’s Hanukkah celebration in downtown Vancouver’s Esther Short Park. The event included a menorah-lighting ceremony. Read story

A new Homeland Security guide aims to help houses of worship protect themselves

December 6, 2023, 9:37am Churches & Religion

A new guide from the Department of Homeland Security released Wednesday aims to help churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship protect themselves at a time of heightened tensions in faith-based communities across the country. Read story

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) looks up inside the reading room in the Library of Congress during a tour for the freshman Democrats in the 118th Congress on Jan. 31, 2023, in Washington, DC.

He has a theological degree. Here’s how Rep. Greg Landsman sees faith in Congress

December 4, 2023, 6:00am Churches & Religion

In a Congress filled with memes and hot takes, Rep. Greg Landsman stands out for the opposite. The freshman Democrat from Ohio speaks methodically, uttering each word only after an almost rabbinical level of contemplation — which is fitting for someone with a master’s in theological studies from the Harvard… Read story

A woman shares Jehovah’s Witnesses’ literature with a passerby Nov. 13 in downtown Pittsburgh. Jehovah’s Witnesses regularly distribute literature in public places and do door-to-door evangelism, but for the first time in more than a century, their congregations will not be regularly tracking their hours in ministry.

Jehovah’s Witnesses timekeepers no more

December 2, 2023, 6:04am Churches & Religion

Jehovah’s Witnesses are well-known for proselytizing door-to-door and handing out their literature on city streets. Less known to the general public, their adherents have been required for the past century to make regular reports to their congregation’s leaders on how many hours they put into such ministry. Read story

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man stands in front of a menorah on the third eve of Hanukkah, at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site in Jerusalem’s old city, in 2009.

What to know about Hanukkah celebration

December 2, 2023, 6:01am Churches & Religion

also spelled Chanukah or other transliterations from Hebrew — is Judaism’s “festival of lights.” On eight consecutive nightfalls, Jews gather with family and friends to light one additional candle in the menorah — a multibranched candelabra. Read story

Pope Francis attends the weekly general audience at the Vatican, Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023.

An ailing Pope Francis tells the public he’s better than a day earlier but has aides read speeches

November 29, 2023, 8:25am Churches & Religion

Pope Francis presided at his weekly audience with the public at the Vatican, but he said that he’s still unwell and asked an aide to read his remarks for him on Wednesday, a day after canceling an overseas trip. Read story

Danny Manning, a local firefighter and part of the Native American Maidu community, demonstrates Friday how his ancestors kept fires going by keeping an ember inside a piece of wood during the cultural burn.

‘Fire is living’: How this nature preserve uses cultural burning for regrowth

November 26, 2023, 6:07am Churches & Religion

Diana Almendariz often uses tule for basket weaving, but on this day she uses the dried bulrush wrapped around a cattail to carry fire across a narrow trail to a small field. She sets the tufted bundle down with intention to start the first of three new fires within a… Read story

Sannyasin Siddhanathaswami sits in the Iraivan Temple at the Kauai Hindu Monastery on July 9 in Kapaa, Hawaii.

How massive Hindu temple ended up in Hawaii

November 25, 2023, 6:02am Churches & Religion

It is the only all-granite, hand-carved Hindu temple in the West built without power tools or electricity, and it’s nestled on one of the smaller islands in Hawaii surrounded by lush gardens and forests. Read story