The week of Easter, actor Danica McKellar celebrated two years of being a Christian. In an interview with Fox News Digital, McKellar shared that Holy Week is special to her not only for its significance to Christianity but also because it is the anniversary of when Jesus transformed her.

“It changed my life,” said McKellar of her experience attending church on Palm Sunday two years ago. “I don’t know what happened. Some people say the Holy Spirit came to me. All I know is that I knew.”

“I became a believer, and it was the most wonderful, transformative moment,” she said. “I was flooded with this knowingness, and I have such peace from that still after two years, and I’m so grateful for it.” 

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Happy birthday to this queen, @candacecbure ! So grateful to be part of @GAfamilyTV with you, and for ALL the amazing impact you’ve had in my life! 💕✝️ (And super excited to see your upcoming movie, #UnsungHero!) pic.twitter.com/fTlHCA28wv

— Danica McKellar (@danicamckellar) April 6, 2024

Danica McKellar Celebrates Spiritual Birthday

Danica McKellar is an author, mathematician and actor. In addition to appearing alongside Fred Savage in “The Wonder Years,” she has appeared in “The West Wing,” “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Big Bang Theory.” McKellar also formerly starred in Hallmark movies before leaving that channel for Great American Family channel.

In April 2022, McKellar revealed to her followers that she had come to trust in Jesus after her friend, fellow actor and former Hallmark star Candace Cameron Bure, invited her to church.

On Saturday, April 6, McKellar celebrated Bure’s birthday and said she was excited for Bure’s new movie, “Unsung Hero.” The film dramatizes the story of the family of for KING & COUNTRY’s Joel and Luke Smallbone and their sister, Rebecca St. James.

McKellar told Fox that the church Bure took her to in 2022 was Shepherd Church and that it was holding a passion play the day she attended.

When McKellar was a child, she did not observe Easter as a religious holiday. “It was the Easter bunny and egg hunts and coloring eggs. I used to believe in the Easter bunny, so it was a lot of fun,” she said. “It was a big family celebration, like a lot of holidays. And I’m really grateful to have a family who always made that effort for everyone to come together.”

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Now that she has become a Christian, McKellar has added going to church to the other Easter festivities and described the holiday as a time of “redemption and rebirth.” 

“My wish for the world is that they would feel that as well and be open to God’s love because it’s transformative, and it’s there for everyone,” she said. 

Harvest Christian Fellowship Pastor Greg Laurie addressed online speculation that Monday’s (April 8) total solar eclipse is a sign of the end times.

Monday’s eclipse will be only the second total solar eclipse that has been visible to Americans in the 21st century, the last being in 2017.

According to NASA, a “solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and Earth. When the Moon completely blocks the Sun, it is called a total solar eclipse…the sky will darken, as if it were dawn or dusk.”

“There’s a lot of excitement about this solar eclipse that will be happening and some are even suggesting that it is a sign from heaven that judgment is coming specifically on the nation of America,” Laurie said.

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Laurie called eclipses, which occur every 18 months, amazing events. But “they’re not as rare as some people would suggest,” he said.

In Jesus’ description of the end times in Matthew 24, Jesus speaks of a time when the “sun will be darkened,” Laurie said. “Is that speaking of what is going to happen tomorrow in the solar eclipse?”

“The answer is no, it is not,” he continued. “Because that is a specific reference to what will happen and what we call the Great Tribulation period.”

The pastor then gave what he described as a “flyover” of end times events, saying that he believes the next event Christians will experience in the “prophetic calendar is the rapture of the church.”

Next, Laurie said, will be the emergence of the Antichrist, who becomes a world leader during the “Great Tribulation period that lasts for seven years.” During that period, an event will take place called the Abomination of Desolation, where the Jewish temple will be rebuilt and the altar desecrated, Laurie added. Christ then will return for a 1,000-year reign.

“Yes, it’s true that the sun will not give its light, but that’s talking about the events of the tribulation period that have not started yet,” Laurie said.

Is the Solar Eclipse tomorrow a sign of coming judgment on the earth? My answer here- pic.twitter.com/xPfpZ0na9L

— Greg Laurie (@greglaurie) April 7, 2024

(RNS) — The Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s injunction on the state’s near-total abortion ban, giving another win to those who say the ban ignores their religious beliefs about when human life begins.

In her majority opinion, issued on Thursday (April 4), Judge Leanna K. Weissmann argued that the injunction was necessary to protect the religious freedom of those seeking an abortion, and allowed the case to proceed as a class-action lawsuit.

“Without a preliminary injunction, Plaintiffs will suffer the loss of their right to exercise their sincere religious beliefs by obtaining an abortion when directed by their religion and prohibited by the Abortion Law,” Weissmann wrote.

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In utilizing Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect the right to an abortion, the plaintiffs in the case are seeking to reverse the political history of the law. Its passage in 2015, which was backed by conservative religious leaders, then spurred outcry from more liberal-leaning religious groups.

The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on behalf of five anonymous residents and Hoosier Jews for Choice opposing a state law passed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022. ACLU lawyers argued that Indiana’s ban violates the state’s RFRA, a measure focused on religious liberty that was signed into law in 2015 by then-Gov. Mike Pence.

In a concurring opinion, Judge L. Mark Bailey suggested the abortion ban effectively privileged one form of faith over others by siding with a specific definition of when life begins.

“In accordance with abundant religious liberty and the recognition of a pluralistic society, our Constitution further provides: ‘No preference shall be given, by law, to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship,’” Bailey wrote. “Yet in this post-Dobbs world, our Legislature has done just that — preferred one creed over another.”

The lawsuit noted that, under Jewish law, “a fetus attains the status of a living person only at birth,” and that abortions “may occur, and should occur as a religious matter, under circumstances not allowed” under the state’s abortion ban. It went on to note that various other religious groups — Muslims, Unitarian Universalists and Episcopalians, among others — also hold religious beliefs about abortion impacted by the abortion ban.

The case is one of several religious liberty-related legal challenges to state-level abortion bans filed across the country after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned the decades-long national right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade. From Kentucky to Florida to Missouri, leaders from an array of religious backgrounds have argued that their faiths allow or even encourage access to abortion, particularly Jewish leaders.

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — In a rare ruling, a Kenyan high court has sentenced a Catholic priest found guilty of assaulting a 16-year-old girl to spend the next three years preaching about the country’s sexual crimes law.

The Rev. Dominic Muli Nzioka, a priest who served a parish in Mivumoni, in the Archdiocese of Mombasa, was ordered by Justice Anne Ong’iinjo March 7 to educate his congregrants about the country’s Sexual Offenses Act.

The ruling came after Nzioka appealed a seven-year sentence issued last June by a magistrate’s court in the city of Mombasa. Ong’iinjo said she was setting aside that sentence, stipulating instead that in addition to probation, Nzioka will be required to give a sermon about the anti-sexual abuse law at least once a month. His compliance will be monitored by the priest-in-charge at his parish and his probation officer.

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According to news reports, Nzioka sent the teen a text in September 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, asking her to join him in his house. She later told the court that the priest had put alcohol in a coffee cup and handed it to her, before touching her inappropriately.

The Rev. Dominic Muli Nzioka. (Photo via MombasaCatholic.org)

“The appellant, having breached the COVID-19 protocols and the church regulations, that children are not allowed to enter the parish house, as well as defying the victim’s mother not to interact with her daughter, makes this court believe that the prosecution’s evidence has been proved beyond reasonable doubt,” wrote Ong’iinjo in her ruling.

“While on probation, the appellant is hereby ordered to sensitise his congregants about the Sexual Offences Act at one Sunday in a month. Upon the completion of the period under supervision, the parish priest and the probation officer will file a report in court to confirm compliance,” said the judge.

Shamsa Abubakar Fidhili, a peace mediator and community organizer in Mombasa, objected to the ruling, saying it was too lenient to deter other predators. “Religious leaders are supposed to be a safe haven for people to run to,” said Fadhili, the chairperson of the Mombasa Women of Faith Network, a branch of the Religious Council of Kenya.

On the social media platform X, a person posting as “The People’s Watchman” wrote, “I am looking for the photo of Dominic Muli Nzioka who was set free by Justice Anne Ong’iinjo after he was found guilty of defiling a minor. His photo should be everywhere so that we can keep our children safe from this … predator. Court and church protecting a rapist.”

The Rev. Henry Ndune, a priest in the Archdiocese of Mombasa, told Religion News Service that Catholic officials were also surprised at the sentence. “While the church has an elaborate canon law, a secular court is telling a priest what to preach,” he said.

Nzioka’s sentence has ignited a debate among some clergy whether a government court ought to be able to decide the contents of a sermon. Clerics told RNS that preaching needs to come freely from the heart.

(RNS) — While the number of U.S. Catholics is increasing, the total number of Catholic parishes nationwide declined 9% between 1970 and 2020, according to a new report by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

In 10 of the 11 dioceses studied, those closures are disproportionately happening in Black and Latino neighborhoods and neighborhoods with higher poverty and unemployment.

The total number of American Catholics increased by 46% in the half-century before 2020, though the study’s researchers provided the context that the overall population increased 65% in those same years, meaning Catholics are a smaller proportion of the population.

The total number of priests, meanwhile, declined by 40%. The shortage of priests has played a significant role in the decisions to close parishes. Bishops announcing parish closures or consolidation repeatedly cite fewer and aging priests and low Mass attendance in decisions that typically receive pushback from their flocks.

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Religious orders, like the Jesuits, have also announced plans to pull out of parish ministry because of few priests, ending longtime relationships with local parishes.

FutureChurch, a Catholic nonprofit that advocates for access to the Eucharist and reforms to the church, including married priests, commissioned the 759-page CARA report.

Parish size has grown by 60% since 1970, according to the report.

The CARA report notes that sacraments, including baptisms, Catholic marriages and Catholic funerals, have all declined. A deacon can also perform these sacraments, but there are fewer deacons than priests in the U.S.

Between 1970 and 2020, baptisms declined 57%, Catholic marriages declined 78%, and Catholic funerals declined 14%.

The report studied 11 dioceses: the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Archdiocese of Chicago, Archdiocese of Detroit, Archdiocese of Miami, Archdiocese of New Orleans, Archdiocese of New York, Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Archdiocese of St. Louis, Diocese of Bridgeport, Diocese of Cleveland and Diocese of Memphis.

The dioceses were selected to fit FutureChurch’s research needs and are not a representative sample. Several large dioceses, including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Archdiocese of Atlanta, Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston and Archdiocese of Seattle are not among the dioceses studied.

But in the dioceses studied, the report showed a tendency to close or merge parishes in neighborhoods that were poorer or had higher percentages of Black people or Latinos.

People attend Mass, in pews marked with tape for social distancing during the pandemic, at St. Agnes Church in Paterson, New Jersey, on June 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

While the average proportion of white residents was lower in neighborhoods where parishes closed and higher in neighborhoods where parishes were opened, “in all 11 dioceses, the average proportion of people below the poverty line, people unemployed, Blacks/African Americans, and Hispanics/Latinos was higher in those neighborhoods where parishes closed/were absorbed than in those neighborhoods were parishes opened/expanded,” the report concluded. (The sole exception was for Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods in the Archdiocese of Miami.)