German Minister Not Guilty of Anti-LGBT Hate Speech

Marriage seminar set up a clash between religious teachings and gay rights, but “alienating” comments are not criminal, court rules.

Standing tall in the raised pulpit of the St. Martini congregation in the northern German city of Bremen, Olaf Latzel, 54, cut a stark figure in his black gown and two white preaching tabs.

But it wasn’t his presence that caused a stir in Germany; it was what he had been preaching from that pulpit.

In October 2019, in a marriage seminar for about 30 couples, Latzel commented on what he called the “homolobby.” He attacked homosexuality, calling it “degenerative,” and said, “These criminals are running around everywhere” during the Berlin Pride Parade.

“All this gender s—,” he said, “is an attack against God’s order of creation. It is demonic and satanic.”

The address was posted on YouTube, where the words of the United Protestant Church minister raised a furor. The regional body of the church, which has a quasi-official status in Germany, initiated disciplinary proceedings. The local government launched an investigation and ultimately prosecuted Latzel for hate speech.

Latzel’s case has attracted less international attention than a similar one in Finland, where a politician was prosecuted for tweeting out Bible verses and a Lutheran bishop for publishing a pamphlet on biblical gender roles. But in both, observers saw a long-expected clash, as increasing concerns for the dignity and rights of LGBT people came into conflict with deep commitments to free speech and religious liberty.

This month, however, a German court decided that the Bremen minister is not guilty of inciting hatred against LGBT people.

On May 20, 2022, Judge Hendrik Göhner said that “these statements are more than alienating from a social point of view—especially ...

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Black Christian Homeschoolers Are Redefining the Movement

Faithful moms are adapting and developing new curricula as more families of color opt to educate at home.

Amber O’Neal Johnston likes to say, “In my house, Charlotte Mason has an Afro.”

Johnston is among generations of homeschooling parents inspired by the 19th-century Christian educator. She believes in Mason’s philosophy that children should be treated as full-fledged people and that educators cooperate with God to create a learning environment rich with books, nature, experiences, and ideas.

But as Johnston claimed her Black heritage over the years, things changed. Her once “bone straight” hair is now worn natural. “It’s big. And I love it,” she said during a Zoom interview, showing off a heavy mass of curls behind a white and patterned headband.

Johnston wants her four kids to claim and love their Blackness too—but she noticed how the books on Charlotte Mason reading lists, full of white authors writing about white characters and history, taught a different lesson.

It was her eldest daughter who shifted Johnston’s view when she remarked, “You said we study important things at school. We study only white people.”

Johnston was stunned.

Since then, the homeschooling mom has worked to bring Black figures and history into the Charlotte Mason approach. She became a board member for the Charlotte Mason Institute, taking the Victorian woman’s philosophy and infusing a “necessary dose of Blackness into it.”

Five years ago, Johnston started a group in the Atlanta area for homeschooling families of Black children. Her website—HeritageMom.com, named for children being a heritage from the Lord in Psalm 127:3—is now a popular destination for Charlotte Mason families and other homeschoolers seeking resources such as multicultural hymn studies ...

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‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’: Ukrainian Orthodox Church Ruptures Relations with Russia

Possible manufacture of holy oil a signal of declaration of independence from Moscow patriarchate, while still opposing rival breakaway church.

After 93 days of war, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) has definitively broken with Russia—maybe.

In a council decision taken May 27, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC)–affiliated body declared its “full self-sufficiency and independence,” condemning the three-month conflict as “a violation of God’s commandment: Thou shalt not kill!”

Such a condemnation was not new. The day the invasion began, UOC-MP Metropolitan Onufriy called it a “repetition of the sin of Cain.” But in dry ecclesial language, the statement dropped a bombshell.

It “adopted relevant amendments” and “considered … making Chrism.”

Chrism, the anointing oil of baptism and other liturgical rites, was last made in Ukraine in 1913. Its manufacture is a typical sign of autocephaly, the self-governing of an Orthodox church branch.

Continuing the tone, the UOC-MP reiterated its position.

“We express our disagreement with … Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia,” it stated of the ROC head, “regarding the war in Ukraine.”

Kirill has consistently supported Russia’s “special military operation.”

In 2018, the breakaway Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was granted autocephaly by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. Rejected by Kirill and the UOC-MP, the act formalized the national schism. (A much smaller third Ukrainian Orthodox church joined the OCU.)

The UOC-MP council’s Friday statement continued to echo the ROC rejection. OCU bishops lack apostolic succession, it said, while overseeing the forcible seizure of churches to transfer jurisdiction. The UOC-MP stated a willingness to dialogue ...

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The Uvalde School Shooting Sends Me to Matthew 18

Jesus gave specific instructions on caring for the “little ones.” The Texas tragedy suggests the church has gravely fallen short.

I remember being 10. I had just discovered a passion for soccer and watched the entire World Cup for the first time alongside my father and my brother.

I embarked on my first mission trip with my church that year to the sierras of Chihuahua, Mexico, where I was fascinated by the idea of one day doing ministry full-time.

I remember being 18. I had graduated high school a semester earlier and had moved to Alabama for a few months before starting college in the fall. My family was no longer together, and my mother had to work all the time because she was now a single parent of two kids.

I knew I wanted to leave those difficult experiences behind and study college away from home. Today I can tell you that I did not know much more at 18 than I knew at 10.

As a journalist and minister who has found a home in Texas, I’ve reflected on these stages of my life as I’ve mourned the tragedy currently crushing the Latino community—an additional chapter to our often painful history. As we so dreadfully now know, on Tuesday, 19 children, ages 9, 10, and 11, were murdered by one who had reached 18 a little more than a week earlier.

The victims loved their moms, celebrated first Communions, and made honor roll. They were children who, just like me years ago, might have watched their first World Cup with their dads and brothers later this very year.

The person who murdered these children was a man barely on the other side of childhood—one who, as Brennan Manning writes, was “broken on the wheels of living.” We know only the surface of what Salvador Ramos’s life was like: a parent struggling with drug addiction, bullying that targeted his speech impediment, violence that intensified as he grew older.

As we ...

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15 Prayers for a Violent World

In an age weary with suffering, how can we pray?

As the father of two elementary-aged children, the news of the May 24 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas—just three hours south of my home in Austin, which resulted in the death of 19 children and 2 teachers—shook me deeply.

Driving my daughter to school the morning after, I felt acutely the fragility and unpredictability of life, and I found myself becoming intensely afraid—and increasingly angry.

Only 10 days prior, a racially motivated 18-year-old man, dressed in body armor and wielding a rifle with a high-capacity magazine, shot and killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket, wounding 3 others. Eleven of the 13 victims were Black.

A day after the mass shooting at a Tops Friendly Markets store in upstate New York, a gunman entered Geneva Presbyterian Church, in Laguna Woods, California—where a group of parishioners had gathered for a lunch to honor a former pastor of a Taiwanese congregation that uses the church for its worship services—and shot and killed one person and wounded five others.

One nation bombs another, a denomination keeps a secret list of abusive pastors, a man is profiled because of his skin color, a Christian is persecuted because of her faith, and thousands are cruelly displaced from their homes—all of it occurring against the backdrop of a global pandemic.

It’s tempting to shut down emotionally in light of all of this violence. It’s tempting to give into despair. “So goes the world,” we might say, wishing it were otherwise but feeling powerless to make a difference. It’s tempting to distract ourselves with busywork or to reach for spiritual platitudes to numb the pain. “Let go and let God.” “God works ...

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A Destroyed Cuban Church Sits on Prime Tourism Real Estate

Devastated in the Havana hotel explosion, the historic Calvary Baptist Church—like many other congregations across the island—will face a drawn-out battle with the government to restore its building.

On May 6, an explosion rocked a heavily transited corner of La Habana Vieja (Old Havana). The almost century-old Hotel Saratoga, set to reopen the following week after extensive renovations, was left in ruins.

Media coverage centered on the iconic hotel, and images of the massive damage to the building and to the buses and other vehicles on the street in front of it circulated around the world. A week later, the final number of those killed by the explosion, including children, elderly people, and a pregnant woman, had reached 45, with more than 100 people hospitalized because of injury. Officials put the blame on the accidental ignition of liquid gas.

Government officials and state media coverage focused heavily on the hotel, which is owned by a tourism company belonging to the Cuban military, but also mentioned damage to surrounding buildings, including a school and some apartment buildings.

Absent from all state media coverage has been any mention of the catastrophic damage to Calvary Baptist Church, which shares a wall with Hotel Saratoga, or the total destruction of the home of an elderly retired couple, both Baptist leaders, which was sandwiched between the church and the hotel.

Calvary Baptist Church is one of the most historically important religious buildings on the island. The church, established in the late 1870s on the site of a former circus, was the first Baptist church in what would later become the Baptist Convention of Western Cuba. In addition to the sanctuary, church buildings house a seminary and administrative offices for the denomination.

At the time of the explosion, 18 people, including three young children, were inside the church facilities. Miraculously, despite the collapse of the dome of the sanctuary ...

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Passion Rekindled: Oberammergau Easter Play Returns with Great Joy

Tourists and pilgrims flock to German village as 1,800 local actors prepare to take the stage after pandemic interruption.

Jill and Oscar Schmidt vowed that they would travel from their home in Washington State to Oberammergau, a small village in the south of Germany, to see the world-famous passion play about the death of Jesus.

They wanted to go in 2010 but didn’t get tickets in time. So they decided they would not miss the next performance—no excuses!—and made plans for the spring of 2020.

“Then they were cancelled,” said Jill.

The Schmidts understood, of course. Everything was shutting down at that time, as the pandemic swept across the world and dominated the headlines. But that makes this moment, two years later, very sweet.

“We are so glad to finally be here,” Jill told CT, “and experience the play at least once in our lifetime.”

This desire—to experience the Oberammergau Passion Play once in a lifetime— has driven millions of tourists and pilgrims to visit the village over the years. It began in 1633 with a vow. Suffering the ravages of the bubonic plague, the inhabitants of the Bavarian village promised to perform a “play of the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ" on stage every ten years if God would spare them further death and devastation. The plague ended, and the people of Oberammergau have been putting on the passion play ever since.

In the 19th century, it began to draw in international visitors, mostly Catholics and Lutherans. Today, a third of the 1 million guests are from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia. The play resonates in this moment with the feeling of surviving a pandemic, but it has long spoken to the themes of crisis and overcoming hardship. The production, after all, retells the story of Jesus’ ...

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Uvalde Pastors Mourn Losses Close to Home

A Hispanic Baptist leader focuses on ministering to his family after his great-granddaughter dies in the school shooting.

In the quiet, 16,000-person town of Uvalde, Texas, nearly everyone has connections to the children, families, and teachers shaken by the deadly elementary school shooting.

“I was watering my flowers in the front yard when I heard shots ring out,” said Julian Moreno, former pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista. Moreno lives two blocks from Robb Elementary School, where an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 kids and two teachers on Tuesday.

Within minutes of hearing the shots, Moreno said he saw two policemen running down the street. Then, an exchange of gunfire so close he could smell the powder.

Knowing his great-granddaughter, Lexi, was a student at the school, Moreno walked to the campus once the shots ceased.

He later learned that the attack took place in 10-year-old Lexi’s classroom, and she was among the victims.

Outside the school, Moreno said, the atmosphere radiated with fear, as parents clamored to get into the barricaded building. Officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and Border Patrol shouted at one another as they put on their gear and approached the school.

“People were talking loudly, a lot were crying,” he said. “They were saying, ‘My son or my daughter is in that building,’ and the officers were just saying ‘I’m sorry, you can’t go any further.’”

Located 80 miles west of San Antonio, an hour from the Mexican border, the town of Uvalde is 82 percent Hispanic, with sizable Catholic and Baptist populations. Around 20 local churches have joined together to support their community, now known as the location of the third-deadliest school shooting in the US.

Because he’s a faith leader, people in the community have turned to ...

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