• Megachurch Pastor Eddie Long Died, Wife Says He is Resting in Better Place With God

  Bishop Eddie Long, pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., died Sunday morning. Long, 63, had been battling cancer- and health-related issues for several months.

  

• 'Silence:' Martin Scorsese, Fuller Theological Seminary Faculty Discuss Faith at Film Screening

  Martin Scorsese, Academy Award winner and director of the new film Silence, joined Fuller Theological Seminary faculty for a private screening of the movie, followed by a discussion about faith. The sold-out screening and interview with Scorsese, held at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 Theatre in Pasadena, was coordinated through Reel Spirituality, an initiative of the Fuller's Brehm Center for Worship, Theology, and the Arts at Fuller Seminary.

  

• Churches Amid Historic Civil Rights' Sites Designated by President Obama as National Monuments

  Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and other civil rights landmarks in Birmingham, Ala., were designated on Thursday as the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument by President Barack Obama in one of his last official acts as U.S. leader. This church is where four girls died in 1963 after Ku Klux Klan members detonated more than a dozen sticks of dynamite outside the church basement. He also deemed two other new national monuments: Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Ala., and the Reco

  

• Christian Vindicated as Court Finds Bible-Related Arrest Unlawful by Highway Patrol Officer

  Pastor Mark Mackey was arrested for reading the Bible aloud in front of the California Department of Motor Vehicles office in Hemet, Calif., in 2011. But on Wednesday, three federal appellate judges in the Ninth Circuit issued a final ruling in favor of the Christian, rebuking the officer's original claims and finding him not guilty.

  

• China's Largest Megachurch Ex-Pastor Arrested by Authorities for Supporting Religious Freedom

  In what some people are calling the most high-profile religious persecution case since the Cultural Revolution, the former pastor of China's largest state-run megachurch was arrested on Saturday by a local public security bureau in China's coastal Zhejiang province, according to persecution watchdog China Aid. Authorities reportedly re-apprehended Gu "Joseph" Yuese sometime before Christmas; on Jan. 7, his family received an announcement he had been arrested on charges of embezzling funds.