RALEIGH, N.C. -- The Rev. Rob Lee IV, a relative of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, said on ABC's "The View" Monday that white Christians need to find "a different way of doing church" that is more aligned with the teachings of Jesus.

It's the latest high-profile appearance for the 24-year-old Duke Divinity School graduate who has spoken with ...Read more

White Christians, long the dominant religious group in the U.S., now account for less than half of all adults living in America, a recently released survey shows.

More than 80 percent of the nation's residents identified as white and Christian 40 years ago, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. In contrast, the institute's 2016 ...Read more

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- An international investigation has picked up speed into whether a controversial Rutherford County church operated a human trafficking pipeline with its South American congregations, U.S. Attorney Jill Rose says.

Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale has been the target of government probes in the past over whether it has ...Read more

Driving on Interstate 84 near the town of Grandview, Wash., you can see acres and acres of tall poles strung with lines. These are fields of hops, used in the production of beer.

In early spring, there appear mats of green on the ground. In mid-spring, farmworkers train the young hop vines to grow upward along the guidelines. In just a few ...Read more

He was a rough-and-tumble bronc rider -- a tall, lanky guy who followed the rodeo. With a swagger to complement his Wranglers and spurs, there wasn't a man around who enjoyed the thrill more.

"I was a cowboy," Micah Smith said as he reminisced about his rowdy youth in West Richland and south of Kennewick, Wash. "That's a domestic way of saying ...Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- A Christian football coach suspended for kneeling and praying on the 50-yard line after high school games lost a bid Wednesday to be reinstated and allowed to worship in front of students.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Bremerton, Wash., High School football coach Joseph A. Kennedy was ...Read more

Every time the Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV hands his credit card to a department store cashier, he braces for the question: Are you related to Gen. Robert E. Lee?

In the past, he has hesitated to answer, though the answer is yes. Lee is his great-great-great-great uncle.

"At the checkout counter, you don't always want to get into a conversation ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Those who bothered to glance at the Confederate memorial that stood until last Monday outside the old county courthouse in Durham may have seen its boy who wore the gray as a quaint relic of an Old South. To white supremacists, the monument and hundreds like it represent something more enduring than bronze or granite.

Believers...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Hillary Clinton wants to be a preacher, and a Duke Divinity School alum who served as her spiritual adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign says Clinton would be powerful in the pulpit.

"I think she would be a terrific preacher," said the Rev. Bill Shillady, who has been a friend and a pastor to the Clinton family for 15 ...Read more

COLUMBUS, Ga. -- It was no surprise to Mary Jo Snead when her son, Carlos, became a pastor.

"When he was just a boy, I could hear him preaching in the bathroom," she said. "I had to tell him to hush."

The decision by her eldest son, Ernest, was a bit more of a surprise. It took him a bit longer to get the calling.

Each Sunday morning, the ...Read more

Have you ever been stumped?

Americans use this colorful idiom when we face a perplexing problem or become confounded by some intellectual puzzle. "Stumps" have come to mean much more than a physical obstacle to forward motion. When you are stumped, forward progress halts until you find a way to remove the stump or go around it.

Farmers know ...Read more

There was the hum of tiny wings, a flash of green that caught her eye -- and in a blink a daughter's grief took flight.

Diana Seuell of Pasco, Wash., remembers the exact moment she spied the hummingbird hovering directly in front of her. The warm May morning was almost a year to the day since she had lost her beloved mother -- a sudden death ...Read more

It had been a prayer in passing, not one a person would expect an answer. Just a thought that gets sent heavenward while your mind is focused on the moment at hand.

But when a quiet knock sounded on my front door, little did I know how it would resonate in my heart.

The year was 1978, mid- or-late August. Time seems to blur as weeks pile atop ...Read more

The world swam before the young man's eyes, his body airborne and plummeting toward the ground below. In one stroke of bad luck, life had shifted.

"If I would have just landed on the pavement I'd probably have just broken my arm," Nate Higgins said, reflecting on his 2004 fall from a rooftop where he had been painting for a summer job. "But I ...Read more