26 Feb: A “dangerous, highly manipulative” Queensland religious sect leader has been sentenced to 13 years behind bars for the death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs while her parents have been handed jail terms of more than 14 years each. They are among 14 members of Toowoomba-based religious sect the Saints sentenced to prison in the Queensland supreme court on Wednesday. Read the full article

26 Feb: A former Christian Brother has been sentenced to more than two years' imprisonment over his "predatory, premeditated and persistent" sexual abuse of a young boy in his care. It's the third time John Vincent Roberts, now in his 80s, has been sentenced for the sexual abuse of students. Read the full article

26 Feb: A major new study on religious views in the United States finds there are deep divides over the appropriate role for religion in American public life, with sizable shares in favor of a more formalized role. Less than half of all adults now say religion is very important in their lives, down from majorities who felt that way in earlier studies. Read the full article

25 Feb: A "rising tide" of politicised religion is impeding women's rights movements worldwide, a global think tank has said. A new report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) highlights how women's rights campaigners are leading resistance against anti-democratic movements, but face "growing backlash" from politicised religion. Read the full article

25 Feb: In a loss for abortion opponents, the US supreme court on Monday declined to take up two cases involving “buffer zone” ordinances, which limit protests around abortion clinics and which anti-abortion activists have spent years trying to dismantle. Read the full article

One to watch

At a budget estimates hearing in the New South Wales Parliament this week, Greens MP Abigail Boyd grilled the education minister, Prue Car, about the teaching of caste and the teaching of anti-science and anti-evolution materials in the Special Religious Education program in the state’s public schools. What do you think? Email your comments to: sigladman@rationalist.com.au

Opinion / Analysis

Clare Heath-McIvor: The first days of Trump’s second presidency have passed with a flurry of tariff standoffs and literal turf wars with Greenland, Canada, Panama, the Gulf of Mexico and now Gaza. We’ve seen restrictions on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s LGBTQA+ specific resourcing, and a revisionist rewriting of Stonewall’s history. Unsurprisingly, gender identity has landed itself front and centre in the culture wars. Now, we have an announcement that he is creating a taskforce to eradicate anti-Christian bias. Read the full article

Yvonne Patterson: I had inferred from ABS reports during the public consultation period that the ABS pretty much expected the proposed question, ‘Do you have a religion?’, would go ahead, given that the ABS had highlighted the bias in the existing question. The final decision is, therefore, a complete about-face. Read the full article

Honest History has followed the Rationalist Society of Australia’s campaign to get the Australian War Memorial to make Anzac Day Dawn Services look more like modern Australia and less like a 1950s Army base Church Parade… We recognise the efforts of the RSA to push this issue. Progress seems to have stalled. Read the full article

Andrew Messenger: Catholic Church officials have accused survivors of child sexual abuse of engaging in a “criminal offence” for telling their stories after receiving redress payments from a national scheme – and then appear to have leaked details of legal correspondence to a conservative newspaper in an attempt to kill the resulting story. Read the full article

Rick Morton: In December 2021, two separate Queensland cults, obsessed with healthcare and motivated by religion, were anticipating the end of the world. In mid-2024, two Queensland courts in neighbouring buildings simultaneously conducted hearings about the separate homicides. Read the full article

Ella Archibald-Binge: The Northern Territory chief minister made a deliberate omission at an event last month commemorating the 1942 bombing of Darwin by Japanese forces. In her opening remarks, Lia Finocchiaro acknowledged veterans and the families of those who survived – but not the Larrakia people, on whose land the event was held. Read the full article

Michael Koziol: “Look at these crazy Australians, who let them in?” Benny Johnson joked as he took to the stage, gesturing to a rowdy group of fans up the front of the ballroom. From across the country and the world, they flocked to the massive Gaylord National Resort and Convention Centre in National Harbor to declare victory over the “woke” left and “deep state”, to pray at the altar of Trump and to plan the American revolution they have in mind. Read the full article

Liz Gooch: American churches have long offered sanctuary to undocumented migrants, but US President Donald Trump’s threat to deport millions of them – and his administration’s warning that houses of worship will no longer be immune from immigration agent raids – has religious institutions on high alert. Read the full article

Stewart Braun: In the 2024 US presidential election, Catholics voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by a 15-point margin: 56 to 41 per cent. Catholics are also prominently placed in the Trump administration… Catholic officials, moreover, have supported Trump, with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York praising him and leading a prayer at his inauguration. So one could be forgiven for thinking that President Trump’s MAGA policies must hew closely to Catholic and Christian positions on social, ethical and political issues. Read the full article

Rachel Leingang and Alice Herman: Walters’ efforts exemplify attempts to erode the separation of church and state – an increasingly powerful push on the right, with elected officials at the local, state and federal level explicitly stating they don’t believe there is or should be a separation, and that they intend to govern that way. Read the full article

Julia Wong: Is Donald Trump a feminist? There was a time when anyone asking such a question could reasonably expect to be laughed out of the room. Yet, just three weeks into Trump’s second term, the man responsible for stripping women in the US of the right to an abortion was declared a “feminist kween”, “feminist hero” and “feminist icon” by several prominent feminist writers in the UK. Read the full article

Simon Jenkins: The national church “of England” has been meeting this week in London and is in turmoil. Does it matter, other than to the 1.7% of the population of England who still worship under its roofs? Since the Church of England continues with an “established” role in the life of the nation, the answer is yes. Read the full article

Eleni Courea, et al: The splendours of the Parthenon, Colosseum and Great Pyramid of Giza were in stark contrast to the utilitarian conference centre in London’s Docklands, but they were there to make a point. As 4,000 people from dozens of countries filed in for a three-day jamboree of rightwing discourse this week, the images were a reminder that great civilisations of the past had risen, declined and fallen. A commentary warned that western civilisation was at a tipping point, in crisis because it had lost touch with its “Judeo-Christian foundations”. Read the full article

The ailing health of Pope Francis is a big story, regardless of your religion but more and more Australians say religion has no part in their lives. According to our last census in 2021 the figure was around 39% of the population just 10 years earlier in 2011 it was 22%. So, what role does faith play in your life? Listen to the episode

Elections in Germany have delivered a major rise in support for the far-right nationalist party Alternative for Deutschland. It ran second to the centre-right Christian Democrats. What role did immigration play in the result? And what's happened to the influence of Christian leaders who spoke out against the rise of nationalism? Listen to the episode

Even as Pope Francis struggles through his treatment in hospital, he is still at work. He proritised a call to the Catholic parish in Gaza. Francis is in the winter of his papacy. Even when his health rallies a bit, everyone from the Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher to his counterpart in New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, have said the same thing – a historic papacy has probably entered its finale. Listen to the episode

Kenan Malik: Whatever the attack was about, it wasn’t about The Satanic Verses.” So insists Salman Rushdie in Knife, his “Meditations After an Attempted Murder”, written after he almost lost his life in a ferocious assault in Chautauqua, a small town in upstate New York, where he had gone to give a talk in August 2022. Read the full article

Siavash Shahabi: Life in Iran is not lived, it is performed. Every movement, every word, every breath is dictated by an invisible force, an unyielding presence that presses against the people like a rope pulling them back, keeping them in place. Read the full article