Thousands of paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP, days ahead of the release of its report.

They are ex-missionaries and military pilots, yoga instructors and computer programmers, mothers, fathers, professors and political activists. Some left religion on a rocky, anguished path, stung by abuse or shunned by family. Others came to the realization slowly, after a lifetime of questions they couldn't shake.

Canada’s Catholic bishops are apologizing for the church’s role in the residential school system. In an open letter, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed their “profound remorse” for their participation in the system, which led to the suppression of Indigenous languages and culture.

rAmen.

"The government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion." What forthright American declared such words? Bill Maher? Christopher Hitchens? Emma Goldman? No. They come from the Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated under George Washington, approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797.

Britain is one of the most secular countries in the world. Belief in God has been declining, along with other indicators of religion, since polling began. In 1961, when a question about God was included in a survey by the National Opinion Polls, 91 per cent of Britons expressed belief. By 2018, according to the British Social Attitudes survey, that had fallen to 55 per cent of the population, with 26 per cent affirming that they’ve never believed.

The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.

Angels don't just sing at Christmastime. For most Americans, they're a year-round presence. A new Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 77 percent of adults believe these ethereal beings are real. Belief is primarily tied to religion, with 88 percent of Christians, 95 percent of evangelical Christians and 94 percent of those who attend weekly religious services of any sort saying they believe in angels.

Worrisomely, Facebook and religion are getting more and more chummy in the U.S. What good will come of supercharging the spread of fantasies as facts?

Two new books explore what unbelievers actually believe.

In moral philosophy and mass culture alike, “nihilism” has a bad name. And little wonder. It is most often associated with meaninglessness, pessimism, and amoralism. At its heart, nihilism is a view of the world in which progress is not assured, a world without overarching meaning. Does that present a problem to the moral life?

Debates over critical race theory and women pastors dominated this year’s Southern Baptist Convention meeting, but most votes went for the moderates.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster will remain in the realms of satire, after an attempt to secure formal recognition as an incorporated entity was knocked by a South Australian legal authority on the grounds that the purported religion is nothing more than a "hoax".

As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen. Will the quest for secular redemption through politics doom the American idea?

A generation ago, hard-core conservatives took over the largest Protestant church denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, and birthed what we now call “the Christian right.” They overcame a tradition of congregational and state-convention autonomy to impose biblical inerrancy, the subordination of women in the pews and at home...

The sudden departure of Russell Moore is forcing an overdue conversation about the crises of American Christendom.

During four days of preliminary hearings last week in the rape trial of That ’70s Show actor and Scientologist Danny Masterson, three women detailed how top officials from the celebrity-driven church allegedly tried to silence their accusations, the Los Angeles Times reports.

It's about time this real story came out.

College majors that focus on inquiry rather than applying knowledge are more likely to secularize students, according to a new study that breaks with the traditional claim that exposure to science leads people away from religion.

Suffering and death are facts of life: “Everyone dies, their bodies rot, and every face becomes a skull.”