The grandfather and uncle of a 3-year-old girl killed last fall during an exorcism at a Northern California church have been arrested this week in connection with her death.

The child died last September after family members performed a ceremony because they believed she was "possessed by an evil spirit," court documents show. The Santa Clara County medical examiner's office ruled the death a homicide caused by asphyxiation.

The San Jose Police Department said on Friday that police arrested the child's grandfather and uncle on charges of child abuse leading to the death of the victim. The child's mother was arrested and charged in January. It was not immediately known if the girl's grandfather and uncle have an attorney who can speak on their behalf.

The grandfather told the Mercury News last week that he performed a ceremony on the child to “liberate her of her evil spirits,” the Associated Press reported. He didn’t reveal all of the details of the exorcism but said his granddaughter was asleep when she got to the church, and he said that the ceremony took two hours.

“If you read the Bible, you’ll see that Jesus casts away demons and made sick people healthy again,” he said. “It’s not when I want to do it, it’s when God, in his will, wants to heal the person. The preacher is like an instrument of God; what we do is what God says.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses are knocking on doors again.

They resumed door-to-door ministry on Sept. 1. The practice was suspended for more than two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dan Sideris told The Associated Press that he was nervous about going door-to-door again, but the experience turned out to be a good one for him.

“It all came back quite naturally because we don’t have a canned speech,” he said. “We try to engage with people about what’s in their heart, and what we say comes from our hearts.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses say they go door-to-door because are following the example of early Christians who found the practice a good way to reach people.

During the pandemic, they tried to reach people through letters and phone calls.

There are reportedly more than 1.2 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States.

The U.S. Senate is poised to pass legislation that would codify same-sex marriage protections.

The Respect for Marriage Act earned 62 votes on Wednesday, which was needed to bypass a filibuster. Twelve Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting for the bill.

The bill will be debated before a final vote is taken. If the Senate passes the bill, which is now expected, it will have to go to the House for a vote before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

The senators who crafted the bill said they used "commonsense language to confirm that this legislation fully respects and protects Americans’ religious liberties and diverse beliefs, while leaving intact the core mission of the legislation to protect marriage equality."

Congress has been moving to protect same-sex marriage as support from the general public — and from Republicans in particular — has sharply grown in recent years, as the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized gay marriage nationwide.

Recent polling has found more than two-thirds of the public supports same-sex unions.

The legislation would repeal the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act and require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed.

The new Respect for Marriage Act would also protect interracial marriages by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin."

A man was arrested in New Jersey for allegedly attempting to firebomb a synagogue.

According to the Department of Justice, Nicholas Malindretos, 26, is charged with attempted use of fire to damage and destroy a building used in interstate commerce.

“The defendant is alleged to have gone to a synagogue in the middle of the night and maliciously attempted to damage and destroy it using a firebomb," said U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger.

Prosecutors allege Malindretos was captured on surveillance camera at the Temple Ner Tamid Jewish Congregation in Bloomfield, New Jersey, on Jan. 29. He allegedly ignited a wick on a bottle and then threw it at the front glass door of the temple before leaving the area.

Despite wearing a ski mask, authorities said Malindretos was identified by a license plate reading device that picked up his vehicle leaving the area. Officers said they found several items consistent with the firebombing.

Malindretos faces a minimum of five years in prison if convicted.

This is the second high-profile incident targeting the Jewish community in the past few months. Federal authorities say 18-year-old Omar Alkattoul used social media to send a manifesto with threats to the Jewish community. He was arrested in November.

Thousands of Arizona Catholics recently learned they may have been improperly baptized with the wrong words.

In Michigan, a separate but similar controversy has been ongoing since 2020. For years, a deacon at St. Anastasia Church in suburban Detroit used the words "we baptize" instead of "I baptize." The Vatican says that phrase makes the sacrament invalid.

The Detroit Archdiocese says it found about 200 baptisms were done properly, and 71 people so far have been baptized again. But 455 people haven't responded. One person who was affected was a priest, the Rev. Matthew Hood. He was quickly baptized and ordained again as a priest in 2020.

The situation has had many seriously upset, with one unidentified woman commenting during a talk who said, “Why do you think so many people are leaving the Catholic Church?” She said, “This is a great example why. This is just awful.”

Another man said, “What would Jesus do?” And then said, “I think he would be on a different side here and say by what you’re doing you have disrupted so many lives, so many people,”

Church members went to try and find videos of baptisms to see if family members had invalid sacraments.

Rev. Hood said, “We’re aware there are young people who no longer practice the faith. This problem has opened that up.” He said, “But for some individuals, it has been the opportunity to say I haven’t taken my faith seriously and this is an opportunity to do that, to realize something real is at play here.”

The blurred line between politics and religion has been around for quite some time.

Seeing politicians in the pulpit is about as normalized as seeing the pastor himself, with presidents from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump mentioning their relationships with the church in speeches. However, churches and other tax-exempt organizations are not allowed to outright endorse or oppose political candidates.

"When you mix religion and politics, you get politics," said David L. Thompson, vice president of public policy with the National Council of Nonprofits.

The 1954 tax law known as the Johnson Amendment, introduced by then Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, is meant to temper just how much religion and politics collide. The law aims to keep money from influencing religious institutions and keep places of worship from becoming super PACs. 

"There's a reason that the auditoriums of all religious institutions are called sanctuaries, we are safe havens from the acrimony of partisan activities," Thompson said. "We're the only ones that can receive tax-deductible donations. Someone who gives to a church knows that that money cannot be used for partisan election-related activities."

But, that doesn't keep people of faith from donating to candidates individually. According to Open Secrets, since 1990 Democrats have been the top recipients of donations from people with a religious affiliation.  

The law also doesn't keep pastors from opening their doors to political messages, like one that played at 300 churches ahead of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race that said, "This is the first year you can vote on Sunday, so please, vote after today's service."

Because it's rarely enforced, the law hasn't stopped faith leaders from walking the endorsement line. Still, its opponents, like former President Donald Trump, want the Johnson Amendment gone completely, and the reason is simple: Religious leaders are influential, bringing about political and societal change in the U.S. for centuries.

"Those who supported the King would say...'The Bible, says Honor the King. Romans 12 says respect those in authority.' And, the other side said, 'But what about Moses? Oh, you know, God wants his people to be free.'" said author John Vile. 

Vile is the author of "The Bible in American Law and Politics" and he says religion was also used to perpetuate racism and power.

"That's how it was with slavery," Vile said. "There are passages in the Bible that seem to say, you know, leave it alone, and there are others like the Exodus narrative."

But, through pastors like Andrew Young, John Lewis or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights movement was ignited. Today, faith leaders are still marching, with dozens fasting and praying recently to move the needle on voting rights. 

Pastor Jennifer Butler, executive director of Faith in Public Life, is among them. 

"It was religion that drove the civil rights movement," Butler said. "It was religion that drove the effort to end apartheid in South Africa."

Her group Faith in Public Life boasts a network of 50,000 faith leaders engaged in political issues.

"We're going to be lifting that up as a faith community, mobilizing thousands of faith leaders around the country to lobby to bring their voices to the public square to make sure that the voters can indeed cast their vote when it comes time for midterm elections," Butler said. 

But, she says there is a difference between Christian nationalism, the belief the U.S. is a nation built by Christians for Christians, and pastors working to bring about good for all people.

"On Jan. 6, there are Christian flags flying high in that crowd," Butler said. "That was extremely disturbing to me as a Christian and as a pastor to use Christian imagery to justify violence and to justify denying people their right to vote."

Despite her dedication, the former Obama administration faith adviser says the Johnson Amendment is a good thing for the country and people of faith.

"From a faith perspective, it's actually idolatry to tie faith to full-on endorsement of something that supersedes God," Butler said. "So as faith leaders, we want to be careful not to be beholden to any political party."

This story was originally published by Newsy.

Throughout the last two years, there has been a rise in antisemitism in the country. Jewish leaders say the acts of hate are also a reflection of our democracy.

Rabbi Jay Streat, the president and CEO of Jewish Colorado, has seen it evolve firsthand.

“Not only have the historic tropes of antisemitism, bigotry racism, homophobia been allowed but the association of those behaviors have now been connected with the most horrendous violence," Rabbi Streat said.

A new report released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) says nearly one out of every four Jews in the U.S. has been the subject to anti-Semitism over the past year.

“Here in Denver, a week or so ago, we had grotesque, disgusting antisemitic, racist, bigoted expressions spray-painted on a local high school," Rabbi Streat said.

Rabbi Joseph Black, with Temple Emanuel in Denver, Jews are being targeted across the country.

“I just heard last weekend from a friend of mine who is a rabbi is Austin, Texas. There were neo-Nazi rallies, there was a fire outside of a synagogue. At Georgetown University, a Jewish fraternity was broken into and a Tora scroll, our most sacred object, was desecrated and torn to bits," said Rabbi Black.

“What we are enduring now, I think, is a stain on democracy but it is also a call to act in our community, to rise up to values and to call out those voices and those behaviors," Rabbi Streat said.

The report also found 39% of American Jews changed their behavior in the last 12 months out of fear of antisemitism. Many have avoided things like posting online content and are removing identifiable pieces.

“I wear a Kepa every single day and I am abundantly aware of the Black man experience that he cannot step out of his skin. And so when I go into a store and I want to take my Kepa off or put a hat on to hide my identity, I think about that a lot," Rabbi Streat said.

Rabbi Streat says it’s why he always chooses to keep his identifiable items on. He knows others that also face injustices don’t have that privilege.

“When we start hiding who we are, we are allowing the racists and the haters to win," Rabbi Black said. “It is vitally important that we create allies and find things that bind us together but in the process of doing so, we have to look at who we are. And the history of white privilege, that I, as a Caucasian American Jew, have benefited from. I think it is important that I am there for the people of color in my community, and in other communities. The LGBTQ, the immigrants, the Asians, the African Americans, every different group who is targeted by hatred, we need to work together.”

The AJC is characterizing this rise in antisemitism as a severe problem in the nation.

“We need Jews and African Americans, and the full panoply of ideologies and ideas and lifestyles and behaviors and expressions of self to stand shoulder to shoulder to say this is actually America," said Rabbi Streat. “We need to be invited into the Black community, the Muslin community, the Sikh community, as do we need to continue to invite those individuals into our community. Not to agree but to raise up a level of empathy.”

More Americans are looking to religious exemptions to avoid getting the COVID-19 vaccine. But this influx of requests has been baffling some religious leaders.

“Recently, I’ve had a bunch of people ask me about religious exemptions,” said Muhammad Kolila, Imam at the Downtown Denver Islamic Center.

Kolila says he's seen an uptick in the number of people asking him questions about the COVID-19 vaccine.

“There is no such thing as an exemption from the vaccination,” he explained. “It’s encouraged because that's the best way to reach the people’s safety, and it’s part of our religion that we try as much as we can to protect our bodies and protect other people's bodies too.”

He said, specifically, the mRNA vaccine does not interfere with their beliefs.

“The only time the exemption happens is if the vaccine contains pork. That's the time we consider the vaccination is not permissible, because we don't eat pork or include anything in our bodies related to pork. Another is alcohol,” he said.

Kolila is not alone.

“People have asked me to give them exemptions, and I can’t think of any religious basis to do so,” said Rabbi Joseph Black, the Senior Rabbi at Temple Emanuel Denver.

He faces the same questions.

“Our top priority in every one of our Jewish values is an idea called 'pikuach nefesh,' which means 'preservation of life,' and according to Jewish tradition, saving a life trumps any other commandment,” he said. “We require all the students in our early learning center to be vaccinated.”

Churches across the country have been clarifying their stance. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America announced in a statement: “...there is no exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccination for religious reasons.”

Other entities, like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, have released similar statements.

“What a religious exemption does is it allows a person on the basis of a religious belief to claim to be exempt from some general legal requirement,” said Leslie Francis, the Director of the University of Utah Center for Law and Biomedical Sciences.

She is a professor of law and philosophy.

“Part of what's worrying a lot of people in this discussion is, aren't we just gonna have a whole lot of people saying they have religious exemptions when maybe they don't?” she said.

That’s exactly what legal expert Christopher Jackson has been seeing as more employers implement mandates.

“Religious exemptions are kind of a thing in employment and constitutional law, but they haven't come up all that much. I think that there has been an uptick in the last few weeks, especially after the president announced a new OSHA rule mandating vaccines for most employers. It really has come up a lot more frequently,” said Jackson, an appellate partner at Holland & Hart LLP.

He said the line isn’t clear.

“The religious belief has to be a sincerely held one. But there isn't a great case for an employer to dive into that, or try to figure out if somebody has a sincerely held religious belief.”

Jackson said he sees multiple ways this could go.

“I could see this opening a floodgate of lawsuits, of seeing federal courts getting involved, or it may be in a few weeks that this mostly dies down. That they kind of sorted out who really should be exempted and who shouldn't and maybe it goes away, and I don’t really think anyone has a clear idea yet which way this is going to go,” he said.

For now, churches will make decisions based on their core beliefs.

“The value of saving life, the value of preserving community, the value of supporting one another, is more important,” Rabbi Black said.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Reverend Dr. Megan Rohrer is the bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod, overseeing nearly 200 evangelical Lutheran congregations from Central California and Nevada up to Oregon.

The bishop is making history.

“It made the history books because I'm the first openly transgender bishop in the Lutheran Church and maybe in all of the mainline churches across the world,” Rohrer said.

Rohrer says becoming bishop as a transgender person was not something they anticipated so soon.

“It was a shock," Rohrer said. "It was just a very unexpected thing for me when I was elected, but a very gratifying process to have so many people believe in my leadership skills and be ready for this.”

Rohrer’s pronouns are “they” and “them” instead of “he” or “she” because they don't want to be put in a box.

“The ideas and the expectations about what it means to be male or what it means to be female are not fully something that I identify with.”

Rohrer says there have been challenges on their faith journey when people debate their worth as a transgender person. However, Rohrer says they’ll continue to live the life God called them to live by being a faithful person consistently.

“God and I are good," Rohrer said. "And so when someone wants to send me a Bible verse to tell me where I'm wrong, I want to send them some of my favorite Bible verses not to like, have a debate with them because, you know, God never once said, 'Let's take a vote before deciding who God loves.' But because like, that's exactly why I think the Bible is such an important book. Like because the people that are going to preach the opposite of me for the rest of my life are just as loved by God as I am. And the book that I think is sacred fills their heart just as much as it fills my heart.”

Rohrer says their relationship with God has been strong ever since they were a child, and they don’t doubt God loves them.

“When I was about six, my parents were getting divorced and it was a very violent divorce, and there was this period where like, everything in the house got destroyed and we were going back to the house to see if there were any toys or anything like we could take with us. And I just had this deep knowing that like, God loved me and was with me. And if all this stuff in our house was broken like as a 6-year-old to lose all your toys, it's a big deal, right? But I just had this deep knowing like like that Jesus was on my side and that I didn't need toys because like Jesus was there.”

Rohrer says their role as bishop is a big step in the church, opening the doors for other LGBTQ leaders and spreading the message that God loves everyone. Rohrer hopes that in the future, gender identity isn’t as big of a deal. And that others realize God can work through all the diversity of creation.

“Folk who use scripture just to belittle or to be racist or to exclude, I think, are being spiritually abusive, and I hope to be the kind of bishop who can care for people who have heard those messages to work for healing," Rohrer said. "Living faithfully consistently changes the church more than debating.”

Rohrer says if what Jesus says is true, then love is the greatest commandment and Rohrer plans to honor that.

SAN FRANCISCO —

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America installed its first openly transgender bishop in a service held in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral on Saturday.

The Rev. Megan Rohrer will lead one of the church's 65 synods, overseeing nearly 200 congregations in Northern California and northern Nevada.

“My call is ... to be up to the same messy, loving things I was up to before,” Rohrer told worshippers. “But mostly, if you'll let me, and I think you will, my hope is to love you and beyond that, to love what you love.”

Video above: Meet Megan Rohrer, the first openly transgender bishop in the Lutheran Church

Rohrer was elected in May to serve a six-year term as bishop of the Sierra Pacific Synod after its current bishop announced his retirement.

“I step into this role because a diverse community of Lutherans in Northern California and Nevada prayerfully and thoughtfully voted to do a historic thing,” Rohrer said in a statement. “My installation will celebrate all that is possible when we trust God to shepherd us forward.”

Rohrer, who uses the pronoun “they," previously served as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Francisco and a chaplain coordinator for the city's police department, and also helped minister to the city's homeless and LGTBQ community. They studied religion at Augustana University in their hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before moving to California to pursue master and doctoral degrees at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

Rohrer became one of seven LGBTQ pastors accepted by the progressive Evangelical Lutheran church in 2010 after it allowed ordination of pastors in same-sex relationships. Rohrer is married and has two children.

The church is one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States with about 3.3 million members.

The Supreme Court is telling California that it can't enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings.

The order from the court late Friday is the latest in a recent string of cases in which the high court has barred officials from enforcing some coronavirus-related restrictions applying to religious gatherings.

Five conservative justices agreed that California restrictions that apply to in-home religious gatherings should be lifted for now, while the court's three liberals and Chief Justice John Roberts would not have done so.

California has already, however, announced significant changes loosening restrictions on gatherings that go into effect April 15. The changes come after infection rates have gone down in the state.

The case before the justices involved California rules that in most of the state limit indoor social gatherings to no more than three households. Attendees are required to wear masks and physically distance from one another. Different restrictions apply to places including schools, grocery stores and churches.

"California treats some comparable secular activities more favorably than at-home religious exercise," allowing hair salons, retail stores, and movie theaters, among other places, "to bring together more than three households at a time," the unsigned order from the court said. A lower court "did not conclude that those activities pose a lesser risk of transmission than applicants' proposed religious exercise at home," it said.

The court acknowledged that California's policy on gatherings will change next week but said the restrictions remain in place until then and that "officials with a track record of 'moving the goalposts' retain authority to reinstate those heightened restrictions at any time."

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for herself and her liberal colleagues, Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, that the court's majority was hurting state officials' ability to address a public health emergency.

"California limits religious gatherings in homes to three households. If the State also limits all secular gatherings in homes to three households, it has complied with the First Amendment. And the State does exactly that: It has adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike. California need not ... treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons," she wrote. She added that "the law does not require that the State equally treat apples and watermelons."

The case before the justices involved two residents of Santa Clara County in the San Francisco Bay Area, who want to host small, in-person Bible study sessions in their homes. California had defended its policy of restricting social gatherings as "entirely neutral."

The court has dealt with a string of cases in which religious groups have challenged coronavirus restrictions impacting worship services. While early in the pandemic the court sided with state officials over the objection of religious groups, that changed following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last September and her replacement by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

In November, the high court barred New York from enforcing certain limits on attendance at churches and synagogues in areas designated as hard hit by the virus. And in February, the high court told California that it can't bar indoor church services because of the coronavirus pandemic, though it let stand for now a ban on singing and chanting indoors.

File video: Religious leaders react to Supreme Court decision on indoor services