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Incarcerated men and women will receive a free copy of Sr. Pastor Tony Evans' latest book "Detours: The Unpredictable Path to Your Destiny" through a special, "buy one-give one" launch campaign offered by B&H Publishing Group and the Prison Fellowship Ministries. For each purchase of Detours redeemed on www.DetoursBook.com before Feb. 28, 2017, B&H will donate a corresponding copy to the prison ministry program.

A large, 14-foot tall Latin, granite cross inside a public park in Santa Clara, Calif., was removed after receiving a legal complaint from a local man and the nation's largest atheist and agnostics group, Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. Ironically, the cross was located in Memorial Cross Park.

Church choirs sang, a half-dozen religious leaders prayed and Donald Trump, as U.S. presidents before him, mentioned God in his inauguration speech. "There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God," he said.

A WhiteHouse.gov page previously about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is non-existent after U.S. President Donald Trump was sworn in. The whitehouse.gov/lgbt page reportedly was gone within an hour of Trump taking office. It was replaced by a Trump "transitionsplash" page. Other previously available White House webpages about climate change, civil rights and health care, also were taken down.

An interfaith prayer service will be held at Washington's National Cathedral on Saturday in conjunction with the 58th Presidential Inauguration.

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley took issue with what she believes is United Nations' members lack of support to Israel during her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday to become U.N. ambassador for the United States. She also spoke against Russia, and questioned what she called disproportionate funding the U.N. receives from the U.S.

A group of Christian leaders prayed over the doorway through which U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will walk at the Capitol Building for Friday's inauguration. They reportedly asked for direction, leadership, protection and blessings for the incoming Trump Administration.

This week as Religious Freedom Day 2017 was observed and U.S. citizens prepare for a transition to a new president, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., offered some recommendations about what President-elect Donald Trump could do in the future about religious freedom.

Origins of all three of the world's major religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - will be explored and "explained" in the second season of The Story of God, a National Geographic special hosted and narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman. Season 2 premiered on Monday.

Trump International Hotel managers again will host the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast, reversing the previous cancelation of their contract to hold the Jan. 20 event, according to organizer Rev. Merrie Turner. Hotel representatives reinstated the contract with Turner Saturday, the day after the organizer hostess and her lawyer filed a $1 million lawsuit against the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) in U.S. Superior Court for the District of Columbia for interfering with a contract. The non-partisan, inter-denominational prayer breakfast dates back to 1993.

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.

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.

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 Reconstruction Era National Monument in South Carolina.

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.

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.

Backpage.com, a website notorious for its facilitation of prostitution and sex trafficking shut down the "adult" sexual services advertising section of its website. The website, which Polaris Project calls "the world's top online brothel," removed the prostitution ads' section hours after a scathing U.S. Senate report concluded the website was the "largest commercial sex services advertising platform in the United States."

Christian ministers went to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to appeal to Congressional members about Comcast Corporation's recent actions to decrease or cease distribution of The Word Network, the largest African-American religious network in the world that was reaching 3 billion people around the globe. On Nov. 11, 2016, Comcast executives sent a two-sentence letter to The Word Network, stating it will no longer offer the channel to millions of subscribers on 456 Comcast systems.

Fuller Theological Seminary received a new $50,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to assist evangelical communities in fostering peaceful, respectful engagement with Muslims neighbors. Fuller is the largest multi-denominational seminary in the world.

Three caves and hiking enthusiasts just discovered significant religious symbols dating back to Jesus Christ's era, according to an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announcement. A cross, plus an ancient seven-branched menorah, was found engraved on the walls of an early water cistern in Judean foothills. The etchings are believed to be more than 2,100 years old.

A federal judge in South Carolina formally sentenced mass murderer Dylann Roof to death on Wednesday, one day after jury members recommended he be executed for killing nine people through gunfire inside an Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015. The victims, all African-Americans, had been attending a prayer service. Roof is the first person to be sentenced to death in a federal trial that included hate crimes' charges, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In all, Roof, 22, was charged with 33 hate crimes.

Rev. John Schlicher said he lay on the ground praying, thinking he and his family would die at the hands of a gunman who killed five people around him in Florida at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Jan. 6. "Even in the midst of evil, there was peace - a peace I can only attribute to God," the United Methodist pastor said, his voice shaking.

Missouri State University officials just agreed to pay $25,000 to a former student who sued the school after he was removed from a master's degree counseling program, because he said he wouldn't counsel gay couples. Andrew Cash sued the university last April, claiming in the lawsuit he was "targeted and punished for expressing his Christian worldview." However, his personal religious stance presented professional issues, given the national counselors' code of ethics.

The musical addition of Carrie Underwood at the Passion 2017 religious conference angered some attendees due to her open acceptance of gay rights. Rev. Louie Giglio, pastor and organizer of the gathering, received a letter from an angry Christian who was upset about Underwood leading congregation into worship on Jan. 2 in Atlanta, Ga.

One of the most popular and photographed U.S. trees in Calaveras Big Trees State Park in California - a giant sequoia with a tunnel cut into it from the 1880s - succumbed to recent severe winter weather and rain, toppling over Sunday and splintering on impact. Called the Pioneer Cabin Tree, this sequoia is believed to be hundreds of years old. Many admirers of the tree are posting on social media their photos of driving through the tree.

Bill (S.54) was introduced in the U.S. Senate on Thursday to prohibit creation of immigration-related registry programs that classify people based on religion, race, age, gender, ethnicity, national origin or nationality. The Protect American Families Act of 2017 was introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), in response to statements from then-candidate Donald Trump, indicating he would create a federal registry of Muslims, seek to deny Muslims entry to the United States, or otherwise add a religious test to American immigration procedures, if he became president.