Religion News Sites

Introduction
New and Starred
Interfaith
Bahá'í
Buddhist
Christian
Hindu
Humanist – Atheist
Islamic
Jewish
Pagan
Sikh
Unitarian Universalist

Comments, suggestions, and reports of dead links are welcome; please write to faith@greenbelt.com.

Introduction

This page, which is updated periodically, lists news services carrying religion news (the gramatically awkward phrase favored by present-day journalists). It also includes a few important newspapers and newsmagazines. All of the sites offer free, English-language news.

Readers should realize that, like most news sources, the sites listed below can be biased at times. Many are run by the religious bodies whose news they are reporting; others are independent but are intended as tools for evangelization. All news sources, of course, reveal some bias, no matter what the subject; religion news, though, still does not receive adequate coverage from the mainstream media, and so religion news stories are often carried by only one source. (For more about this problem, see Religion and Reporters.)

Starred sites are particularly worth visiting. These are news sites which, drawing from a number of sources, achieve excellence in quantity, quality, and variety.

New and Starred

ChristianWeek [new]
Church Net UK
Jewish News Links [new]
The Lycian Sanctuary (Pagan) [new]
Michel's Religion News Page
The Muslim News [new]
SikhNet News [new]
USAJewish [new]
Vaishanava Internet News Agency (Hindu) [new]
Worldwide Faith News (WFN)

The List

INTERFAITH

free! Like Internet Infidels, the religion page of free! carries articles on church-state issues in the U.S. Articles are staff-written by members of the Freedom Forum and are somewhat slanted toward the forum's views. A handful of articles are added daily, and the archives date back to November 1997.

Greenbelt Interfaith News. Interfaith news from around the world, with special coverage of archaeological and indigenous news. New issues are posted quarterly; the archives date back to June 1997.

Michel's Religion News Page. Most interfaith news sites aren't. By contrast, Michel's Religion News Page makes a real effort to go beyond the usual blend of Christian and Jewish articles. The site's simple format consists of links to articles at other sites, mainly secular newspapers. A large number of links are added daily; the archives date back to October 1997. On a down note, many of the links go out of date quickly. The site is nothing more than a one-man project by a Buddhist academic in South Africa, yet the comprensiveness and quality of the links make this one of the best religion news sites on the Web.

News About Religion in Russia. This handy site is maintained by a history professor at Stetson University in Florida. It reprints interfaith news about Russia in both English and Russian. The archives date back to April 1996 and are indexed by both date and subject.

News Odyssey. If you don't mind reading scripts written in all-caps, this is a convenient way to catch up on a week's worth of interfaith news. News Odyssey, which is produced by the United Methodist Church, appears weekly on Odyssey, an interfaith cable channel. Abridged versions of the scripts are posted at the show's site; the archives date back to June 1997. Since the program is only 30 minutes long, the news is presented in a whirlwind fashion, but the interviews are more in-depth. (PBS's Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly, which has a similar format, does not post scripts at its site.)

BAHA'I

One Country. Quarterly news from the Bahá'í International Community, dating back to April 1995. Interfaith articles are often carried here.

BUDDHIST

Buddhayana Quarterly Online. Buddhist news from around the world, as reported by the Buddhayana Centre Netherlands. New issues are posted at irregular intervals throughout the year; the archives date back to January 1998.

CHRISTIAN

The Christian Reporter and CRNews. This independent news service carries news from many Christian churches in the same manner as Worldwide Faith News, but on a smaller scale. Unlike the articles at Worldwide Faith News, the articles posted here often proselytize, but this site is useful for its coverage of smaller churches. In addition to international news, the site also covers Australian news. The framed site is updated daily; the archives date back to January 1999.

Christianity Today. The online version of this popular conservative Protestant magazine offers most of the printed version's contents. The magazine's links to Christian news are most easily read on the News page. New issues appear monthly; the archives date back to 1996.

ChristianWeek. This ecumenical newspaper from Canada "is committed to historic Christianity" – in other words, you're unlikely to see articles praising liberal theology here. The archives page lists the headlines in each issue; the issues date back to October 1996. [new]

Church Net UK. Church Net UK is run by a religious studies department at a British university: The site is attractively designed, and the articles are well-written; the news service reports worldwide events, with especially strong coverage of British news. News is updated weekly, with archives dating back to February 1996. Unfortunately, Church Net UK's framed pages do not have a back button, so the site is difficult to navigate with older Web browers. In addition, important stories are sometimes overlooked. Overall, though, this site provides an exceedingly interesting and easy way for general readers to keep up on ecumenical news.

Ecumenical News International (ENI). A major Christian news service; only daily summaries are available at the moment. Archives of daily summaries date back to January 1996.

Evangelical Press (EP). This Christian news service is not yet on the Web, but some of its articles are printed in Maranatha Christian Journal; the archives date back to August 1996.

Golden Compass (GC). Ecumenical news from Belgium and the Netherlands, published monthly. Golden Compass has cut back severely on its services, but its Low Countries page is still a valuable source of information on religion news in that region.

Newsroom. "Designed to help editors, journalists and decision makers cover the religious dimension to news," Newsroom collects Christian news articles, mainly on the topic of religious freedom for Christians throughout the world. Free registration is required. The articles are ordered by news topic, with the most recent topics at the top of the list. Strong coverage is offered of non- Western countries; the archives date back to July 1997.

Worldwide Faith News (WFN). This is the best Web site for Christian news. Every day, WFN publishes articles from most of the major denominational news services, as well as a number of smaller sources that are not otherwise available on the Web. The news is presented in a stark format, and when using the browse index you must memorize the Web addresses in order to figure out where the news originates from. Unfortunately, the archives (dating back to January 1996) are only available through a search engine. You can search by month, but all of the entries come in a jumble, without any identification of their sources. Despite its name, WFN presently receives news only from Christian sources. These drawbacks, however, are minor compared to the advantage of having so many religion news services available at one location.

See also Religion News Sites: Christian Denominations.

HINDU

Hinduism Today. The online version of an international monthly magazine based in Hawaii. The archives can be searched, date back to September 1993, and are gradually being extended backwards.

Vaishanava Internet News Agency. This site, which is devoted to the Vaishnava tradition within Hinduism, includes a few international news articles among the offerings. The home page contains links to articles dating back about two months; the opening words of the article give a clear description as to their contents. The articles in the archives, alas, are listed by title. A search engine is available.

HUMANIST – ATHEIST

Internet Infidels News Wire. This site links to articles on freethinkers and on church-state issues, mostly from sources sympathetic to freethinkers. The news for the past week is listed at the top of the page, followed by archived articles divided by topic. Regional articles are linked separately on pages devoted to Canada, the United States, and the U.S. states; unfortunately this makes it difficult to browse through all of the regional news. The archives (linked discreetly at the top of the page) date back to December 1997. A search engine is available. Internet Infidels is a major source of information on the interaction between government and religion in North America.

ISLAMIC

Islamic Voice. This Indian newspaper provides a convenient summary of each month's Islamic news. News from Islamic World is a digest of news from other sources, while Community Roundup publishes original articles on Indian news. The archives date back to January 1997.

MSANEWS. Started by a group of university students in 1991, MSANEWS has survived a copyright controversy to become the largest source of Muslim news on the Web. The news service’s editors rightly describe MSANEWS as "activist/academic"; the site is actually a bulletin board for news from other sources that range from objective to proselytizing. Current articles are located on the page marked New Archives; these archives date back to April 1996, while the older archives are organized by subject rather than date. Both archives can be searched. Easily overlooked is the treasurehouse of information located under the heading Resources; especially valuable is the giant directory of Muslim news and information entitled LaunchPad.

The Muslim News. This independent Muslim newspaper from the United Kingdom publishes British and international news monthly. The archives date back to July 1997. [new]

JEWISH

Jewish Bulletin of Northern California. In addition to its coverage of local news, the Jewish Bulletin reprints national and international stories from Jewish newspapers throughout the country. The newspaper is published weekly, and its archives date back to June 1995.

The Jewish Chronicle. The world's oldest Jewish newspaper, located in London, can be reached through free registration. The well-written articles are listed each week on a single page, with the first paragraph printed and a link to the full text. The archives date back to May 1996.

Jewish News Links. The number of Jewish news sites on the Web is so great that we can't keep up with them all. Here are a few places to look for more links: American Jewish Press Association (annotations supplied by publications), HaReshima, Jewish 1000, Jewish Community Online (annotated), and Maven (see also the links to related subjects). [new]

Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). This site has become the first major religion news services to post large quantities of full-length articles. Daily news briefs initially greet visitors, who can then proceed to various pages of regional news, or to Latest Stories, which combines the regional news. A search engine is available, but it is not clear how far back the archives reach; about two months' worth of articles are posted on the above pages. Needless to say, the articles are well-written. The site design has been simplified from its earlier version, but the distracting animated logo remains. Nevertheless, JTA is to be commended for offering so much to Web readers.

USAJewish. Be sure to turn your images on; the site's graphic subtitles – "Lone Democracy in the Middle East, Blah blah blah," "Wascally Pwiests," and "Eastern Religions are So Peaceful" (articles about religious riots) – give a sense for what's in store for the reader. This daily set of news article links is by the former editor of JCN News and contains the same wonderfully eccentric selection and commentary. A generous amount of interfaith news is included, primarily in the "God's Children Throw Tantrums" section. The news forum includes press releases and other news; the archives date back to April 1999, with summaries of each issue's contents. We said about JCN News, "The coverage is comprehensive; would that other religious faiths had news sites as good as this one," and this remains very much the case with the news service's re-incarnation. [new]

PAGAN

The Lycian Sanctuary. Links to U.S. and international news, dating back to September 1998. Several links are added each month. [new]

The Witches' Voice. Perhaps it is appropriate for a Pagan magazine to be designed like a labyrinth. News is scattered about the site, but most of it can now be found in Wren's Nest; this section may be of interest to non-Pagan readers, since it includes many religious freedom items. Except for in-house news, the first few paragraphs of the article are reprinted, followed by a link to the original article. News is updated daily, and the archives date back to February 1997. Also worth visiting is Jane's Tidings, a quarterly news digest that often displays the editor's wry sense of humor.

SIKH

SikhNet News. Daily reprints of Sikh-related news, mainly secular. The archives can be downloaded. [new]

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST

UUA-L Announcement Mailing List. In true congregationalist fashion, the Unitarian Universalist Association sponsors this bulletin board of UU news items, both official and unofficial. The list dates back to November 1996 and is updated monthly. The UUA also publishes a page called The News and UUs, with links to articles from the press. Mercifully, the site has been changed so that all of the items appear in chronological order.