World Religions News

PORTLAND, Maine — HistoryIT announced today that it has acquired LifeWeb 360 and launched MemoryPort, a digital commemoration and engagement platform designed to help organizations preserve, access and use the stories of the people who define their communities. The announcement coincides with HistoryIT’s 15th anniversary, underscoring the company’s long-term commitment to trusted, accessible digital history.

MemoryPort is a digital commemoration and engagement platform designed for people-centered organizations, including nonprofits, alumni associations, faith-based organizations, professional associations and fraternal organizations. The platform enables organizations to invite members and alumni to share memories and upload photos through a branded, searchable Commemoration Site, while keeping communities informed through timely, opt-in updates. This community-generated content preserves the lives and legacies that shape organizational identity.

For 15 years, HistoryIT has helped organizations preserve historical materials and make them accessible in ways that transform history into a usable asset. With MemoryPort, that same philosophy now applies to history happening in the present, ensuring contemporary stories are captured as they are shared and organized in a structured, searchable and brand-aligned system.

“Organizations are increasingly expected to communicate thoughtfully around life events, especially moments of loss, while also strengthening connection and stewardship over time,” said Kristen Gwinn-Becker, PhD, Founder and CEO of HistoryIT. “MemoryPort brings the same care, structure and longevity we apply to archival preservation to the living stories that define belonging within a community.”

The acquisition of LifeWeb 360 represents a strategic investment in HistoryIT’s broader offerings, extending the company’s ability to preserve and activate organizational history beyond traditional archival collections. Rather than existing as a standalone tool, MemoryPort builds on HistoryIT’s established preservation services and software ecosystem.

MemoryPort complements HistoryIT’s existing services and integrates with Odyssey Preservation, the company’s proprietary digital preservation software, ensuring that stories, photos and tributes contributed by members and alumni can be preserved to professional standards for future generations. This integration allows organizations to treat contemporary stories with the same rigor, stewardship and longevity as historical collections.

Through MemoryPort, organizations can keep communities informed through centralized, subscriber-based updates; enable respectful tribute and memorial storytelling; replace manual, ad-hoc processes with a sustainable system that includes moderation, analytics and ongoing data enrichment support; and connect moments of remembrance to existing giving workflows.

By unifying remembrance, communication, stewardship and operational efficiency, MemoryPort helps organizations demonstrate care for their communities while reducing administrative burden.

“LifeWeb 360 was created to help grieving communities connect and celebrate a loved one through the stories they leave behind, reminding us not that they died, but how they lived,” said Ali Briggs, Founder of LifeWeb 360. “Through HistoryIT’s acquisition, these stories are preserved within the broader legacy of the communities that shaped them — ensuring moments of reflection, meaning, and belonging endure when they matter most.” 

LifeWeb 360 was originally developed in Chicago, aligning with HistoryIT’s own founding in Chicago before the company established its headquarters in Portland, Maine.

“As we mark 15 years of HistoryIT, this moment reflects our long-term view of digital preservation,” Gwinn-Becker added. “Preserving history only matters if people can trust it, access it and use it. MemoryPort ensures the stories being shared today become part of an organization’s enduring legacy.”

About HistoryIT
HistoryIT gives history a future. Since 2011, HistoryIT has helped organizations protect their history—and put it to work—by transforming scattered and fragile archives into accessible institutional memory. Through a single, end-to-end digital preservation approach that combines expert services with purpose-built software, HistoryIT ensures history is preserved to a standard future generations can trust. The result is a digital archive that strengthens connection, advances fundraising, and ensures long-term organizational continuity.

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Contact:
Audrey Carroll
Bear Icebox Communications
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RNS or Religion News Foundation.

(RNS) — Two back-to-back interviews by conservative influencer Tucker Carlson in the past two weeks revealed a growing chasm within American evangelical Christianity over U.S. support for Israel.

The former Fox anchor, now host of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” recently interviewed the Rev. Fares Abraham, a Palestinian American pastor who is director of the evangelical organization Levant Ministries. Carlson then flew to the Ben Gurion Airport for a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor.

If anyone wants to understand today’s Middle East evangelicals, they should listen to Abraham’s riveting personal story. His mother survived being shot by Israelis. When he was 10, Israeli soldiers dumped a huge stone on a neighbor, killing him immediately. Abraham said that Israel shelled the Baptist church in Gaza where his wife attended as a child and that Israeli snipers cut down another Gaza church’s pianist. She may not have bled to death, Abraham said, had the Israelis allowed ambulances to rescue her. Instead, the pastor said, her body showed signs of having been run over by a tank.

Abraham’s story diverges radically from what Huckabee told Carlson, which was a mix of dehumanization of Gazans, baseless generalizations and repetition ad nauseam of racist Israeli talking points. He exhibited total detachment from anything having to do with Palestinians, including any recognition of Palestinian nationhood or territory. He declared that the occupied West Bank is in fact part of historic Israel, calling it Judea and Samaria. He took it upon himself to represent, defend and express pride in the Israeli war machine, which he insisted is more humane than any other army, including that of the U.S.

The interview with Huckabee itself came about after an exchange on the social media site X that ended with Huckabee daring Carlson to come to Israel so the ambassador could explain what Christian Zionism means.

Once Carlson was in front of him, Huckabee was unable to explain how U.S. policy applies to a verse in the Bible’s Book of Genesis about God granting the descendants of the patriarch Abraham the land that Israel now occupies. Carlson poked holes in Huckabee’s concept of who, specifically, the descendants of Abraham are, and whether the current secular leaders of Israel, whose families came from Eastern Europe, are worthy of this divine deed, which, Huckabee asserted more than once, applies to the land from the Nile to the Euphrates — Egypt to Iraq — even if the current Israeli government is not claiming it all at the present time.

Huckabee sounded more like a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party than a representative of the American people. 

The Rev. Fares Abraham focused on other biblical references — Jesus teaching that his kingdom is not an earthly entity and that all human lives, created in the image of God, must be preserved at all costs.

When I spoke with Abraham after the Carlson interview, he insisted that his core concern is to issue a pastoral call to the American church. “I invited Christians to listen directly to Palestinian Christian voices, to pray, to get informed, to visit the region and to stand in solidarity with the living Body of Christ in the Holy Land,” he said.

He emphasized that “the interview was not about polarization, but about awakening and faithful witness.”

It is doubtful that such a call will make a dent in Washington’s Middle East policy. Instead, the coming decision on a war against Iran will likely be made with Huckabee’s fantasies of a greater Israel in mind. We should ask ourselves, however, which is the way to peace. 

(Daoud Kuttab is the publisher of Milhilard.org, a news site focused on Christians in Palestine, Israel and Jordan. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

(RNS) — Black Americans are more likely to consider people not related to them by blood or marriage part of their families, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. Religious affiliation, Pew found, is a key factor in forming these alternative family networks.

Pew’s 93-page report, based on a survey of 4,271 Black adults and 2,555 adults of other races, examines how Black Americans define and experience family, and how people support one another. Overall, 77% of Black Americans said their family includes at least one nonrelative, compared with 63% of adults of other races.

Kiana Cox, the senior researcher of the survey, noted the research examined the trope of Black Americans’ referring to people who are not relatives as cousins. “It’s sort of tongue in cheek,” she said. “We use the term ‘play cousin,’ because that’s the term that some Black people might be familiar with.”

Cox said one of the key findings is the extent to which relatives and nonrelatives serve as sources of financial and emotional support, as well as how widespread the extended family networks are.

Respondents who said they are religious were more likely to include a nonrelative in their family. About 60% of Black Christians reported having more than one nonrelative they consider family, compared with 53% of religiously unaffiliated Black adults, while 62% of Black adults who practice other religions said so.

Cox said Pew was limited to broad religious categories, Christian, non-Christian and unaffiliated, because of the small sample sizes of Black non-Christians. Some 70% of Black adults identify as Christian. “Because of sample size, we can’t break apart those other religions any further,” Cox said. “So we have a three-way break: Christian, non-Christian and unaffiliated.”

The survey also found that 72% of Black adults whose family included a nonrelated member said the nonrelative shared their religious or spiritual beliefs, as opposed to 56% of adults of other races. “Religion is a basis of connection, or a basis of definition, for these nonrelative family members because they share religious and spiritual beliefs,” Cox said. 

While the study, which was conducted June 16-25, 2025, did not directly examine how faith traditions shape racial identity, Cox said previous Pew research, including Pew’s “Faith Among Black Americans” survey from 2021, shows that race is central to how many Black Americans understand religion.

“From our previous work on race and religion, we know that ideas about race are crucial to how Black people think about faith,” Cox said. “Opposing racism is an essential part of faith for many Black people. …While I can’t make a direct connection between these findings and those studies, racial identity, opposing racism and racial equity help form the foundation of faith for Black people.”

Among adults who have at least one nonrelative they consider family, Black adults were more likely than adults of other races to say those family members share one of their identities, including religion (85% vs. 75%), are longtime family friends (83% vs. 70%) and share their religious or spiritual beliefs (72% vs. 56%).

“I think our data does suggest that religion is one of the bases that people are using to define who gets included, or at least who is in their close network,” Cox said.

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Religious affiliation was also associated with the size of these extended family networks. About 60% of Black Christians said they have more than one nonrelative they consider family, compared with 53% of religiously unaffiliated Black adults. 

The report includes a brief history of Black family networks, citing the role of extended kinship systems rooted in African traditions, in which family terms were applied broadly within the community. It also notes the effects of the transatlantic slave trade, which forcibly separated Black families and led to the formation of kinship bonds among enslaved people on plantations.

Though other Americans have open family structures, Cox said Black families’ relationships with their extra members tend to be closer. “They are unique in terms of the breadth of them and the closeness of them, and that those networks do have connections to African kinship systems,” Cox said.

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RELATED: Can I get an amen? Black Americans’ faith, religious practice detailed in Pew study

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Cox said the report highlighted the connection many Black Americans feel to their community at large, even those outside of nonfamily relative systems. Again, Christian respondents proved more likely, at 60%, to consider Black people in the U.S. to be their brothers and sisters. Slightly more than half of religiously unaffiliated Black adults said the same.

“That definition of brothers and sisters and feeling a responsibility to look out for one another that extends to Black people in the country, and not just the family unit,” said Cox. 

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Hundreds of supporters of detained Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye held a defiant prayer service inside a Catholic cathedral on Monday to press authorities to free him after more than a year without trial on treason charges, saying he is in failing health.

The archbishop of Kampala, Paul Ssemogerere, had been expected to preside but attendees were told the event had been postponed. The chancellor of the archdiocese, Pius Male, told The Associated Press the archbishop sought a postponement “because there were issues which were still being discussed so that may have harmony.” He gave no details.

Instead of heading out, those inside Lubaga Cathedral sang hymns and prayed, led by Winnie Byanyima, the UNAIDS director who married Besigye in the church years ago.

The event was the first of its kind in support of Besigye, who has sometimes appeared in court in a wheelchair. He has been repeatedly denied bail, even as many Ugandans urge compassion. His trial is yet to formally start.

Byanyima told the crowd that the archbishop had informed her of President Yoweri Museveni’s request to postpone the event pending an investigation into whether it was political.

“So we are here and unable to have the Mass that we wanted because of the order of our president,” she said. “I would like that we still pray because we came to pray.”

Sandor Walusimbi, a spokesperson for the presidency, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Uganda’s president has said Besigye must answer for “the very serious offenses he is alleged to have been planning,” and has called for “a quick trial so that facts come out.”

Besigye, once Uganda’s most prominent opposition figure and four-time presidential candidate, is accused of plotting to remove Museveni by force.

Besigye went missing in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in November 2024. Days later, he was presented before a military tribunal in Kampala to face charges related to threatening national security. The case later was transferred to civilian court and amended as treason, which carries the death penalty.

Museveni’s son, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has alleged that Besigye plotted to kill his father. Kainerugaba, Uganda’s top military commander, last week called Besigye “a dead man walking.”

Those urging Besigye’s release on compassionate grounds point out his age, 69, and say he needs to consult with a doctor of his choice and not the government-appointed medics available at the maximum-security facility where he is held.

Besigye once was a trusted ally of Museveni in the guerrilla war that propelled the president to power in 1986, and served as Museveni’s personal doctor and military assistant.

He later became a fierce critic of the president, condemning what he saw as a descent into authoritarianism that betrayed the democratic promise of Museveni’s early years. Term and age limits on the presidency have since been scrapped.

Museveni was declared the winner of last month’s election, with more than 71% of the vote, and will now serve a seventh term. His main opponent, the opposition figure known as Bobi Wine, has since gone into hiding, fearing for his safety.

ALEPPO, Syria (AP) — Ramadan in the Arab world is a time of fasting and prayer, but it brings another beloved tradition: the much-anticipated TV drama series shot each year to be aired during the holy month.

After iftar, the evening meal that breaks their daytime fast, families gather to watch their picks from the year’s crop of soap operas and political and historical dramas, snacking on sweets and nuts and drinking tea and coffee until late into the night.

The most anticipated productions are often Syrian. While Egypt is known for its movies and Lebanon for its pop singers and composers, Syria’s TV series have for decades been seen as the gold standard in the region.

As the country emerges from 14 years of civil war, more than a year after Islamist-led insurgents brought the authoritarian Assad dynasty to an end, Syria’s TV industry is seeking its footing in the new order.

A creative outlet fractured

In the Assad years, when political expression was strictly curtailed, “television became the main sort of platform for freedom of expression and also for employment for artists and intellectuals,” an area where they could subtly push boundaries, said Christa Salamandra, a professor of anthropology at Lehman College and the City University of New York who has researched Syrian drama.

In 2011, mass anti-government protests were met by a brutal crackdown and spiraled into civil war.

After that, “the industry fractured,” Salamandra said. “Creatives went into exile — or they stayed, but it split.”

Since Assad’s fall, actors and directors formerly divided along political lines are working together again. Series about once-taboo topics, like torture in Assad’s notorious prisons, are being shot inside Syria.

But like everything in the new Syria, the postwar trajectory of TV drama has been complicated.

Television presenting once-forbidden stories

On a chilly day the week before Ramadan, a television crew had transformed a street in central Aleppo into something magical.

In the background, collapsed buildings were a reminder that the city had been a central battleground in Syria’s civil war, but the cameras had transported the street back to a more innocent age. Classic 1970s cars and a horse-drawn court lined it as a vendor wearing a tarboush hat sold sahlep, a sweet drink of hot thickened milk and spices.

The series — titled “Al-Souriyoun al-Aada” or “The Syrian Enemies” — is based on a novel of the same name that was banned during former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule because of its focus on dark moments in Syria’s history, including the “Hama massacre” of 1982.

At the time, then-President Hafez Assad — Bashar Assad’s father — ordered an attack on the city of Hama to quell a rebellion by the Muslim Brotherhood. Between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed or disappeared in the monthlong assault and siege that left the city in ruins.

In the small-screen version, Yara Sabri, a prominent actor who left the country for years due to her opposition to the autocratic government, appears as the mother of a troubled young man from a rural village who will become a major player in the country’s oppressive security apparatus.

Wissam Rida, who plays her son, said that as a young actor starting out in Damascus, performing alongside exiled stars like Sabri once seemed an impossible dream.

“I used to watch them when I was younger and wish that I could work with them,” he said. After Assad’s fall, Rida said, “They came back with such beautiful energy you can’t imagine, and you can’t imagine how much we were in need of them.”

New authorities lack experience

Still, production has not been without difficulties.

“Al-Souriyoun al-Aada” director Allaith Hajjo is known for shows like “Dayaa Dayaa” (“A Lost Village”), a comedy about life in a small mountain community, and “Intizar” (“Waiting”), a social drama about an impoverished Damascus suburb. He never left Syria.

“In the days of the (Assad) regime’s existence, we were always trying to put forward material that would go over the heads of the censors,” he said.

Back then, “I dealt with actors who were a red line in the eyes of the regime,” Hajjo said. “At the same time, now I am dealing with people who may be rejected” by the current authorities.

The production has been attacked on social media because of the presence of some actors seen as close to Assad. Hajjo said politics should have no role in casting.

He added that the new authorities have little experience in dealing with artistic productions and that the work had run into “some problems” with censors.

“It’s their right to need some time to gain experience, but I hope this time won’t affect the quality and the level” of the output, he said.

The National Drama Committee, the government body responsible for reviewing scripts, did not respond to questions.

The series, originally set to air during Ramadan, has been delayed in production and likely will air after the holy month.

Director Rasha Sharbatji, who shot the Ramadan series “Matbatkh al Medina” (“The City’s Kitchen”), said she had found the new authorities accommodating.

She added that she had met interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa “and he is personally interested in drama and appreciates how important it is.”

But it remains to be seen if his government will permit TV dramas to talk openly about problems that have occurred post-Assad, including outbreaks of sectarian violence in which government forces were implicated.

Salamandra said creators likely will “make serials about the old atrocities with subtle references to the recent ones. Because that’s what they’ve always done.”

Returning to rebuild an industry

Jihad Abdo is among the exiled stars who have returned. A top actor in the 1990s and early 2000s, he fled Syria in 2011 after voicing criticism of Assad.

He started over in the United States, where he begged for entry-level jobs and had to change his name from Jihad — a common name among both Muslim and Christian Arabs that means “striving” — to Jay to work in Hollywood, where many associated “jihad” with extremism.

Eventually he landed roles in some major productions, including with Nicole Kidman in the 2015 film “Queen of the Desert.” But he longed for home.

Now back in Damascus, he appears in the web series “Al-Meqaad al-Akheer” (“The Last Seat”), a social drama airing during Ramadan, as a man struggling with Alzheimer’s. And he now leads Syria’s General Organization for Cinema, where he faces the daunting prospect of rebuilding the Syrian film industry with no budget.

Abdo said that “the margin of the freedom is bigger” than in Assad’s time and the government has not told him that any subject is off limits.

“We’re not sure yet about how this margin of freedom will be shaped,” he said. “We are trying to make it as big as possible, because we need to address the problems in order to solve them.”

Abdo believes the TV industry has a role to play in Syria’s postwar reconciliation by telling human stories and by showing that those with different political views can work together.

“The wound is big, it’s bleeding, it is still open,” he said. “But it’s our responsibility, the people in entertainment, the intellectuals, prominent names, to bring everybody together again and to keep talking, no matter how different we are.”

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Associated Press journalist Omar Sanadiki contributed to this report.

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