Five years after blood was spilled inside a church in Montego Bay, a murder trial is forcing Jamaica to confront again the extraordinary rise of Kevin Smith, the religious empire he built, the warnings that surrounded it and the night when worship ended in death.

“The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts.” Haggai 2:9

The old mainline denominations are shrinking while Adventists and Pentecostals grow, and one in five Jamaicans claims no religion at all. The shift is changing which churches need buildings, and which are left holding more property than people.

From the Pope’s case for faith in public life in Paris to a church in Jamaica, Queens being sold for US$11.75 million and a covenant row in Kingston 6, this week’s church news kept returning to the same themes: buildings, money and the state.

For generations, calling Jamaica a Christian nation required little explanation. Christianity was everywhere. In schools and Parliament, at funerals and weddings, in…

The Church of Christian Compassion in West Philadelphia opened Compassion Senior Living, a $20 million, 38-apartment building where one-bedroom rents range from $900 to $1,300 depending on income.

Broadleaf Church of God’s Bishop Calbert Spence says gang warfare and weekend curfews from 6pm have stopped his church holding night services since March, as police list Manchester communities still under curfew.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore raised nearly $10 million from church sales as it closed parishes, but a bankruptcy judge ruled the proceeds belong to parishes and are not available to more than 900 abuse survivors.

A South African court refused the Apostolic Faith Mission leave to appeal an order returning the keys of a building to a pastor couple, drawing a clear line between ownership and possession.

Raleigh congregations including St Paul AME, the city’s oldest Black church, Edenton Street United Methodist and St Michael’s Episcopal are exploring homes on church parking lots and land, helped by the city’s 2022 end to minimum parking rules.