The bullhorn-powered war of words between satanists and Catholics boiled over into brawling and a handful of arrests Friday during an extraordinary event at the Kansas Capitol that pushed boundaries of free speech and the separation of church and state.

The organizer of a “black mass” that took place outside the Kansas state Capitol on Friday amid heavy Catholic protest was arrested shortly afterward in the Capitol building after punching a protester in the face. 

A video from local news outlet WIBW shows Michael Stewart raising his arms and chanting in the Capitol rotunda, surrounded by a number of protesters urging him to stop. A young man later identified as Marcus Schroeder attempted to snatch what appeared to be papers from Stewart’s outstretched hands. 

A physical altercation inside the Kansas Statehouse Friday ended with Capitol Police arresting Satanic church leader Michael Stewart, capping off a morning of inflammatory religious demonstration. Stewart punched a man, Marcus Jeremiah Jared Schroeder, who repeatedly attempted to rip a booklet out of his hands while he called out to Satan from the Capitol’s first-floor rotunda. Both men were taken into custody and booked into the Shawnee County Jail, records show.

In February 2025, claims (archived) circulated on social media and news outlets including Fox News and Newsweek that 70 Christians were beheaded in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Media reports and posts (archived) on X (archived), Facebook and Instagram (archived) said the bodies of the victims were found in a church in Kasanga after the victims were kidnapped from Mayeba, both villages in North Kivu province in the country's northeast.

Public schools in Oklahoma are now required to teach students about the Bible and the Ten Commandments, the state’s top education official said Thursday. 

All public schools in Oklahoma are now required to incorporate the Bible and Ten Commandments into their curricula for grades 5-10, primarily for historical context.

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters issued a memo Thursday informing superintendents across the state their districts are required to incorporate the Bible into lessons.

Walters said in the memo that his directive aligns with educational standards approved in May 2019.

Oklahoma’s top education official ordered public schools Thursday to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 through 12, the latest effort by conservatives to incorporate religion into classrooms.
The directive drew immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and supporters of the separation of church and state, with some calling it an abuse of power and a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Religious freedom advocates are addressing an uptick in U.S. threats by providing legal and media resources for people and institutes of faith.

"So often Christians and other people of faith feel really besieged right now," Religious Freedom Institute's Eric Patterson told CBN News. "They feel besieged by neo-Marxism, by wokes, by the sexual orientation and gender ideologies that seem to be pressing a new view, that nothing is real. There's no male, there's no female."

Attacks include legal fights, hostile legislation, workplace backlash, arson, and vandalism.

The U.S. state with the greatest number of religious freedom safeguards is Illinois, while the state with the fewest safeguards is West Virginia, according to a new analysis. 

First Liberty Institute, a Texas Christian nonprofit legal organization specializing in religious liberty cases, released its analysis Wednesday ranking all 50 states based on how free its residents are to practice their faith.

It is an auspicious time for advocates of religious liberty in the United States. Consider what they have accomplished at the Supreme Court over the past year: They defended the right of Americans to express their faith while on the clock for a public school district (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District), affirmed the right of religious schools to use government vouchers (Carson v. Makin), heightened the standards protecting workplace accommodations for religious beliefs (Groff v.