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Peter Smith.

Gloria Simeon, co-founder of the Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition, speaks during an interview outside her smokehouse in Bethel, Alaska, on June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

Trump’s push for drilling, mining sharpens debate for Alaska Natives about land they view as sacred

August 7, 2025

When Alaska Natives debate proposals to drill and mine the landscape of the nation’s largest state, it involves more than an environmental or economic question. It’s also a spiritual and cultural one. They have hunted and fished for subsistence food for generations. Some fear that extraction industries could threaten these activities in a similar way that other factors have contributed to a salmon crisis on Alaska’s longest rivers. Such debates have intensified with the Trump administration’s aggressive push to increase extraction here. Other Alaska Natives say such projects boost their economies. Opponents fear permanent environmental damage. Advocate Gloria Simeon says her people have been stewards of the land for millennia and take that relationship seriously.

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Messengers attending the Southern Baptist Convention lay on hands and pray over missionaries during the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Richard W. Rodriguez)

Southern Baptist public policy arm survives challenge to its conservative credentials

June 11, 2025

Southern Baptist representatives have fended off two efforts to move the staunchly conservative body even more sharply to the right. They gave a vote of confidence Wednesday to its public-policy agency. It had faced criticism for not being conservative enough. They also defeated a proposed constitutional ban on churches with women in any pastoral role. That vote failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional change. The actions came in Dallas toward the end of the two-day annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

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Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis, poses for a portrait at the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Ky., Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Madeleine Hordinski)

With a massive ark and museum, he spreads creationism a century after Scopes trial. He’s not alone

May 20, 2025

The 1925 Scopes monkey trial famously put the spotlight on evolution and appeared to mark a defeat for biblical fundamentalism. But a century later, many Americans still embrace creationism, the belief that the biblical story of human origins is literally true. That’s most evident at a giant replica of the biblical Noah’s Ark in Kentucky, which draws 1.5 million visits per year along with a related Creation Museum. The message is that “the history in the Bible is true,” contends founder Ken Ham. This trend alarms science educators, who say the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and who see creationism as part of an anti-science movement affecting responses to climate change.

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The Ark Encounter is seen in Williamstown, Ky., Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Madeleine Hordinski)

Takeaways from AP’s report on creationist beliefs 100 years after the Scopes trial

May 20, 2025

Some people thought the 1925 Scopes monkey trial marked a cultural defeat for biblical fundamentalism. But a century after what was dubbed the Trial of the Century, the issue is far from settled. Many American adults still embrace creationism — a belief in the literal truth of the Genesis account of the origins of the Earth and humanity. Polls generally show that somewhere between 1 in 6 and 1 in 3 Americans hold beliefs consistent with young-Earth creationism. That belief is most evident in a region of northern Kentucky that hosts a Creation Museum and a gargantuan replica of the biblical Noah’s Ark.

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