Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The Associated Press reports that more than 900 clergy members accused of child sex abuse are missing from churches’ and religious orders’ released lists.
- The Chinese government sentenced Christian pastor Wang Yi to nine years in prison for violating the state’s policy that limits Protestants’ ability to worship only in churches recognized by the Communist Party.
- A church in New Mexico sued the federal government for failing to process visas for one of the church’s leaders, claiming religious discrimination.
- Federal prosecutors filed hate crime charges against a man who stormed a Hanukkah celebration with a machete, wounding five people inside a rabbi’s home.
- Thousands of New Yorkers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in solidarity with the Jewish community after the recent rise of anti-Semitic crimes in New York City.
- In Britain, a judge ruled that ethical veganism qualifies as a philosophical belief under Britain’s Equality Act, granting religious protections against workplace discrimination to those who embrace ethical veganism.