For decades, conservative Christians opposed to homosexuality cited the Bible scholarship of Richard B. Hays, the dean of Duke Divinity School, who provided a full-on argument from Scripture against gay relationships. “Homosexuality is one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose,” Mr. Hays asserted in his book … Read more
Charles Person, the youngest of the 13 original Freedom Riders who traveled from Washington to Birmingham, Ala., in 1961 in an effort to integrate interstate bus terminals across the South — and who were nearly beaten to death for doing so — died on Wednesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 82. His … Read more
J. Fraser Stoddart, a Scottish-born scientist who went from playing with construction sets as a boy to building molecular machines a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, known as nanomachines, for which he shared the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, died on Dec. 30 in Melbourne, Australia. He was 82. Alison … Read more
James Arthur Ray, an Oprah-endorsed motivational speaker who spent two years in prison for manslaughter after the 2009 deaths of three people in a sweat lodge, the culmination of a three-day spiritual program he ran in the Arizona desert, died on Jan. 3 in Henderson, Nev. He was 67. His brother, Jon Ray, announced the … Read more
Mauro Morandi, whose 32-year sojourn on an uninhabited Mediterranean island led to his being known as Italy’s Robinson Crusoe, died on Jan. 3 in Modena, Italy. He was 85. The cause was a brain hemorrhage, said Antonio Rinaldis, who wrote a 2023 book with Mr. Morandi about his life on the island. Unlike Daniel Defoe’s … Read more
Shiu Ka-chun, a former social worker and pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong who devoted his last years to helping protesters imprisoned after a crackdown on dissent, died Friday in Hong Kong. He was 55. His wife, Kelly Hui, said his death, in a hospital, was due to stomach cancer. As a social worker, civil rights … Read more
In early 1988, the British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick found himself drowning in letters from people who believed they had survived an encounter with death. “I slowly floated down a tunnel, not afraid in any way but looking forward to something,” one man wrote to him. “When it came I was absolutely at peace and going … Read more
Perry, a miniature donkey whose handlers said he was used by DreamWorks animators as a model for the chatty “Shrek” character named Donkey, died last week at the age of 30. Jenny Kiratli, lead handler at the Barron Park Donkey Project in Palo Alto, Calif., the organization that took care of Perry, said he was … Read more
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founding father of France’s modern political far-right who built a half-century career on rants of barely disguised racism, antisemitism and neo-Nazi propaganda that vilified immigrants and tried to rewrite the horrors of World War II, has died. He was 96. His death was confirmed on X by Jordan Bardella, the current … Read more
Mike Rinder, a former spokesman for the Church of Scientology who became one of its fiercest critics and who gained prominence as a host of the Emmy Award-winning television series “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” died on Sunday in Palm Harbor, Fla. He was 69. His death, at a hospice center, was confirmed by … Read more