(RNS) A Pentecostal couple who believes in faith healing has been sentenced to 31/2 to seven years in prison for neglecting to take their sick son to the doctor.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible were already on a 10-year probation for the 2009 death of their 2-year-old son, Kent, who died of untreated bacterial pneumonia, when their second son, Brandon, died last year.

“We believe in divine healing, that Jesus shed blood for our healing and that he died on the cross to break the devil’s power,” Herbert Schaible told police after the death of his second son.

The family are third-generation members of northeast Philadelphia’s First Century Gospel Church, which teaches it is a sin to call on the help of a doctor.

(RNS) An 84-year-old nun was sentenced to nearly three years in prison on Tuesday (Feb. 18) for breaking into a Tennessee nuclear facility in July 2012.

Sister Megan Rice and two other anti-nuclear activists were convicted last May of breaking into a federal complex that stores enriched uranium.

“Please have no leniency on me. To remain in prison for the rest of my life would be the greatest honor you could give me.” Rice told the federal judge at her sentencing hearing, according to USA Today.

U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar in Knoxville said he wanted the sentence to send a signal that others need to work for change within the bounds of the law.

(RNS) A North Carolina high school will allow the formation of a club for nonreligious students after a four-month standoff.

The Secular Student Alliance, a national organization for nonreligious college and high school students, announced Feb. 17 that lawyers for Pisgah High School in Canton have said the school will permit freshman Kalei Wilson to establish a chapter of the group.

“We are thrilled to see this victory for Kalei and all of the students at Pisgah High School!” said August E. Brunsman IV, executive director of the alliance. “We fight everyday to ensure students’ rights aren’t infringed upon.”

Among the findings of the study, “Religious Understandings of Science”:

• Nearly 36 percent of scientists have no doubt about God’s existence.

• 18 percent of scientists attended weekly religious services (compared with 20 percent of the overall U.S. population).

• 17 percent of scientists consider themselves evangelical.

“Why was Christ’s first miracle to be the ultimate bartender? Jesus was interested in celebration. We separate being human from being spiritual all too easily in Nashville.”

– Geoff Little,

organizer of the Beer and Hymn Sing group in Nashville, Tenn., and a member of Downtown Presbyterian Church