"Easter should be for us a genuine joy," says Lutheran pastor, professor, and writer Walter Wangerin Jr, "that for a while death was all that existed, but coming with Easter is the remarkable, surprising grace that death is overcome."

"Breathing is one of the most basic prayers," says Liz Ellmann, who heads Spiritual Directors International. "We are so close to God we're as near as our breath."

A partnership between the city of Portland, Oregon and evangelical churches has led to thousands of volunteers completing hundreds of community service projects focused on schools, hunger, homelessness, health, poverty, and the environment.

In his new book on the difference between faith and belief, this Harvard professor and scholar of religion says what it means to be religious is shifting significantly as the 21st century unfolds.

Read more of Bob Abernethy’s interview in Cambridge, Massachusetts with theologian and Harvard professor Harvey Cox.

"The holy is at the origins of everything that exists," says the author of the prize-winning novels "Gilead" and "Home."

Read more of Bob Abernethy's interview with novelist Marilynne Robinson.

Read an excerpt from Marilynne Robinson's latest novel "Home."

Marilynne Robinson's Calvinist Protestantism imbues her with a fierce political liberalism grounded in Scripture and informs the respect with which she describes small movements of character and conversation.

Watch interviews with delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's recent national assembly, which voted to allow local congregations to hire noncelibate gay and lesbian pastors.