Watch excerpts from Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's recent speech describing his 2009 conversion to Catholicism and his concerns about rising secularism in America.

Reformation historian, award-winning memoirist, and Cuban émigré Carlos Eire says reading the medieval devotional book "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas à Kempis was, for him, "a conversion experience."

Writer Mary Karr says what struck her about Catholicism "wasn't the grandeur of the Mass, it was the simple faith of the people" and "the carnality of the church. There was a body on the cross."

Watch much more of correspondent Judy Valente's conversation with Mary Karr about God, prayer, poetry, and the Catholic faith.

Benyamin Cohen wrote a book about his year-long exploration of Christianity and used what he learned to reflect on the meaning of his own Jewish faith.

"The fear people have is that if my child is raised in the other parent’s religion, then the child will grow closer to the other parent," says one interfaith family mediator.

The Redeemed Christian Church of God, founded in Nigeria, is expanding its missionary network in North America.

"Immigrant religion today is coming here to evangelize us and then to go back out to evangelize where they’re from," according to Dana Robert, professor of world Christianity and history of mission at the Boston University School of Theology.

Watch National Catholic Reporter senior correspondent John L. Allen Jr. and Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discuss the Roman Catholic Church's plan to absorb unhappy Anglicans wishing to become Catholics.

"My life has been transformed. I don't know why God has blessed me and graced me the way God has. In my own mind, I don't deserve it."