In the brave new world of social media, says communication professor Stephen O'Leary, church authorities from pastors to the heads of denominations "no longer have the kind of control they once did."

Trying to balance public health and religious liberty, the Obama administration announced a plan to calm anger over a new rule that would require health insurance plans, including those offered by Roman Catholic hospitals, universities, and charities, to provide free birth control to female employees.

“The question in the eyes of many other Muslims,” according to Georgetown University Islamic studies professor John Esposito, is “are these people really Muslims or not?”

We talk with Cheri Harder, president of the Trinity Forum and a former congressional policy advisor and White House staffer, as Republican presidential campaigns get under way.

An acclaimed new movie shows that a monastery is "at once a refuge and a very integral part of the world," says Jesuit priest James Martin, and that "the life of faith is not without doubt."

The much-praised French film "Of Gods and Men" dramatizes the essence of universal Christian love, according to the author of the book on which the movie is based.

Pastor Matthew Cork of Yorba Linda Friends Church in California says its ministry includes producing a feature film "that has a cause and a mission behind it."

Three expert movie-watchers discuss the moral, ethical, religious, and spiritual themes they saw in some of this year's Academy Award nominees.

A journalist who has written extensively on the biblical and spiritual preoccupations of directors Joel and Ethan Coen says in "True Grit" they treat the Presbyterian moral code of fourteen-year-old narrator-heroine Mattie Ross with tenderness and empathy.

As Mideast turmoil spreads, a professor of international affairs says we are witnessing changing interpretations of religion and "a struggle over which interpretations have authority over whom."