Activist groups should bring about a greater awareness of worker rights issues and add a moral voice to global economic matters, says David Schilling of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

This award-winning economist is credited with bringing down Thailand’s HIV infection rate, lowering its high birth rate, reducing poverty rates, and championing sustainable development ideas that work in rural settings.

Is the federal government more than “one word for things we do together”? Should government say "you're on your own"? A politician and a priest speak about Catholic social teaching, the budget, and government's role in our lives.

“It doesn’t take a lot of misfortune to be on the street these days. I think everybody in America knows that right now,” says Ann Miller of Helena, Montana, where she and her husband, Wayne, opened God’s Love, an emergency homeless shelter and soup kitchen.

"We’re a nation based on moral values, and when we express those values to communities around the world, we’re showing them an America…with whom they want to partner and not fight."

“We don’t want a religious state,” says Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament Ossama Yassin. “We want a modern, civil, democratic state belonging to the people.”

“When we say grace we are grateful for the food on our plates. But where did that food travel? Who picked it? How did it get to us? As people of faith we are called to think about that.”

"What’s wrong with this picture: 50 miles north of here is possibly the worst human rights situation, including Christian persecution in the entire world, and here we are in South Korea living a lifestyle that’s probably on par with the United States and Europe," says pastor Tim Peters, a missionary in South Korea.

We discuss the major religion and ethics stories of the past year in the U.S. and abroad with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Religion News Service editor Kevin Eckstrom and Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton.

"When we’ve had that political will to reduce poverty, we’ve been able to do it in our country, and that’s what we need to mobilize now," says Reverend David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World.