“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.”

Catholic Charities in Illinois refuses to accept same-sex and unmarried couples for adoption or foster parenting. The state recognizes civil unions, and it wants to withdraw the charity's funding for such placements.

"The government is trying to tell us what we can or can’t do in terms of works of mercy, works of charity, which are fundamental to our faith," says Father Tom Ackerman of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Birmingham.

“Secularism is indispensable. It’s a protection so everyone has peace, believers and non-believers,” according to one French citizen.

“For most of the French, religion was an enemy of democracy, liberalization, freedom,” says this political scientist who specializes in Islamic studies, and “a synonym for public disorder.”

"As Muslim societies wrestle with how to treat religious minorities, let them look to our nation," said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick this week in his congressional testimony on protecting the civil rights of American Muslims. Watch excerpts from the hearing.

"That old singing, that old praying which I love so much—that is the great strength of my being, of my writing," says the author of "A Lesson Before Dying" and many other critically acclaimed books.

During the Montgomery bus boycott "it was black Christians teaching white Christians what it meant to be Christian," says a white Lutheran pastor who joined Martin Luther King Jr. and others in a movement to change the world.

Watch much more of our conversation with Rev. Robert Graetz, who calls the Montgomery bus boycott a spiritual movement based on love and nonviolence that transformed the hearts of people across the country.

The freedom Jews have experienced in America, says curator Josh Perelman, "also makes possible the ultimate choice, which is not to be Jewish."