To mark Human Rights Day on December 10 and the awarding of this year's Nobel Peace Prize in absentia to jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, read an essay about a new book on human rights in history and religion's role in the human rights movement.

Author and consultant Rushworth Kidder says there can be unintended ethical consequences when people use powerful new social media without "a moral compass."

Ethicists and religious leaders are only just beginning to think about the moral questions and ethical consequences of unmanned weapons systems.

The financial crisis is a moral crisis, says religious leader Jim Wallis, and repairing the economy will require a moral reawakening.

Join our discussion of the most anticipated religion and ethics news stories in the year to come.

Revisit our November 2007 Web-only essay on the spiritual and moral pain of war. "My sense is that this is a fundamentally religious issue," says clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, a combat trauma expert.

"In a democracy that espouses certain moral values, we need to have accountability," says ethicist Shaun Casey. "It prepares us morally to face the future when we're facing a crisis and pressure to abandon legal and moral precedents that we've observed."

The recent release of four Bush administration memos on US interrogation techniques has intensified public debate about the use of torture. Two ethicists discuss torture and its moral limits in an age of terror.

In a recession economy, will money trump moral arguments as state legislatures continue considering repeal of the death penalty?

The recent economic debacle should cause us to reread, or perhaps read for the first time, the Christian theological tradition and how it inextricably relates economic exchange to morality (our quest for the good) and to God.