“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.”

“Our Christian faith,” says David Montague, director of the Memphis Teacher Residency program, “informs our belief that every child can learn.”

“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.”

Watch more of our conversation with author Michelle Alexander about crime, the war on drugs, and the disproportionately high number of African-Americans in prison.

"I feel the young people and children, adolescents, all of them, they all need an opportunity...they need a good education," says Sister Judith Lupo, head of Brazil's largest church-run social services agency.

A new survey finds that Catholics in the US are making up their own minds about social and moral concerns. As one of the authors of the survey, William D’Antonio, said, American Catholics like being Catholic but they like to do it on their own terms.

Clinics in India pay poor women a lot of money to be surrogate mothers, but "the contracts are usually written to protect the wealthy people who are commissioning the baby," says ethicist Arthur Caplan.

“There is acute embarrassment that the second-fastest growing economy in the world has almost half of its children malnourished,” says social researcher Biraj Patnaik.

“Church groups, mosque-related groups, synagogue-related groups—it’s not necessarily their mission to promote water security, but if it’s their mission to help their neighbors, which it always is, then we’re going to have to think hard about how to work together,” says one of the founders of Partners in Health.

Religious leaders of this largely Christian country will have a key role to play in successfully managing its wealth and in fostering its adherence to democratic values.