Watch Shohreh Aghdashloo, Cyrus Nowrasteh, and Steve McEveety talk about their new film, "The Stoning of Soraya M."

The prolific and best-selling author Jodi Picoult writes "ethical thrillers" about contentious issues such as the death penalty, organ donation, euthanasia, sexual abuse, date rape, teen suicide, and school shootings.

"Our job is to take an illiterate woman and make her into an engineer in six months," says social activist Bunker Roy, founder of the Barefoot College. Students come from villages across India and a dozen other countries.

Acedia is a condition best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer, according to writer Kathleen Norris. "It's an ancient word that means the inability to care, even to the extent that you don't care that you don't care anymore."

Read more of Bob Abernethy’s September 16, 2008 interview with Kathleen Norris.

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discusses the theological debates that Palin's nomination has reignited over women's roles.

A group of women in Cambridge, Massachusetts founded a book club to learn from each other's Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions.

Women are a mainstay in black churches, except in the pulpit. Will the "stained-glass ceiling" limit the careers of the record numbers of women entering divinity schools?