“Sometimes the pain that’s resident in the community—it can be overwhelming,” says Rev. David Watkins III, pastor of Greater Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago’s Washington Park neighborhood. “However, part of the hope of the gospel is that even in the midst of despair, you always have a way out…This community should be better off because as a church we are in it.” More →

March 30, 2016

In The Relevance of Religion: How Faithful People Can Change Politics, former Missouri senator John Danforth, an Episcopal priest, explores how an over-emphasis on religion has changed the tone of American politics and whether religious values can help to mend a badly fractured political system. More →

March 30, 2016

Amidst the clashes over Jewish values that took place during this week’s annual meeting of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, one rabbi tried to find common ground: “America and Israel are built upon values: B’tzelem Elohim, everyone is created in the image of God; kavod habriyot, respect due to all God’s creations. Those are the values that these countries are built on,” said Rabbi David Paskin of the organization Come Together Against Hate. More →

March 25, 2016

“We Little Sisters of the Poor are a group of women who made religious vows to God. Now we find ourselves in a situation where the government is requiring us to make changes in our religious health care plan to include services that really violate our deepest held religious beliefs as Little Sisters,” says Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, Mother Provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor. But Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center, says, “Women deserve insurance coverage for birth control  no matter  where they work.” More →

March 25, 2016

Easter becomes “a very thin, generic festival,” says author Rev. Fleming Rutledge, without “looking into the grave and then saying we rejoice with the risen Christ.” Only then, she says, can flowers “give us the gladness that comes with the unrepeatable quality of the resurrection.” More →

March 25, 2016

With the approval of plans to build the first new Catholic church in over 50 years and Pope Francis’s recent visit to the country, there are signs of increasing openness to religious life in Cuba after 50 years of repressive Communist rule. More →

March 18, 2016

Jaipur Foot provides free orthopedic care to poor people with disabilities and missing limbs. That’s important in a country where disability still carries a deep stigma, according to the group’s founder D.R. Mehta. “They can go and work back in their field, factory, or shop, earn their living. They acquire social respect, and they acquire self-confidence again.” More →

March 18, 2016

During Maundy Thursday and Good Friday “pilgrimage becomes a metaphor for life,” says Rev. Kenneth Semon of the Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe. “We’re following our Lord, who goes before us.” More →

March 18, 2016

“Islam believes fundamentally that the spiritual and material worlds are inextricably connected. Faith is a force that should deepen our concern for our worldly habitat, for embracing its challenges, and for improving the quality of human life.” More →

March 11, 2016

Pope Francis may soon release his greatly anticipated response to a key bishops’ meeting on family issues that took place last fall. At that meeting, bishops discussed the church’s response to a host of issues, including some that are very controversial. The bishops were especially divided over whether the church should change its rules against communion for divorced Catholics who have remarried. Many American Catholics have been pushing for that change and others. More →

March 11, 2016