The John Templeton Foundation's Templeton Prize honors any living individual, regardless of profession or background, who has made significant strides in the study of science and religion. In 2002, distinguished mathematical physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne was the recipient of the prize, nearly a million dollars, that he contributed towards further spiritual research and work.

“In simple terms, we have become the most religiously diverse nation on earth,” says Diana Eck, professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University.

Part two of a five-part series exploring religious America: Today, just over half of all Americans are Protestants, worshipping in 300,000 congregations, in many hundreds of denominations — and, often, apart from any denomination. Part two reports on the experiences of being a mainline Protestant, ...

When a person has a religious experience, what happens within the brain? What kind of changes take place? In one experiment, brain scans examine the parts of the brain that are activated during prayer. In another, mystical and religious experiences are simulated by using bursts of electrical ...

More than five weeks later, America remains deeply shaken by the events of September 11th, no more so than in New York. Correspondent Betty Rollin spoke with four religious New Yorkers of different faiths to see how they were affected.

As of early October 2005, 30,000 U.S. troops had been deployed to the Middle East and Central Asia, and among them were some of the country’s 2,800 military chaplains. How do chaplains help prepare U.S. forces for whatever lies ahead? In particular, how are they counseling American military ...

"Rather than to try to change God, prayer should change us, should make us better human beings. That is the ultimate purpose of prayer," says Cantor Abraham Lubin of Congregation Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland. We spoke with him as he prepared for the high holidays.

A new report from the Institute of Medicine, which advises the government on health policy, calls on the U.S. to do far more than is now being done to relieve the suffering of dying children and their families. Doctors and families face a dilemma in trying to choose between painful treatment that is ...

One of the consequences of the Holocaust was its effect on the faith of observant Jews. How could a just God have permitted such a tragedy? Today, the personal story, in his words, of Menachem Daum, a New York television producer whose parents were both Holocaust survivors.

Missionary work is something of a rite of passage in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the course of 18 months to two years, young men and women will work 16 hours a day, six days a week. On average, each one will convert ten persons during that period. But with 60,000 ...

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS: Buddhism is the world’s fourth largest religion, founded about 2500 years ago in India. The Buddha taught that life is suffering and the way to overcome that is to get rid of attachments. Widely practiced across Asia, … More →

Deborah Rosenthal is a respected artist who is also an observant Jew. As a result, her work is often infused with her religious beliefs. Recently, she was asked by the conservative Jewish congregation to which she belongs to create two stained glass windows for its sanctuary. For the commission, she ...

Wicca, as modern witchcraft is often called, and its symbol of the pentacle are becoming more visible in today's society. It is a polytheistic, earth-based religion that emphasizes feminism and the environment and encourages diversity of beliefs. It has no theological system or creed, no central ...

A profile of a man who knows a great deal about poetry and a great deal about funerals. He is Thomas Lynch, writer and mortician, and each of his vocations enriches the other.

R & E talks with Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. George Carey about interfaith communication and conversion — particularly, whether Christians should take it upon themselves to attempt to convert Jews.

At the Passover feast, or Seder, Jews retell the story of their ancestors' exodus from slavery in Egypt. R&E was invited to sit in on that retelling by fifth graders at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Maryland. They acted out the story for students from the Rockledge public school in Bowie, Maryland.

Pope John Paul II “did not want a monument that was just dedicated to himself, but rather an institution that really focused in on our teaching role within the Church,” says Rev. G. Michael Bugarin, director of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.

A century and a half ago, Brigham Young led 600 Mormon settlers to the Salt Lake Valley and predicted it would blossom as a rose. Today, the valley is headquarters to what may be the fastest-growing church in the U.S., blossoming so fast it is continuously redefining itself.

Tenafly, New Jersey, is a suburb of 16,000 people, nearly half of them Jewish, just across the Hudson River from New York City. However, when a group of Orthodox Jewish newcomers put up a symbolic boundary called an eruv, Tenafly became one of the latest battlegrounds in an ongoing civil war in the American Jewish community.

Many houses of worship have worked hard to be more welcoming to people with disabilities. But the deaf prefer to worship within their own community, and to be ministered to by other deaf people.