“One of the attractions of this strategy is that we’re not just a relatively small Christian community in the United States taking an action,” says Rev. John Thomas, former president of the United Church of Christ. “We’re joining a much broader movement.” But Rev. John Wimberly, a ...

“Sometimes I fear that in order to try to teach tolerance we say we’re all alike and we forget to acknowledge our distinctions. And it’s in acknowledging our differences and celebrating those differences that we come to better understand one another,” says Rabbi Sandy Sasso, director of ...

“America is the greatest country in the world because of its great Constitution,” says Hamtramck city councilman Saad Almasmari. “I’m an American. My rule is going to be the US Constitution and the state and the city law.”

Farming is often about homecoming, explains Mary Berry, executive director of the Berry Center. “It doesn’t mean [farmers] have to go to the place they were born,” she says. “The concept of homecoming is simply to take root some place and care about a place, not just for a short amount of ...

A lawsuit alleges that some private yeshivas run by Hasidic Jewish sects are not complying with New York state law by not teaching English, math, and science; an activist, pastor, and preacher says white and black churches must cross the bridge to a new America now; and a church in Baltimore runs a ...

“America’s original sin—it isn’t just slavery,” says author, activist, and Sojourners editor Jim Wallis. “It’s the kind of racism we created to justify the use of black people as chattel and property to build this nation, to say from the beginning that black lives matter less than ...

“American exceptionalism, which I’ve been critical of for years, could be made true if we become a majority of minorities who learn to live together justly, and fairly, and respectfully,” says author and activist Jim Wallis.

"Cyberspace just gives us a new place to grieve, a new place to create rituals, a new place to memorialize the death of someone we care about," says Carla Sofka, professor of social work at Siena College and co-editor of a book on death and grief in an online universe.

“We don’t even believe that the cow is an animal,” says Devender Nayak. “We see it as a manifestation of God.”

“A headscarf isn’t meant to hurt you; it’s what’s meant to protect you. You’re modest in the sense of God looking at you, but you’re modest to other people as well,” says Umand Weerasinghe, a young Buddhist woman in Maryland whose Muslim friend Sofia Amir loaned her a scarf to wear for ...

Watch two more women, one a Muslim and one a non-Muslim, participate in World Hijab Day, and see what their experiences are like. Say Muslim Yasmine Ison: “Wearing the hijab [gives] me this whole other freedom that I never had. I started to notice this control I had of myself.”

“It’s a very painful situation that we find ourselves in, of looking at where we’ve been and perhaps making the wrong assumption that so much progress has been made, when we see ourselves retreating right back to some of the same behaviors,” said Sweet Honey in the Rock member Nitanju Bolade ...

"Surveys show that Americans are divided on this issue, and so [the White House] hopes that the faith community, by using moral arguments, can help them in their cause," says managing editor Kim Lawton.

"People in this generation have had a lot of control over their own lives. They've had a lot of choices that they were able to make, living in relatively good financial circumstances, for example, and maybe they want choices to have at the end. They want to control how they go out," says University ...

"For us it’s very important to hold onto our faith and to do that in a space where it’s encouraged, to engage your intellect but also to remember it goes with your faith, and they are not separate," says Aisha Ibrahim, a student at Zaytuna.

"I didn't come out of the church. I don't have an intuitive understanding of what religion gives to people. I just don't. I didn't really grow up in a Christian household," says the author of Between the World and Me. "I'm very distanced from that. For both good and ill, it probably marks ...

"Native spirituality is taking deeper roots within the hearts of Christian people,” says Sister Kateri Mitchell, a member of Mohawk Nation and the Sisters of St. Anne who directs the annual National Tekakwitha Conference for Native American Catholics.

“People are going back to the basic texts, and they’re stripping away centuries of culture and tradition and looking for what they see at the heart of the religion,” says American journalist Carla Power, author of If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of ...