A new report says this year Americans gave record amounts of private charitable donations. Another report says Americans donated nearly $3 billion to post-hurricane relief efforts. Yet nearly four months after Hurricane Katrina, the magnitude of the destruction is still difficult to comprehend. In ...

As the U.S. Senate prepared for hearings on President George W. Bush’s nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, the court heard arguments on a major religious freedom case. At issue is whether the União do Vegetal Church should be able to import a hallucinogenic tea it ...

Every year in New York's Central Park, the Buddhist magazine TRICYCLE sponsors a demonstration of Buddhist practices called "Change Your Mind Day."

Transcendental Meditation was widely popular 40 years ago: a technique for relaxation and awareness using certain sounds and ways of breathing, 20 minutes, twice a day. Now, it is flourishing in Fairfield, Iowa, the home of what is now the Maharishi University of Management.

A Sikh ceremony celebrates the creation of the Khalsa — a brotherhood of Sikhs who publicly take a vow to follow a certain spiritual and physical discipline.

There is an old but persistent stereotype that some religious believers are so strict and stern they have no time or taste for laughter. Brad Stine is a successful performer who thinks evangelical Christianity and standup comedy can go together, and that humor can help spread faith.

Part one of a four-part series on America’s evangelicals. They make up about a quarter of the population. Their political influence is strong. Their churches seem to be thriving. And yet, many evangelicals say they feel misunderstood by the wider culture — under siege — as if they were an ...

Tibetan Buddhists celebrated their New Year, called Losar, with traditional services of prayer and purification, sending positive energy into the world, they hope, to help bring about peace.

Estimates vary widely, but some claim that as few as 115,000 Zoroastrians remain—a few in Europe, North America and Iran, but the vast majority are in India, where they are called Parsis.

As Muslims around the world observe the holy month of Ramadan until mid-November, we wondered what it is like to fast during daylight hours for a month -- eating and drinking nothing, not even water. We spent a day with Imam Yahya Hendi, the Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University in Washington and also the leader of the Islamic Society of Frederick, Maryland.

In India, in the city of Kalimpong, the poorest children have one place to go to school. It is called the Gandhi Ashram, and it's run by a Canadian Jesuit priest. Father Thomas McGuire seeks students out, feeds them, teaches them, and gives them confidence -- and violins.

We have a story about a gay Orthodox Jew struggling with that seemingly impossible choice between sexual orientation and religion. It's one of several such stories in a documentary feature film released three years ago and directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski. The title of the film is TREMBLING BEFORE ...

Buddhist meditation techniques are widely popular, and one such method is called Shambhala meditation, a simplified version of Tibetan practice. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, author and meditation leader, told a group of beginners to relax, note their breathing, set aside their thoughts, and just be ...

The Jewish tradition of tahara, the washing and purifying of a dead body, is considered one of the greatest of all good deeds — mitzvot. Those who perform taharas are volunteer members of the burial society, chevra kadisha. Women attend to deceased women, men to men.

Many of the best known Christmas traditions were actually adapted from pagan practices and given new Christian meanings.

We talk with Rabbi Alan Lew of Congregation Beth Shalom in San Francisco, who has written about the High Holidays in his new book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared.

Buddhists pay special tribute to the dead during the Bon or Obon Festival — the Feast of Lanterns.

The Church of God in Christ, now the fourth largest Christian denomination in the U.S., teaches classic Christian doctrine: the Bible is God’s word. But COGIC members also put special emphasis on the power of the Holy Spirit, of which the surest sign — many say — is speaking in ...

R & E takes a look at the life of a Trappist monk at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. “It’s a life of transformation. It’s about a person becoming more like Christ,” says Father Aelred Hagen.

Susan Braunstein, Curator of Archaeology and Judaica at the Jewish Museum of New York, explains the traditions of Hanukkah.