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Pentecostalism and related “Spirit-filled movements” are rightly seen as a hard-driving engine fueling the global spread of Christianity, but their adherents are often wrongly seen as apolitical, o...

Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, will not seek a third four-year term as the top administrator of the ecumenical organization....

A newly estimated civilian death toll of more than 600,000 Iraqis since the U.S.-led invasion confirms the fears of churches that opposed the war in 2003 and dramatically belies Washington’s estima...

As women in mainline Protestant denominations rejoice over decades of ordination—United Methodists and Presbyterians this year celebrated 50 years of women ministers and Episcopalians the 30th anni...

In a move that internal critics say will hurt academic standing, leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have voted to require all tenured faculty and board members at its educational instituti...

A bill passed by the House and a companion bill awaiting action in the Senate would remove money—at least the awarding of attorneys’ fees to successful plaintiffs— from cases related to public disp...

The Supreme Court declined on October 2 to hear a case from parents who complained after their children were required to simulate Muslim worship and attire as part of a history class....

A book by a former White House official is causing shock waves with its explosive allegations that President Bush’s aides mocked religious conservatives and duped them for political gain in the ear...

Officials of the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. are considering selling their Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, headquarters building, which currently houses Baptist offices in less than ...

I have been involved for 25 years in fruitful conversation with Muslims, and I have read the Qur’an and a lot of literature about Islam....

Now that the dust has settled from l’affaire Regensburg, it’s a good time to think about what makes for genuine interfaith dialogue....

Dinner would have to wait....

Reading the obituaries of Sister Mary Luke Tobin, who recently died at 98, inspired reminiscences of her and other women religious....

At a ceremony filled with pomp and tradition, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will become the first woman in Anglicanism's nearly 520-year history to lead a national church when she is installed a...

I read this week’s lectionary passages last summer in the Urubamba Valley in my native Peru, and in my native Spanish: “Pero Cristo ya vino, y ahora el es el Sumo sacerdote . . .” At first I resisted the Hebrews passage, as I prefer Jesus’ concrete teachings to more abstract theological concepts. So, while leading a tour group across the Andes, I turned to Mark: “And man must love God with all his heart and with all his mind and with all his strength; and he must love his neighbor as he loves himself.”

David Barton, a chief advocate for a Christian America, is a bad historian. When he thunders, "We have lost our understanding of the Founders' intent and teachings. . . . We have been robbed," he is partially right: the founders were at least loosely Christian. But it is historically absurd to dismiss the separation of church and state as a myth.

I remember seeing Helena, a widow, unfolding a $20 bill to put in the offering plate. I knew that her family was selling its possessions to pay the ransom for her only son, imprisoned by guerrillas.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded us that grace is free but not cheap, gratis but not banal, gratuitous but not superfluous....

In creating the character of 18-year-old Ahmad Mulloy, John Updike has imagined what some of us fear most—a homegrown terrorist....

The Syringa Tree began as a one-woman Broadway play, which won the 2001 Obie Award, and then flowered into a beautifully written novel....