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If there is a movie that can make you feel optimistic about the possibilities of forming community in America, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party is it....

There is some uncertainty about what to do with the dead. Should we anoint them, embalm them, bury them, preserve them in vaults, or burn them up and keep their ashes on the shelf?...

I like the title of Jon Sweeney’s book Born Again and Again, reviewed in this issue along with three other memoirs dealing with fundamentalism....

The hidden Jesus: After the end of the Japanese occupation of Burma in 1945, the minority population of Christians feared for their lives in the face of some Buddhist mobs. Myanmar theologian Anna May Chain said that during this time her family was taken in by friendly Muslims—the males were hidden in a mosque and the females were led from one safe house to another. Later they were sheltered in a prison where Buddhists jeopardized their own well-being by bringing them food, medicine and clothes. They finally found refuge in a convent run by Catholics, then considered “outsiders” by Protestants. At this very vulnerable time in the life of her family, said Chain, Muslims, Buddhists and Catholics were like Jesus to them, offering hospitality and charity (address at the World Council of Churches Ninth Assembly).

The theme of the World Council of Churches Ninth Assembly, held last month in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was the prayer, “God, in your grace, transform the world.” A recurrent question for many observer...

Leaders of the U.S....

The Ash Wednesday service in the state psychiatric hospital where I work was hardly an elegant affair....

The appeals for visible church unity made at the recent World Council of Churches assembly in Brazil were not new, but the longtime obstacles remain a sore point for many—especially limits on celeb...

A wide-ranging abortion ban recently passed by South Dakota is aimed ultimately at the U.S. Supreme Court....

In a case related to religious freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously sided with members of a small New Mexico sect in their bid to use hallucinogenic tea in religious rituals....

As criticism of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina continues, praise of faith-based groups that have responded is providing new momentum in a campaign to expand federal funding of relig...

United Methodist relief officials, chosen late last year by the U.S....

In an ongoing investigation of 2004 partisan politicking by churches and other tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, the Internal Revenue Service said that it found violations in 59 of 82 cases as of...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to stop funding an abstinence program that included religious elements....

Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of a 1963 bombing that killed four girls, has become a national historic landmark. U.S....

Reviving a religious issue from the last presidential election, a coalition of 55 Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives acknowledged the “moral leadership” of the Catholic Church but s...

The United Methodist Church will not hold its large 2012 General Conference in Richmond, Virginia, because the name of the city’s minor league baseball team is racially charged, according to denomi...

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says it is “deeply concerned” about a worsening situation for religious minorities in Iran....

Evangelical historian Mark Noll, longtime professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, will leave for the University of Notre Dame at the end of this academic year....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox—does the name ring a bell?...