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"The walking dead.” These are the words of African-American soldier Leon Bass as he described the horror he saw when Americans liberated prisoners in the Buchenwald prison camp in April 1945. Today some call confirmed drug addicts “the walking dead.” Then there’s the book/film Dead Man Walking—which describes many of us spiritually.

Day of ColoursReal World Records, World music/QawwaliRizwan-Muazzam QawwaliThe brothers Rizwan and Muazzam, nephews of the late Sufi singing great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, deliver a majestic album. Imagine the droning power of Gregorian chant melded with the expressiveness of blues shouters. With the simple instrumentation of harmonium and tablas, Colours addresses spiritual themes central to the Qawwali tradition. “Light of My Life,” a Persian song in praise of Allah, is particularly arresting.

In creating Revenge of the Sith, the third (chronologically) and final (cinematically) installment in the six-film Star Wars saga, George Lucas confronted a writing challenge unpreced...

When Paul speaks of God “justifying” the “ungodly” Abraham when he believed God, Paul does not mean that Abraham was morally “wicked.”

Peter Gomes claims that it happened, and who is he to exaggerate?...

I recently gave a seminar on memoir at a public library in Talladega, Alabama....

If the increasing number of book titles and Web sites devoted to the subject is any indication, discourse about religion and film ha...

In 1996, shortly before his death, John Howard Yoder grouped ten essays based on papers he had written in the preceding three decades into w...

In his novel Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope writes: “There is, perhaps, no greater hardship on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons....

Mainline or liberal Protestants need a better term to describe themselves. Mainline implies cultural and social dominance, which is hard to assert given the numerical realities....

Calvinist reaction: President Bush, scheduled to give the commencement address at Calvin College on May 21, was the recipient of two separate letters from the college community protesting hi...

After all the media attention to things (Roman) Catholic in recent weeks, this may be a useful moment to reflect on the continuing significance of the Reformation....

When do I wear clerical garb, and why?...

Members of the congregation must ask themselves, “Do I dare to say the creed?”

It was a modest gesture, but some United Methodists hope that President Bush’s first meeting with bishops in his own denomination will contribute to a new relationship with mainline church leaders....

United Methodists have taken the first step toward full communion with Episcopalians and most Lutherans after their bishops approved an agreement to share the Eucharist, with members of the two oth...

Like their Episcopal colleagues in the U.S., Canada’s Anglican church representatives will “attend but not participate fully” in the June meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham,...

The pastor of a North Carolina Baptist church has resigned after controversy over allegations that he told members to “repent or resign” if they intended to vote for Democratic presidential candida...

The Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm has withdrawn support for a bill that would allow religious institutions to endorse candidates without threatening their tax-exempt status....

Was Thomas Reese, the respected priest-editor of a Jesuit magazine who was often seen on TV during April’s papal transition, the latest casualty in a simmering battle between the Vatican and the U....