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Are science and religion enemies or friends? Neither, says Peter Harrison—but they're both forms of virtue.

In 1944, an Anglican bishop consecrated a Chinese woman to the priesthood—30 years before women attained that rank in the Episcopal Church.

I am a fan of mysteries. I love watching detectives in movies and on television. I love mystery novels so much that I don’t just read them on the beach. But I’m one of those people who doesn’t try to solve the puzzle before the end of the story. I like to experience the mystery as it unfolds. I especially love unsolved mysteries, those brainteasers that simply cannot be wrapped up tightly leaving no lose ends. Stories like mountaintop visions of transfigured splendor.

Over these past days, I have been reminded again that at our best, to be human, and to be human community, is to live betwixt and between muddle and ambiguity. We are, unavoidably, marked by profound inconsistencies and misdirected hopes. We are an enigma—even, and perhaps especially, to ourselves.

Before I went into the ministry, I was a business manager. Scuttling papers back and forth on my desk, I dreamed of seminary. A headache grew between my eyes every single day....

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(The Christian Science Monitor) As Colin Christopher sat among a diverse group of American Muslims meeting with President Obama on Wed...

In a time of rising Islamophobia, President Obama made a plea for religious tolerance during his first presidential visit to an American mosque....

Something subtle and remarkable has happened in American politics—and, it seems, in democracies across the developed world. The big arguments over what the state owes the people, in terms of services and public welfare, have been somewhat eclipsed. Now the focus is on who counts as people in the first place.

Something happens when we pray. It may not be what we want or hope or even recognize, but something happens when we communicate with the Almighty. I remember a Sunday school teacher from my childhood who taught our class how to pray.

In American history, some lives have mattered; others have not. That difference fundamentally has been a racial one.

A luxury housing construction project in the works at Union Theological Seminary could potentially save the school’s Upper Man­hattan campus by raising more than $100 million for urgently needed re...

One might expect Spotlight to be fascinating because of the victims' stories. But it's the focus on clerical and legal institutions that grabs the viewer.

Ammon Bundy’s militia has occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon since January 2. The standoff with authorities continues despite the arrest of Bundy and 11 of his followers and the shooting death of LaVoy Finicum during a traffic stop last week, and despite Bundy’s pleas that the four remaining militia members leave the refuge. They insist that they will not leave until their comrades are released and everyone is pardoned. These conservative Mormons have claimed that God told them to seize the land in defense of ranchers sentenced to jail time for setting fires on federal land. 

I love the United Church of Christ. I do. After growing up a “spiritual but not religious” “none” at the tail end of Generation X, I found my way into Christ’s church at the age of 17 and was baptized.

Cultivating character is the lifelong work of evaluating and choosing between various virtues. It's difficult, and it’s our calling.

c. 2016 Religion News Service...

Several American Jewish groups celebrated a recent Israeli government decision to greatly expand—and fund—a pluralistic and egalitarian prayer section adjacent to the Western Wall plaza as a first ...

In December, we lost the last hen in our household flock after a possum attack. Since then, I have heard Jesus’ avian simile in Luke 13:34 differently.

When it comes to equal pay for women, the church should do better than employers generally, not worse.