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Do people really see a light at the end of a tunnel when they have a near-death experience? And could that be heaven up ahead?...

China's leaders still speak implicitly against religions with strong foreign ties. Meanwhile, Christian theology thrives in China.

The below train of thought was prompted by reflection on my grandmother’s death and the opportunity I had to officiate her funeral. She was quite certain about what awaited her on the other side. I, on the other hand, am deeply agnostic about what happens to us when we die.

My first year in college, I had a friend who was going through a bit of a Goth stage. He dressed in all black and spent a lot of his time with his guitar, playing really intense (and often really good) original music. For his birthday, another friend of ours shot a goofy video (on VHS, I think!) about him. She asked me to appear as his bizarro-world self, so I dressed in all white (can't believe I found white pants somewhere on my dorm floor!) and showed up with my guitar. Then I improvised a major-key adaptation of "The Sound of Silence": "Hello lightness my new friend..."

In this thorough revision of an earlier volume, Ruthven offers a quick overview of Islam and its adherents....

Some insist that the Christian-Muslim alliance evident during the overthrow of Mubarak remains strong. Yet Egypt is divided in many ways.

Rush Limbaugh: If a lot of African-Americans back in the '60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? . . . If John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge? Rep. John Lewis: African Americans in the 60s could have chosen to arm themselves, but we made a conscious decision not to.

If life is the most important thing in a political and theological belief system, then why would a person support the death penalty, back wars and oppose gun violence prevention?

At first they sounded to me like the names of medieval cricket teams, but it turns out that mendicants and anchorites were actually two different types of ancient monastics....

Robert Wilken's historical survey of Christianity is impressive, accessible and lively. It also leaves out a lot.

In the Bible, social issues are always framed primarily as questions of obligation, not individual rights.

Four decades after Roe v....

The Rev....

When President Obama rests his hand on two historic Bibles to take his second-term oath of office Monday (Jan. 21), he'll add a phrase not mentioned in the Constitution: "So help me God."...

A presidential inauguration is by tradition the grandest ritual of America's civil religion, but President Obama took the oath of office on Monday (Jan....

A senior Vatican official admitted that years of talks between the Vatican and a breakaway group of ultra-traditionalist Catholics have led to a "stalemate," and urged a new "spiritual" approach to...

WASHINGTON (RNS) Forty years after the Supreme Court legalized abortion, the constitutional right many Americans take for granted is coming under increased scrutiny....

When thousands of abortion opponents gather on Friday (Jan....

President Obama started his second term with a traditional worship service and a challenge to help heal the nation’s divides....

In the past four decades, American attitudes have changed markedly on gay marriage, smoking, bullying and a host of other cultural issues. But on Roe v....