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c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Against a backdrop of heartland fears that U.S. Muslims seek to impose Islamic law on American courts, a leading Muslim group will launch a...

c. 2012 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pinched by the global recession and tough-love budget demands of the European Union, the Italian government is looking for extra...

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Mitt Romney has trounced Rick Santorum, an ardent Catholic, among...

A Virginia judge has ordered seven congregations that broke from the Episcopal Church to return all property to the local diocese—from...

Paul has a way with a sneer. Nineteen times in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul mentions wisdom, and each time we hear a growing sneer in his voice, until he nominates Christ as the wisdom of God. The word "wisdom" is distasteful to him because it is wooing the Corinthians to pursue a dead wisdom when they might turn to a wisdom he calls the "source of life"--and come alive.   When Paul writes that Christ is the wisdom of God, he's tapping into an ancient way of speaking about God. He's drilling down into proverbs, where wisdom plays the part of the creative spirit of God. Wisdom is begotten of God, the firstborn of all creation, the very spirit alive in Creation, a feminine expression of God. This isn't just some hocus pocus stuff from the Old Testament, either. The New Testament writers are so influenced by this thinking that they pay homage to Lady Wisdom everywhere.

My wife and I have been joking with our neighbors lately about TV ads that a Super PAC supporting their cat, Kobie, might run against our cat, Owl. Now Scott Simon's reporting on an ad someone actually made.

New today from the Century: the editors on the Qur'an burning, Carol Howard Merritt on social media and spirituality, more.

Albert Nobbs's journey from page to stage to screen has been long and bumpy. Simone Benmussa adapted a short story by Irish writer George Moore into the play The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs; this was then nearly made into a film by the celebrated Hungarian director Istvan Szabo. The fact that the project was still alive and kicking in 2011 is due, in large part, to the determination of Glenn Close.

What have you gained from on-line worship and community? How has it impacted your life? What are the negative aspects of it? 

Anxiety has a way of turning otherwise faithful Christians into foxhole atheists. I'm too busy worrying to pray.

c. 2012 Religion News Service PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) William Hamilton, the retired theologian who declared in the 1960s that God was dead, died Tuesday (Feb. 28) in his downtown...

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) The Senate on Thursday (March 1) defeated a Republican-led bid to...

A small Minnesota church is finding out the high cost of standing up for same-sex equality—while also receiving an unexpected lifeline from...

In the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ we see that God is so for us and with us that we can no longer be defined according to death, a religion-based worthiness system or even the categories of late-stage capitalism.

Christopher Shea highlights a new study that analyzes the effect of U.S. grain and soy subsidies on the American diet. The study's abstract leads with its contrarian, we're-taking-on-Michael-Pollan angle: Many commentators have speculated that agricultural policies have contributed to increased obesity rates in the United States, yet such claims are often made without any analysis of the complex links between real-world farm commodity support programs, prices and consumption of foods, and caloric intake.

New today from the Century: Katherine Willis Pershey on anxiety, Nadia Bolz-Weber's seven-word gospel, more.

Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.

Isabel Dalhousie, the Edinburgh-based philosopher who edits the Journal of Applied Ethics, is not everyone's cup of tea. Her niece, Cat, is usually irritated with her....

Docetic offertory prayers imply that the money inside the envelopes in the offering plates is unimportant, even embarrassing.

John H. Hick, a prolific author re­nowned on British and U.S....