Latest Articles

“Today, we live with this illusion that we know the world," says William Dalrymple. "The reality, of course, is. . .that there's huge parts of the world which we know absolutely nothing about, particularly in areas of religion and philosophy." For most of us, India is one of those places.

What is most startling about the iconic French director Alain Resnais is not that he is still making movies at the age of 88, but that his films still demonstrate such an unbridled love of cinema a...

The Cuban food-production system supplies only 16 percent of the average Cuban's diet. Yet due to dire necessity, Cubans are moving toward a more sustainable agriculture.

In U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's reasoning, religion amounts to a "private moral view," which should not infringe upon the constitutional rights of others. While some legal scholars say Walker's decision to overturn California's Proposition 8 lands on firm legal ground, some religious leaders accuse the judge of trying to scrub faith from the public square.

A few years ago when Tomas wrecked a car, the police didn't care about his immigration status. But times have changed.

I thought that interfaith dialogue had its limits—until I started talking with a Wiccan....

The accepted baseline for study of the Psalms is genre analysis. Beyond that baseline, however, several interpretive options are available.

The ten-member medical team killed in Afghanistan last month included a German, a Briton and six Americans who brought their varied skills in health care and in regional languages to remote parts o...

The First Amendment protection of religious freedom is designed not just to protect the religious traditions that the majority of us like or feel comfortable with....

The National Association of Evangelicals has condemned plans by a Florida church to burn copies of the Qur'an on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks....

The paradox of being a writer is that you are more likely to get outcomes when you let go of getting outcomes: it frees you from the ego's grip. There is a parallel here to the faith journey: seek your life and you will lose it, lose your life and you will find it.

The tricky truth about children’s sermons is that it’s easier to come up with bad ones than good ones. ...

“When you give a banquet,” Jesus said, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” but he didn’t say anything about atheists.

A commissioner to the General Assembly (our denomination’s national meeting that happens every two years), came back to report on what he...

Jimmy Carter says he doubts that he would have been elected president in 1976 without the encouragement of pastor Jimmy Allen of San Antonio, Texas.

My summary of Land's position: Following the golden rule, like taking public transit, benefits us most when other people do it so we don’t have to.

As many as 1,000 people who had registered for the five-day Baptist World Congress in Honolulu were un­able to attend because their visas were denied by U.S. officials, said leaders of the sponsoring Baptist World Alliance in an opening day news conference July 28.

The first time I taught an introductory world religions class, one of the students was a quiet Afghan named...

One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. But as United Methodist pastor Elise Erikson Barrett points out, we don’t much like to talk about miscarriage.

Amateurish historians often tell us that we must study the past to avoid repeating its mistakes. Such efforts rarely work out well. Laurie Maffly-Kipp, by contrast, offers an unusual, complex and thoughtful approach to history.