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Prayers linger in choir stalls, soak into walls. Centuries of prayer can make you feel buoyant in medieval European cathedrals. Gratitude settles over you like a benediction within busy urban shrines.

I should have seen my road to Damascus moment approaching. I’d been warned.

My grandmother was 14 years old and living on a farm in Michigan when she made an appointment with her Presbyterian minister to tell him that she felt called to the ministry....

Neil Jordan's Ondine is a lovely picture, but it's so gentle and understated that it's attracted little attention....

In Williamsburg, Virginia, where I live, the fraternities and sororities of The College of William & Mary invite new members in (and leave others out). What's in and what's out translates cunningly into who's in and who's out.

After a five-month absence, parts of Port-au-Prince looked marginally better than when I had last seen the city in February. At least some debris from the January 12 earthquake had been removed. But generally, the city seemed at a standstill.

Bishop Mark S. Hanson, the out­going president of the Lutheran World Fed­eration, appealed to delegates at the LWF gathering in Ger­many to hold together and avoid splits in the face of differences over issues of sexuality.

We Protestants need more saints. The Roman Catholics have more than 10,000 canonized saints. By my count, we Protestants have as few as five....

What was remarkable about the overturning of Proposition 8—California’s ban on same-sex marriage—was the weakness of the case mounted by the defense. At times during the proceedings, Judge Vaughn Walker had to ask the legal team in charge of defending the proposition, in effect: “Haven’t you got something better than this?”

When I opened this bio­graphy, I was as curious about how David Remnick would pull off a biography of a sitting president—after only one year in office—as I was about Obama himself.

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book about the 2008 presidential campaign has people talking about the private lives of the politicians and all the scenes we didn't see during the campaign.

It’s hardly news that someone counts herself in the “religious but not part of an organized religion” camp. Or as novelist Anne Rice described herself: she is a follower of Christ who has decided to quit Christianity.

And a side order of peace: Conflict Kitchen is a takeout restaurant in Pittsburgh that sells food from countries with which the U.S. is in conflict. Every four months a different country—and menu—is highlighted, along with the culture and politics of the country and the reasons for the conflict. It is now serving Iranian food, with assistance from Pittsburgh’s Iranian community (kubidehkitchen.com).

Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed a bill allowing people to carry concealed handguns to church, his office announced on July 6....