Feature

Public ritual might be construed as a benign relic, as imperialism, or as marketing. Or it might be seen as a form of pilgrimage.

Ted Goins, president and CEO of Lutheran Services Carolinas, spends a lot of time focused on the Affordable Care Act’s regulations for providers of nursing care. But the health-care reform law also affects LSC is another way: as an employer.

Most people know only about the ACA's consumer-focused elements. Faith-based care providers are preparing for the law's other provisions as well.

Pussy Riot became a cause célèbre for the Russian opposition and its Western supporters. Many Russian Orthodox believers saw things differently. 

The one who puts all things under his feet is doing something in the world.

A sociologist might see in football a society's need to control and ritualize violence. The church fathers, however, weren't much for sociologists.

I knew I had to talk to him. This longtime church elder would soon see my newsletter article, and he wasn't going to like it.

At the International AIDS Conference, one thing was clear: even if a cure is found, the struggle against the virus will continue.

Excellent Christian preaching names and explores the shadows in order to declare that the light shines in the darkness.

The new liturgy makes no claim that couples of the same sex can, in the ecclesiastical sense, marry. What it does say is more interesting.

I, Brian, a sinner, a most simple suburbanite, a generally decent sort but subject to fits of selfishness, do here wish to confess and be shriven.

Unemployment is a human crisis. Yet the Obama administration, Congress and the Fed mostly act like it's not their problem.

"We do not shame a company," says Sister Nora Nash of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. "If there is shaming, the company brings that on itself."

"Jesus calls us to make disciples, not just converts," says Todd Friesen of Lombard Mennonite Church in Illinois. "I believe that discipleship begins in communal worship."

The LDS canon's four books carry equal weight of authority. All are read as historical witnesses to God's promise of salvation.

The 19th-century Mormon kingdom emphasized the common good. Later came a shift toward personal morality as the mark of saintliness.

Monastic vows sound familiar to anyone who's been to a wedding. In both marriage and celibacy, we promise to be faithful.

In Strasbourg, my husband and I became ecclesiastical two-timers. Once we'd done that, it was easy to become three-timers.

The general was insulted by the piddling, muddy Jordan. But he entered the water—and was healed! Then it was time to pay the bill.

When you pray at LA's cathedral, you are part of humanity past, future and in the inglorious, unromanticized present.