by Marium Mohiuddin
“You have to come and help me right now!” he said. All I could think was “it’s 4 a.m., and there’s no way I can sneak out.” My parents would kill me. Despite being a senior in college...
by Sparrow Etter Carlson
I write this now with my hand on my heart, and here it will remain. For what follows is about the precious people within our midst who are treated as ex-humans in our society and...
by Mohammed Jibriel
I recently learned about the concept of moral injury, which describes the profound psychological, behavioral, social, and spiritual distress that...
by Zack Ritter
“All 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza are terrorists,” she said as we were eating cookies, standing around the flickering flames at Shabbat services. I was...
by David Callaway and Hannah Santos
Long-time advocates of religious freedom paused when Eddie Castillo successfully used the First Amendment to wear a pasta strainer on his head for his license photo. Castillo, a Pastafarian, argued the…
by Marcus Braybrooke
The vicar of the parish where I was a curate always wore a cassock. He said it was “the only classless garment.” He did not wish to be identified with either the wealthy or poorer members of the parish. I had not at the time realised how quickly people form an opinion of you by what you wear.
by Paul Chaffee
A largely unknown treasure for interfaith activists is the convention held each year by the Religion Communicators Council (RCC). Founded in 1929, the RCC has given annual awards to religious communicators and to secular communicators working on religious subjects since 1949.
by Henry Goldschmidt
Imagine you’re an officer in the New York City Police Department. It’s Friday night, and you’re working on a block that’s closed for police activity. A young woman wearing a long, modest skirt and full-sleeved blouse says she lives on the block and needs to get past the police line. You ask for identification to check her address, and she tells you bluntly, “I can’t carry ID on Shabbos – it’s against the Torah.” Is she for real, or maybe up to something?
by Katherine Marshall
World leaders meeting in Hangzhou, China may be unaware that a few days earlier a shadow group of religious scholars met in Beijing. Their agenda was geared to the G20 and their meeting reflected a determined effort by Chinese scholars and counterparts from across the world to continue a tradition of gathering in parallel with the global encounters of national leaders
Religiously related beheadings broadcast this summer over the internet snapped the world to attention, initiating a dark new chapter in global religious relationships. We might call this a tragic aberration if the madness were confined to Iraq/Syria, or if religious freedom was not diminishing globally even as religiously related conflict is accelerating. But this new level of violence could push us to a tipping point. Humankind’s best hope may be the willingness of peacemakers, religious and secular, to join hands strategically to end absolutist violence, wherever it’s found.
In what could go down as one of its most notable reckonings of the era, the Supreme Court heard arguments next week in two major gay marriage cases. As the advocates and justices prepare to spar over California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, important constitutional principles had a much-needed day in the sun.
