“Across the US and around the world, I’ve witnessed the many ways people worship, express their spirituality, seek the sacred, and build community. The perseverance of faith and hope, even in the most difficult circumstances, continues to inspire me.”

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

Looking Back: Kim Lawton

“I see it all the time,” says Father Michael Doyle, a Roman Catholic priest in Camden, New Jersey, “a beauty that’s deep and wonderful and sometimes tragic, but beauty absolutely, I do. Their faces are there with their burdens and their wrinkles and their difficulties and so forth, but beauty that’s just jumping at you.

Looking Back: Lucky Severson

“Any ritual should have the capacity to deepen your mindfulness,” says University of Virginia professor Vanessa Ochs. It helps you “deal with the chaos of life.”

Looking Back: Rituals

“What makes me a believer,” says writer Frederick Buechner, “is that from time to time, going back almost as far as my memory will go back, there have been glimpses I had, sometimes literally a glimpse, which have made me suspect the presence of something extraordinary and beyond the realm of the immediate."

Looking Back: Bob Abernethy

“In the last 20 years,” says correspondent Tim O’Brien, “we’ve seen five vacancies on the Supreme Court and changing attitudes on a wide range of social issues. Times do change, and so do the justices. For better or worse, what the Constitution really means would seem to have changed over the years right along with them.”

Looking Back: Tim O’Brien

“Many of my stories have concerned human suffering,” says correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro, “and one of the most effective ways to tell these is through the work of social innovators and entrepreneurs, many driven by deep faith.”

Looking Back: Fred de Sam Lazaro

“I think the purpose of the monastic life in the modern world is to show that we don’t need a purpose,” says Brother Paul Quenon of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. “The purpose of life is life, and you are to be just to be. Everybody measures their importance by how useful they are. That’s not it. That’s not what life is.”

Looking Back: Judy Valente

“Conflict is a part of human experience,” says Wichita West High School psychologist Janet Fox Peterson, “and teaching about speaking and listening is so very critical, and we’re not working on that very much as a society.”

Conflict Resolution in Public Schools

The sisters don't go out and try to fix the society,” says seminarian Peter Ludwig. “They really embrace the culture that they're in, find people, the absolute poorest of the poor. It's what's so different about Mother Teresa. She doesn't go and try to fix all the problems in the world. She goes out to love, to bring love into the problems of the world.”

In the Footsteps of Mother Teresa

“They are human beings, and so they have a right to live in peace and security,” says Imam Omar Suleiman, who has made several visits to the refugee camps on the Jordanian-Syrian border. “And if we’re not contributing to the betterment of their situation...are we really the moral standard for the world?”

Perspective on Syrian Refugees: Imam Omar Suleiman

Bob Feinman of Humane Borders says he “didn’t spend a whole lot of time paying attention to the rabbis” when he was in religious school as a child. “But the one thing I remember was the Seder every year at Passover, the Exodus. We were the ones that walked around in circles following Moses for all those years. People here are walking in circles, facing an uncertain future and facing death, as we did.”

Sanctuary Movement

“We hope to celebrate this anniversary without hiding the problematic side, the dark side of Martin Luther,” says Rev Johannes Block, pastor of the Evangelical City and Parish Church of St. Mary’s in Wittenberg, Germany, where Luther himself preached hundreds and hundreds of sermons in the 16th century. “The Reformation said you are responsible for yourself,” he continued. “Everybody is responsible for his faith. It’s a step of democracy. Everybody is equal in the church.”

500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation

“I don’t see Protestant-Catholic unity coming in the immediate future,” says Michael Root, professor of systematic theology at the Catholic University of America. “There are real differences. The question we face is how do we both affirm the commonalities while being honest about the continuing differences?”

Extended Interview: Professor Michael Root

Follow along as managing editor Kim Lawton visits several key sites in Germany associated with Martin Luther and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago.

In the Footsteps of Martin Luther

“We have a government now that is trying to legislate what it means to be faithful—faithful to America, faithful to a particular religious perspective,” says Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the Interfaith Alliance. “We heard that in the pre-inaugural sermon that the president was presented with, and if you don’t fit into that pretty narrow definition of what it means to be an American religious person, that has a chilling effect on your sense of being at home in this country.” 

Religious Reaction to Trump Executive Orders

An examination of religion's role and the ethical dimensions behind top news headlines.

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Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

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