It’s been a time of calamities: Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, flooding in South Asia and Africa and a massive earthquake in Mexico have... Read More
The Constitution of India declares the nation a secular republic. Despite this, the nation’s left-leaning Congress Party has long... Read More
Editor’s note: At sundown on August 31, Muslims all over the world will celebrate one of the principal festivals, Eid al-Adha. Earlier... Read More
In a medieval town in the south of France, a crypt tucked beneath a basilica houses one of the world's most famous sets of human remains, a... Read More
Bones attributed to St Peter have been found by chance in a church in Rome during routine restoration work, 2,000 years after the apostle's... Read More
The cleanup after Hurricane Irma is a massive undertaking, after the destructive storm hit Florida and neighboring states over the weekend.... Read More
The most obvious effect of the Reformation—which celebrates its 500th anniversary this year—is division.It is estimated that more... Read More
As Buddhist Myanmar is once again in the news for a brutal crackdown on its Rohingya Muslim minority, it's worth remembering just how... Read More
America's Founders were clear on religion, at least when it came to job qualifications. The Constitution bans religious tests for federal... Read More
It was 2016, and the era of white Christian American influence was supposed to be over.Political pundits declared that shifting demographics... Read More
Whether Christianity and pluralism survive in the Middle East, or disappear forever, may well lie in the hands of the U.S. Senate.Earlier... Read More
Martin Scorsese's recent film Silence, like the historical novel by Shūsaku Endō on which it is based, turns on an act of emotional... Read More
Is it permissible to take a selfie in front of the Kaaba during hajj? With spotty internet, I was unable to Google the answer. Forced to call... Read More
Nobody knows the precise origins of the turban, although there are references to it dating back almost 4,000 years from Mesopotamia and... Read More
In Manteigaria Silva, one of Lisbon's oldest delis, not much has changed since 1928. Cured hams dangle from the ceiling, port and Madeira... Read More
This year marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s famous 95 Theses, which helped spark the founding of the Reformation and the division of Christianity into Protestantism and Catholicism. The 95 Theses critiqued the church’s sale of indulgences, which Luther regarded as a form of corruption. By Luther’s time, indulgences had evolved into payments that were said to... Read More
In most American weekly church services, offering plates were passed around to finance all of church activities. As giving became very public, one of the features of the weekly offering was, of course, that all gathered could see who was giving, if not how much. Once the age of plastic money arrived, all of this ritual and financial necessity in American churches was jeopardized. Read More
