“If I’m hungry I should eat. If I’m thirsty I should drink. But because of a recognition of a greater and higher need, I choose not to,” says Abdu’l Karim Ewing-Boyd. We visited him and his family in Washington, DC as they prepared to break the long fast leading up to the Baha’i New Year. More →

March 4, 2016

Twenty-five Indian tribes want the federal government to protect nearly two million acres of land sacred to Native Americans. But the proposal has created tension with local residents who want access to the land for recreation and development. More →

September 11, 2015

“The fast is a time for me to remind myself, to reclaim myself, to be in charge of my body and not simply respond to random physical promptings. This is just something that I look forward to more and more every year and it gives me more time to recognize my strength in prayer.” More →

March 20, 2015

“My goal is to be present,” says this writer and spiritual teacher, to the “emotional reality” of Native Americans and “put it in the voices and characters of real people. My job is to present a truth that you will embrace more fully if you believe it as you read it.” More →

October 31, 2014

A delegation of top Yazidi spiritual leaders is seeking help for their ancient religious minority in Iraq, which has been particularly targeted by ISIS. “We became victims of one of the largest…atrocities of the modern world,” says Yazidi human rights advocate Murad Ismael. More →

October 31, 2014

“Africa is finding, just as it found its political and economic voice it’s also finding its theological voice, which oftentimes may be different in perspective,” says J. Peter Pham of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, “because of background, because of history, and because of the way they have interpreted revelation as different from what those in the West, in Europe, or North America, are used to or are necessarily comfortable with.” More →

August 8, 2014

“The Martyrdom of the Báb commemorates the day when the Báb was finally taken before a firing squad in the northern Persian city of Tabriz,” says Hillary Chapman, a Baha’i educator. It’s “not a celebration, but a commemoration. But the use of the arts is very much encouraged as a way of kind of portraying the inner meaning of that day.” More →

July 3, 2014

“The Baha’i belief is that in this day and age one of the meanings of the Kingdom of God is that all people will join together in a common spiritual belief. It may or may not be the same religion but a common spiritual understanding, or the phrase we use in Baha’i is one common faith.” More →

July 3, 2014

“If there’s any way to avoid getting a blood transfusion, one is better off in general if they can avoid it,” says Dr. Abe Steinberger, a neurosurgeon at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey. More →

June 5, 2014

This expression of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, “is creating an atmosphere to pray, and it’s an offering. I think it’s just a physical way of expressing this love for the divine, and in the whirling it becomes a meditation,” says Manjula Kumar, a program manager at the Smithsonian Institution. More →

December 13, 2013