What's New
Criminal Justice Reform and the Faith Community; Religious Freedom Ambassador; A Year with the QuranA growing coalition says reforming America’s criminal justice system is a matter of faith; Rabbi David Saperstein says religious freedom is central to the American identity; and writer Carla Power and Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi debated Islam’s holy book in search of interfaith understanding. More
“We have to make sure that our men and women who are coming out of prison have welcoming and affirming communities to come to, where they can be judged by the content of their character and not one mistake that they made in their past,” says Bishop Darren Ferguson, a former inmate and now pastor of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Far Rockaway, New York. More
“I’m living on the fact that somebody cared for me when I got out. The guys who got out before me helped me when I got out. People who are doing this work helped me, so I’m bound to reciprocate.” More
“Freedom of conscience underlies all other rights. It’s why our Bill of Rights begins with the free exercise of religion, and without the freedom of conscience to live in accordance with your core values, all other rights are in peril,” says Rabbi David Saperstein. More
“People are going back to the basic texts, and they’re stripping away centuries of culture and tradition and looking for what they see at the heart of the religion,” says American journalist Carla Power, author of If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran. More
“We are event-driven in this ghastly tango with the jihadis, and what we don’t hear from are the peaceful, everyday Muslims who are going to work and bringing over kabobs for their neighbors and helping out in doing charity.” More
The Episcopal Church elects its first African-American presiding bishop; the Supreme Court hears arguments about race and juror selection in a death penalty case; and prayer flags made at the National Cathedral recall friends, saints, and loved ones. More
“What the court says about jury selection, and what it says about the reasons that prosecutors have to give for striking people of color from juries, that’s going to affect every case from now on,” says Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. More
“We’re tapping into all of this long history of practices that have gone before us honoring this season of Hallowtide in the church,” says Terri Lynn Simpson, former assistant director and program coordinator at Washington National Cathedral’s Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage. More
The work of the Episcopal Church, says its new presiding bishop, is “to find ways to be a bridge community that brings differing people together under the rubric of love.” (Curry is being installed as the new presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church at a service on Sunday, November 1, at Washington National Cathedral.) More