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“At Christmas I often tell grieving people that this may be the year you break with what everyone else expects of you to do what you and your family need to do that will bring you comfort.” More
“The fundamental problem is that governments that are trying to convict and fine and imprison and execute people have no incentive in giving those people lawyers that will defeat those goals,” says Southern Center for Human Rights president and senior counsel Stephen Bright. More
The elite St. Olaf Choir is considered a pioneer in America’s a capella choral tradition, and for more than 100 years St. Olaf College, a small Lutheran college in Northfield, Minnesota, has held a Christmas musical festival that is known and loved around the world. More
The conductor of the St. Olaf Choir suggests that music “will somehow seep into the bodies of those performing and certainly those who are hearing, and if it makes them reflect and they think differently about themselves and the people with whom they live day in and day out and how they lead their lives, then I think we’ve done our job.” More
More than 80,000 Mormon missionaries are now serving around the world; all abortions are against the law in this Central American country; and this dancing by Sufi Muslims is also a spiritual offering.
The number of people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is going up steadily as a result of the lower age limits for both men and women who want to serve as missionaries. More
Strongly influenced by Catholic teachings, the country of El Salvador now forbids all abortions. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from San Salvador on the consequences for many women when abortion is considered murder, regardless of the circumstances. More
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
The legacy of Nelson Mandela; the pope’s document urging Catholics to do more for the poor; churches and alternative Christmas gift-giving; and the growing number of Hispanic Protestants in the U.S.
The first democratically elected president of South Africa died this week at the age of 95. We look back at the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela, who led the movement to end apartheid peacefully. More