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“You had people watching synagogues burn. You had people looting business that had been plundered. You had people joining in on the violence.” More
Kristallnacht, says this historian who directs the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, was a pogrom, an escalation of violence against the Jewish population at a time when America was heavily isolationist: “There were a variety of factors that made people turn away from actively helping the Jews just as they really needed the help the most.” More
Out of the ashes and rubble of World War II a ministry of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation was born “to heal the wounds of history.” More
Changing expectations for reform under Pope Francis; violence, neuroscience, and the ethics of probing the human brain to predict violent behavior; and Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” More
Liberal Catholics who were hopeful that Pope Francis’s papacy would usher in sweeping reforms are discovering that the Church “is an institution that takes its time with major decisions, and none of this is going to happen soon.” More
A new book by religion scholar Reza Aslan portrays Jesus as a Jewish revolutionary and just one of many in a line of “failed messiahs.” “It was a phenomenon that was quite widespread and that led to a number of rebellions and insurgencies throughout the first century,” says Aslan, “and the argument of the book is that those zealot ideals and principles are at the heart of Jesus’ teachings and actions.” More
“On the one hand, knowing what it is to worship Jesus has given me a profound sense of respect for the faith of Christianity…But I also, as a historian and a scholar of religions, have been able to look at Jesus in a sense unburdened by dogma and doctrine.” More
We visited a Hindu religious coming-of-age ceremony for nine-year-old Rushil Ramakrishnan at the Hindu Temple in Adelphi, Maryland. More
The debate over what it means to be a Catholic university; the long spiritual journey of poet Christian Wiman. More
What does it mean for a school to be Catholic? “This is a university that’s founded on biblical truth, on scripture, and on the sacramental richness of the Catholic Church,” says Ave Maria University president Jim Towey. But according to Rev. Kevin O’Brien, vice president for ministry and mission at Georgetown University, “What we did 50 years ago to promote our identity does not suffice today because the world is different and our students and faculty are different.” More