More and more churches in Alabama are opposing the high interest charges of payday lenders. “There’s a moral and ethical injunction starting back in the Old Testament going all the way into the New Testament church,” says Rev. Shannon Webster, pastor of Birmingham’s First Presbyterian Church. “There are injunctions against lending at interest in an exorbitant way.” More →

June 3, 2016

Religious leaders have joined civil rights activists, the Justice Department, and others in challenging Alabama’s tough new immigration law. “The government is trying to tell us what we can or can’t do in terms of works of mercy, works of charity, which are fundamental to our faith,” says Father Tom Ackerman of the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham. More →

September 23, 2011

“It’s a matter of sharing the burdens of a free society and a good society. That’s, morally speaking, what taxes are about,” according to political philosopher and Harvard government professor Michael Sandel. More →

August 5, 2011

During the Montgomery bus boycott “it was black Christians teaching white Christians what it mean to be Christian,” says a white Lutheran pastor who joined with Martin Luther King Jr. and others to change the world. More →

January 14, 2011

Watch much more of our conversation with Rev. Robert Graetz, who calls the Montgomery bus boycott a spiritual movement based on love and nonviolence that changed the hearts of people across the country. More →

January 14, 2011

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This week brought the 35th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and last month, civil rights historians also marked another anniversary — “Black Sunday,” the day in 1965 when state troopers attacked protesters … More →

April 4, 2003

Read more of R&E correspondent Judy Valente’s interview with Dr. Roseanne Cook about her medical practice in rural Alabama. More →

November 8, 2002

Health care in the United States is a big problem for the poor — not only because they often can’t afford it. Sometimes it just isn’t there. This is especially true in rural areas, which have a hard time attracting doctors. In rural Alabama, a Catholic nun has found a calling as a doctor, one of only three serving 14,000 people. More →

November 8, 2002