Every year, close to the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and that of "Black Sunday" -- the day in 1965 when state troopers attacked protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery -- the nonpartisan Faith and Politics Institute in Washington organizes a trip to Alabama. The trip's purpose is to remind members of Congress what the civil rights movement was all about.

A WASHINGTON POST-ABC NEWS poll asked American whites and blacks whether they support or oppose the U.S. having gone to war in Iraq. Among whites, 78 percent said they support the war. But among African-Americans, just 35 percent supported. Of all African-Americans, the most conflicted may be ...

In Jordan, next door to Iraq, humanitarian aid workers have relief supplies but only limited access to Iraq. There are daily demonstrations in Amman against the war in Iraq and the American government. Opposition to the war is overwhelming among both Muslims and Christians.

Islamic scholars in Cairo said an attack on Iraq would be an attack on all Islam, and that every Muslim would have the obligation to defend the faith. Diane Knippers, Jack Moline, and Akbar Ahmed join us to discuss the implications of that call -- and of the war -- for Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the U.S. and its allies not to forsake humanitarian issues while waging the war in Iraq. For months, nongovernmental relief agencies have been trying to get ready for a potential humanitarian crisis. Among the active groups are many faith-based organizations that have a long history of providing aid to the region.

"Jews in France and Jews in other countries are again threatened by an anti-Semitism that is growing, by right-wing radicals, right extremists, neo-Nazis, but also by extreme Muslims and Arabs who are using the situation for their aggression against Jewishness," says Michel Friedman, chairman of the ...

The Church of God in Christ, now the fourth largest Christian denomination in the U.S., teaches classic Christian doctrine: the Bible is God’s word. But COGIC members also put special emphasis on the power of the Holy Spirit, of which the surest sign — many say — is speaking in ...

A Florida program called “Hospice of the Sun Coast” pairs high school volunteers with hospice patients, and in the process the teens say they “walk away with a lesson in life.”

Sometimes-controversial Archbishop Rowan Williams took over in December 2002 as head of the more than 70 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion. Williams will be formally enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury in February 2003.

As the crisis over Iraq intensified, the Vatican ratcheted up its diplomatic efforts to avert war. Pope John Paul II scheduled several high-level meetings, with officials including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

R & E takes a look at the life of a Trappist monk at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. “It’s a life of transformation. It’s about a person becoming more like Christ,” says Father Aelred Hagen.

As war against Iraq looms, we ask Seyyed Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, what the reaction to war might be among the rest of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims.

Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent, has written a powerful new book about the costs of war to individuals and to societies. He wants Americans to understand how self-destructive war can be.

Thirty-five years after his death, the nation is still coming to terms with the life of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Theologians, politicians, historians, and artists continue to discuss King's legacy.

The debate about the death penalty has been revived by the actions of Illinois' outgoing Republican governor George Ryan, who pardoned four death row inmates and commuted the death sentences of all 167 others. Ryan called the capital punishment system "immoral." Watch our discussion with Steve Mills, who has been covering the Illinois story for the Chicago Tribune.

As the U.S. military buildup continues in the Middle East, debate also continues over the morality of going to war. William Galston and George Weigel share their opinions and concerns over the subject. Galston is a professor at the School of Public Affairs and the Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at University of Maryland and Weigel is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

Ever since September 11, Americans have been trying to understand Islam. Is there something about the religion itself that drove the terrorists? Or had a small, violent minority that despised the modern West hijacked Islam to justify its politics?

Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock in the original Star Trek television series, has a controversial new book called Shekhina, a photographic exploration of the presence of God. He says he was deeply influenced by the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah where the Shekhina, or the ...

Susan Braunstein, Curator of Archaeology and Judaica at the Jewish Museum of New York, explains the traditions of Hanukkah.

Somali immigrants fleeing civil war first settled in Georgia and Tennessee. But they were alarmed at what they felt was an environment too promiscuous and too violent for their children. So they went on a search for a smaller, safer place to raise their families, and about a thousand ended up in ...