With modern neonatal technology and under federal law, doctors can keep alive tiny premature babies, even if the babies' parents want to let them die. But often those babies survive to grow up significantly damaged and in pain. Should they be kept alive? Who should decide?

Many individuals are hoping to make places of worship more accessible to persons with disabilities. The issue goes beyond just being able to get up the steps or hear the sermon; it's about changing attitudes toward the disabled. There is a large pool of disabled worshippers who want to be more than ...

As the Greek Orthodox enthroned a new archbishop, we looked at the practice of praying with icons. Whether singing or speaking their prayers, whether at home or in church, Orthodox Christians from all ethnic backgrounds use icons in their prayers. We talked to Frederica Mathewes-Green, a convert to Orthodoxy and author of several books about the faith.

The work of Mother Teresa’s worldwide missionary order continues, and so does the work of another missionary nun in Calcutta, who ministers to the poor in a different way.

Hillary Rodham Clinton stated that, “In Christian theology, there are sins of weakness and sins of malice,” adding that her husband’s adultery was a sin of weakness. Is there a hierarchy of sin? Are we using the insights of modern psychotherapy to excuse bad behavior instead of ...

Many second generation American Hindus are fascinated by the religion’s philosophy, but rarely go to the temple or practice rituals, and often don’t understand them. There is a danger that the beliefs the rituals embody are at risk.

Three years after the most radical overhaul of the nation’s welfare system ever, the number of people on welfare has been cut in half. But it has not changed other factors that effectively keep people in poverty.

In Baltimore, Maryland, Tamir Goodman is both an Orthodox Jew and a star basketball player. At 17, in his junior year in high school this past season, he averaged 35 points a game and was offered an athletic scholarship next year by the basketball powerhouse University of Maryland.

Alongside Christians and Jews in all their variety, there are now Muslims and Buddhists and Sikhs and Hindus, a million Hindus in all, struggling, as have all other newcomers, to establish their faith and traditions in the United States.

In Washington and in cities across the U.S., followers of the Falun Gong meditation movement are turning out to express solidarity with besieged practitioners in China. Thousands have been detained since China’s Communist government began last week’s crackdown. This week, Falun Gong ...

Following the Columbine High shootings, the film industry wrestled with whether the violence it presents on the screen encourages violent behavior in real life. Father Ellwood Kieser does think Hollywood bears some responsibility for society's violence. His calling, he says, is nothing less than to persuade America's entertainment industry to celebrate human values as well as money.

As death approaches, hospice care can impose a heavy burden, with great responsibilities on families. Palliative care is a method of treatment for terminally ill patients and their families that provides them with hospice-like care in a hospital.

Part two of our series on the Tibetan Buddhists in exile in India. They’re refugees not only from Chinese oppression in Tibet but also from what the Dalai Lama calls “cultural genocide.”

Our special report on the life, the plight, and the humor of the Dalai Lama. Forced out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, living in exile with little apparent chance of returning, the Dalai Lama remains one of the world's foremost symbols of hope and nonviolence. How does he keep from hating those ...

Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, U.S.-Sino relations are again at a low point, sparked by the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and charges that China stole nuclear secrets. Some activists are concerned the tense political situation will pose increased difficulties ...

“The greatest thing I can say about being a priest, what I like better than anything else, you belong to everybody. I’ve tried awfully hard to understand human problems and to find the right advice.”

There has been a revival of cultural interest in Joan of Arc, the 15th-century peasant girl who became a French national hero and a Roman Catholic saint.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, but over 500 years later, Saint Joan is getting new attention through modern eyes.

Earth Day is the day set aside each year for reaffirming a commitment to protecting the environment. In recent years, because of a shift in thinking about the natural world, many faith communities have been taking up the cause of the environment. This movement is particularly strong along the banks of the Columbia River, where salmon has been declared an endangered species.

Most of the refugees from Kosovo are Muslim. Most of those being bombed in Serbia are Eastern Orthodox Christians, for whom, this has been Holy Week and this Sunday is Easter. America's more than five million Orthodox Christians began their Holy Week in prayer for the people of the Balkans. On Orthodox Palm Sunday, a gathering in Washington also protested NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia.