"The court will have to sort of decide where one person’s freedom ends and another person’s begins on something like this. But it does point to this larger question that we have," observes Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service, "should religious groups or religious people or ...

Phil Jones was told that he had an incurable bone marrow cancer, and that he was too old for the procedure that might save his life. The Moffitt Cancer Center of Florida disagreed, and a perfect donor match appeared in a naval officer who was also an ordained minister. Jones says he "felt God’s ...

"The Martyrdom of the Báb commemorates the day when the Báb was finally taken before a firing squad in the northern Persian city of Tabriz," says Hillary Chapman, a Baha'i educator. It's "not a celebration, but a commemoration. But the use of the arts is very much encouraged as a way of kind of ...

"The Baha'i belief is that in this day and age one of the meanings of the Kingdom of God is that all people will join together in a common spiritual belief. It may or may not be the same religion but a common spiritual understanding, or the phrase we use in Baha'i is one common faith."

A decision from the Supreme Court on the Hobby Lobby case is expected on Monday, June 30. The case challenges the reach of both the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Affordable Care Act. Can the Christian owners of a for-profit corporation claim religious exemption from providing ...

"When people are thinking about honesty versus dishonesty," says Dan Ariely, professor at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, "it’s all about being able, at the moment, to rationalize something and make yourself think this is actually okay."

"We encourage people to have conversations," says Reverend Rosa Lee Harden, producer of the Wild Goose Festival. She finds that sometimes people "who weren’t raised in Christian families, who follow other faiths more deeply understand the message of Jesus than sometimes we do."

Organizations fight human trafficking on Vietnam-China border; neglected houses of worship in Philadelphia save their historic buildings through creative partnerships.

Vietnamese women and children from rural villages are regularly targeted for labor and sex trafficking. They are often lured with opportunities for work in China, and then sold as wives, prostitutes, or forced labor. "We were told that if we didn’t agree to be wives, we would be sold into ...

"It's almost like a version of 'This Old House' where you look at a house that's been in a state of deterioration and we need a lot of people and a lot of resources to come and try to help and get this house of worship back on its feet again," says Rev. Wilbur Winborne, pastor of 19th Street Baptist ...

Faith groups help soldiers with moral wounds; the world's largest Buddhist temple; a Hindu boy's rite of passage.

"You may come home feeling good, you did your duty, you helped people, you helped keep your unit alive. Then at some point you may start to think," observes Rita Nakashima Brock of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinty School, "who am I that I could do those things? That's when moral injury kicks ...

"It is not that you ever forget what happened to you in war, it is part of your life story. There are no other institutions in our society that I know of except religious institutions that support people over their entire life course."

Leaders of the largest Buddhist temple in the world want it "to be like Mecca is in Islam, a global center," says Rachelle Scott, an expert on the group and assistant director of religious studies at the University of Tennessee. "Critics question the intentions of the temple. They think that the ...

Religious objections inspire surgery without blood transfusions; a poet shares the importance of faith and modern poetry; Jews celebrate receiving the Torah from God at Mount Sinai.

"If there's any way to avoid getting a blood transfusion, one is better off in general if they can avoid it," says Dr. Abe Steinberger, a neurosurgeon at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey.

“I have a hard time conceiving of a God completely removed from suffering,” says Christian Wiman, a lecturer in religion and literature at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. “Once I understand the notion of Christ participating in suffering, then it makes more sense to me.”

"Poetry had always been the place where I'd experienced God and it's still the place where I feel lifted out of myself and given something I could not understand in any other way."

Watch more of our interview about the meaning of Shavuot with the director of community engagement at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC.