Best-selling writer and journalist Sara Davidson says she felt completely unprepared for the reality of dying. Then she met Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. Their weekly conversations about facing mortality led to their book, "The December Project." "When you ...

Watch Web-only excerpts from our recent conversation with the United Methodist pastor of the grandfather and grandson who were shot to death outside a Jewish community center in Kansas.

Papal Canonizations Conversation; India's Domestic Workers; Jerusalem the Movie

“In the first thousand years of the Church about 80 popes were made saints. In the next 900 years, just three. There’s this renewed push now to make popes into saints, and that’s not always how it was done in the Church.”

Millions of young Indian women make up a vast labor force of domestic workers that is largely unrecognized by their government. At a very young age, they leave – or are taken – from poor communities for work, only to receive less than the minimum wage. "It's one of the biggest incomes for most ...

"The message of the Gospel is not welfare, is not give my people a better madras or give them some more food. It's to set them free, and setting them free is this whole movement— right-based, dignity for them, their rights, and empowerment."

A new National Geographic film about Jerusalem attempts to transcend the city's reputation for conflict with sweeping imagery and personal stories of why the city is so loved. "Jerusalem to me is more than a city." says Farah Ammouri, a young Muslim woman featured in the film. "Its beauty, its ...

Buddhists persecute minority Muslims in Myanmar; Father James Martin, SJ explains the importance of the Easter story for Christians.

"There’s a fear among large segments of the Buddhist population in Myanmar," says Matthew Smith, executive director of Fortify Rights, an independent organization to protect and defend human rights, "that the country is at risk of being taken over by Muslims. It’s a very unreasonable, irrational ...

During the days just before Easter, Christians reflect on the fundamental events that shape their hopes as Christians. "The story of the passion, death, and resurrection, especially the resurrection,” says Father James Martin, SJ, “is at the center of a Christian’s faith."

“For a lot of people who are not Christian, some of the rituals may seem obscure. The songs, the rituals, the masses, the liturgies—they're really carrying us through the story so we can experience it anew for ourselves."

Technology allows critically ill newborns to survive; a rare Jewish book survives 600 years.

The haggadah is the book that guides Jews through the ritual of the Passover Seder, the meal commemorating their ancestors' exodus from slavery in Egypt. The Sarajevo Haggadah is famous for its artistically illustrated manuscript pages. Created 600 years ago, "It went through so many different ...

"The central moment in Passover is the use of the material—the use of the tools we have with us in the world to bring us to another place."

Hollywood releases biblical films; Calvinism garners more interest among evangelicals, including Southern Baptists.

Hollywood is releasing several stories from the Bible this year, to varying reactions. "We’re talking about sacred characters and sacred stories," says San Diego State University history professor Edward Blum, "and so it’s not just Noah on screen talking to some powerful force. It’s Noah ...

“To treat [Noah’s Ark] as something that’s not poetic and mythical is a mistake….we have goodness and wickedness inside of us, and we have a second chance now to take care of creation and each other. That’s a beautiful, poetic, inspiring idea to learn from and to inspire us to do ...

"We made [Son of God] for this generation [so] that the teenagers would watch it. It's a story of our time. It's the story of our God, and we wanted to make it as well as we could."

"Hollywood, I think, approaches the Bible as public domain, as something that is owned by the culture at large, and they have discovered that some segments of the Christian community look at it as private property."

"For some, Calvinism is divisive and unbiblical" says Southern Baptist pastor Daniel Montgomery of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky, "We’ve seen that it unifies our efforts. It gives us an understanding that God is at work in this world. We don’t need to make things happen. We ...