By way of video, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly will present this acceptance speech from Deborah Potter for a 2014 Wilbur Award on April 5 in Tennessee. R&E has won the award for its piece on the life of Dorothy Day, … More →

The President and the Pope; Bivocational Pastors; Blind Boys of Alabama; Franciscans at home and abroad care for sacred Christian sites

President Obama visited Pope Francis for the first time this week (March 27)."The principal focus of the meeting was talking about issues of peace, international issues, and also talking about how to help poor people, how to help the marginalized all over the world," says Father Tom Reese, an ...

On Sundays, you’ll find Pastor Sam Livingston at his Baptist church in Hohenwald, Tennessee. But on the weekdays he's at his other very different job as a public utilities manager.

Of all the tourists who go to Israel and its surroundings each year, it’s estimated that more than half of them are Christian pilgrims visiting the holiest sites of the Christian story. It was Pope Clement VI who made the Franciscans the official guardians of these sites seven centuries ago.

Religious business owners argue against federal requirement to provide contraceptive coverage; historian Simon Schama tells "The Story of the Jews"; Orthodox Jewish women take more of a leading role in Purim festivities.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday hears arguments in a deeply divisive case: What limits should there be, if any, on owners of corporations claiming a religious exemption from federal law?

Historian Simon Schama explores 3,000 years of Jewish history and culture in a five-part documentary series and companion book. “The problem of the Jews,” Schama says, "was that they were a nation without a home."

"We are a very noisy, verbalizing, speechifying language animal, and I love that. But we walk around as so many millions of talking books."

"In the last couple of generations, we’ve seen a great increase in Jewish learning amongst women. Women have said, 'Well, we are also obliged in the commandment. We can take a leading role.'"

Interfaith groups organize against gun violence; Dorothy Day; Sikh children learn to tie their turbans.

In the year since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, many religious groups and interfaith organizations have advocated for more gun restrictions.

She said the models to follow were the saints, and it was the saints who constantly replenished the church.

“How glorious they look, how beautiful they become when they tie the turban on their head," says Surinder Singh, youth and education coordinator of the Sikh Foundation of Virginia.

Examining the ethics of probing the brain to predict violent behavior; A Journey Through NYC Religions is documenting every religious site in New York's five boroughs.

A neuroscientist and an ethicist ponder the subject of violence and how to prevent it: “It’s beyond a reasonable doubt now that there is this brain basis to crime,” says Professor Adrian Raine. But “we have to be very careful how we use this information,” warns Professor Paul Wolpe.

A Journey Through NYC Religions, says editor and publisher Tony Carnes, “has made me more free to listen to people. And that may sound like a small thing, but it’s actually pretty big.”

The real-life Philomena and the Oscar-nominated film based on her life; the debate over the ethics of solitary confinement; and Ash Wednesday on the streets of Washington, DC.

The movie "Philomena" is up for four Oscars, including Best Picture, at the Academy Awards on Sunday, March 2. It tells the true story of an Irish Catholic girl forced by nuns to give up her son for adoption and her search for him decades later.

"We are locking people up in solitary confinement to prevent this violent behavior, and in fact it may actually instigate—because of the impact on their mental health—even more violent behavior," says Heather Rice-Minus, a senior policy advisor for Justice Fellowship.