Rights groups are working to identify the unmarked graves of mentally disabled patients in Minnesota to give them the respect and dignity in death that they didn't receive in life.

A Supreme Court case tests the limits of public prayer and the First Amendment; income inequality threatens to put an end to the American Dream; its 75th anniversary recalls a violent anti-Semitic pogrom known as the "night of broken glass"; and the destruction of a historic British cathedral during ...

"This case is about Christians aggressively imposing themselves upon their fellow citizens with the power of government," says plaintiff lawyer Douglas Laycock. But defense attorney Tom Hungar warned that the case could lead to "government regulating the theological content of prayers, prescribing ...

“One of my goals is to get pastors and congregations to feel emboldened to ask questions about the economy,” says Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

“You had people watching synagogues burn. You had people looting business that had been plundered. You had people joining in on the violence."

Kristallnacht, says this historian who directs the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, was a pogrom, an escalation of violence against the Jewish population at a time when America was heavily isolationist: “There were a variety of factors that made ...

Out of the ashes and rubble of World War II a ministry of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation was born “to heal the wounds of history.”

Changing expectations for reform under Pope Francis; violence, neuroscience, and the ethics of probing the human brain to predict violent behavior; and Reza Aslan, author of "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth."

Liberal Catholics who were hopeful that Pope Francis's papacy would usher in sweeping reforms are discovering that the Church "is an institution that takes its time with major decisions, and none of this is going to happen soon." 

A new book by religion scholar Reza Aslan portrays Jesus as a Jewish revolutionary and just one of many in a line of "failed messiahs." "It was a phenomenon that was quite widespread and that led to a number of rebellions and insurgencies throughout the first century,” says Aslan, “and the ...

"On the one hand, knowing what it is to worship Jesus has given me a profound sense of respect for the faith of Christianity…But I also, as a historian and a scholar of religions, have been able to look at Jesus in a sense unburdened by dogma and doctrine."

We visited a Hindu religious coming-of-age ceremony for nine-year-old Rushil Ramakrishnan at the Hindu Temple in Adelphi, Maryland.

The debate over what it means to be a Catholic university; the long spiritual journey of poet Christian Wiman.

What does it mean for a school to be Catholic? "This is a university that’s founded on biblical truth, on scripture, and on the sacramental richness of the Catholic Church," says Ave Maria University president Jim Towey. But according to Rev. Kevin O’Brien, vice president for ministry and ...

“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."

Complex relationships between slaves, slaveowners, abolitionists, and religion in the new movie "12 Years a Slave"; a lawyer works to make justice accessible for all in Southeast Asia; and the challenges facing Conservative Judaism on its 100th anniversary

A movie based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free man who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery, portrays the complex relationships between slaves, slaveowners, abolitionists, and religion.

"It's about remembering and never forgetting and understanding from the past and embracing your past in order to go forward into the future."

Watch excerpts from our interview with Yolanda Pierce, associate professor of African-American religion and literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, as she talks about the new movie "12 Years a Slave" and about Christianity and slavery in America.