We review some of the week's leading religion news stories, from deadly riots in Afghanistan over the burning of a Quran at a Florida church to the morality of the budget to a church-state decision from the Supreme Court.

"If the criminals have guns, then we need to have them," says Pastor Russ Tenhoff of the Safe Harbor Ministry in Baltimore. But other religious leaders say they are working to prevent guns from getting into the hands of the wrong people.

An acclaimed new movie shows that a monastery is "at once a refuge and a very integral part of the world," says Jesuit priest James Martin, and that "the life of faith is not without doubt."

Reformation historian, award-winning memoirist, and Cuban émigré Carlos Eire says reading the medieval devotional book "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas à Kempis was "a conversion experience."

"As Muslim societies wrestle with how to treat religious minorities, let them look to our nation," said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick this week in his congressional testimony on protecting the civil rights of American Muslims. Watch excerpts from the hearing.

Watch the 100-year-old Morehouse College Glee Club in a recent performance at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

An interfaith coalition is launching a prayer and fasting campaign to protect federal funding for programs that help the poor.

"We don’t have an obligation to be everywhere for the very simple reason that we don’t have the capacity to be everywhere," says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"Something is changing," says an Israeli sociologist, "and I don't know, but I think it will come here. It's very difficult to believe the whole Arab world will be in riots and Jerusalem and West Bank are going to be quiet."

Doctors and patients make health care decisions, says Dr. Bruce Silva of the Sierra Vista Regional Health Center, "but then it has to be okay'd by someone else who puts their belief systems and their ethics on me and on my patients."

The widespread crisis in Japan is marked by ongoing relief efforts and acknowledgment of the impermanence of life.

The UN has demanded a cease-fire and authorized military action. What moral considerations underlie international interventon?

"Whether you act or whether you don't act, the stakes are really quite high, and that's what makes it so daunting from a moral perspective."

On Purim, says Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, the more you can poke fun at the gravitas of life, the better.

Purim is a bittersweet holiday with a powerful spiritual message, says Rabbi Gil Steinlauf of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC. A story about Esther that seems to be all about chance is really about "God's presence working itself out in ways we can't quite understand."

"The whole idea is to live the kingdom life here and now," says Brother Arnold Hadd of the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village. "It's for God and the community."

Shaker communities "required of you to give your all to God to and to strive to work at your salvation each and every day," says one of the last living Shakers.

The current president of Friends of the Shakers says the communities believed they would "grow to a great number and then dwindle down to as few as the fingers on one hand, and then there would be a resurgence."

"There are a great many people invested in supporting American Muslims as part of the American community and interfaith dialogue," says Syracuse University religion and media professor Gustav Niebuhr.

Watch excerpts from the March 10 House Committee on Homeland Security hearing and from a news conference held by religious leaders.