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For the poet Javier Sicilia, a grieving father whose son was murdered by thugs last year, the pope’s visit is historic as well. Yet for him, and for those wounded voices he seeks to amplify, the pontiff’s arrival has less to do with pushing back secularism than with long-overdue attention to the ravages of Mexico’s drug wars.

Four young Muslims attempted to bomb a New York Synagogue committed to interfaith work. A Muslim and a Rabbi point to the bad theology behind terrorism and the path forward.

In his latest book Frank Schaeffer speaks to those Christians who have grown weary of religious right hatred and political power plays.

Watching Higher Ground felt like catching a glimpse of a mythical creature I’d let myself imagine but never thought I’d see in real life. But suddenly there it was, projected on a big screen: sophisticated and complex theological thinking, a female protagonist interested in ideas and books and God, a friendship between two women that has very little to do with men and everything to do with trusting your body and your mind, and the insidious nature of religiously sanctioned sexism and its devastating effects.

Jeffress thinks it’s fine to interrogate candidates’ religious beliefs. Indeed there may be times when it is legitimate to ask whether a candidate’s religious positions would have a direct impact on policy. Religious Right activist David Barton has declared that the Bible is opposed to progressive taxation, capital gains taxes, collective bargaining, and the minimum wage. It’s legitimate to ask whether candidates who praise Barton’s work—such as Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich—share those opinions. Similarly, when a presidential candidate like Bachmann calls a Christian Reconstructionist thinker her “mentor,” it is not religious bigotry to ask whether she shares his views about the Constitution and the roles of religion and government in society. But questioning the authenticity or soundness of a candidate’s religious views, for example to have Barton and Glenn Beck rail against what they believe are President Obama’s religious views on the nature of salvation, seems far less appropriate—or useful.

Harold Camping admits he was wrong, but only in the most technical way. He wasn’t really wrong, he is saying, because he trusts God, and was just passing God’s false prophecy along. It’s not that he’s wrong, that’s not the point, and not that he’s sorry. This, Camping says, is just “how God brings His messages to mankind.” Apology and repentance this is not.

In a state where it’s almost required to have a Christian-themed bumper sticker the legislature approved an “I believe” vanity plate. A federal judge has just deemed it unconstitutional.

While President Obama, in his much-debated Oval Office Address last week, seemed to be calling Americans to personal prayer, activist Drew Landry’s vision is more collective, and possibly more practical. He believes the simple discipline of praying in unison will get people to pay more attention to the disaster being laid out at their doorsteps. Meanwhile, experts like Len Bahr say it is too late to restore the Gulf. The problem in dealing with the environmental disaster, he says, whether by prayer or science, is that nobody knows how bad it will get before it can get better.

Hold the popcorn, we’re not quite there yet.

Regarding today’s feature on the vanishing middle, another argument for solidifying the liberal position: moving goalposts.