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The assumption that Arab states that aren’t democratic are oppressive Islamist states lazily equates the public practice of Islam with all things undemocratic.

While the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has denied that there is a national strategy for the Church to fight sex abuse cases more aggressively, even the Church’s staunchest defenders see the pattern. As William Donohue, the pugilistic president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, told the New York Times this week, bishops are going after SNAP because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Yesterday morning President Barack Obama gave the keynote address at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, a longstanding tradition among presidents since Dwight D. Eisenhower. The breakfast also drew Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace and husband of recent Arizona shooting victim… This isn’t anti-religion; this is anti-hatred.

The positive reception of Budrus in the U.S. says a lot about the political climate today. The right-wing “pro-Israel” movement is going through a tough time. It has always built its public appeal on one simple narrative: Israel wants peace, but it must fight to ward off implacable violence from its enemies. Anything Israel does is justified because it’s in self-defense.

Elie Wiesel lost millions to Madoff because, he says, “we thought he was God.”

Bishop Spong, a compassionate theologian and wise religious leader, has declared that he is finished arguing over whether or not gays and lesbians should be fully welcomed in church and society. What’s his logic?

Religion watchers across the country followed the story, just over a week ago, of the frantic search in California for a “prayer group” that authorities feared intended to commit suicide. Was the “cult” label responsible for the hyperbolic coverage?

As Islamic political thought evolves, no easy answers to how events in Egypt will unfold.

Two out of three Americans believe that gay people commit suicide at least partly because of messages coming out of churches and other places of worship. How is it that a community claiming to possess truth and love ends up perpetuating these problems?

A few weeks ago the stars were realigned. The Archimedes’ Lever of this cosmic shift was, of all places, in Minnesota, where a newspaper published an article quoting an astronomer on an issue involving the accumulated result of long, slow gravitational pull. These comments went viral online at something close to the speed of light, leading to reevaluation of the Zodiac, panic among horoscope followers, assorted tweets defending or regretting tattoo selections, and some attempts at explanation from astrologists as to their systems of making sense of human existence through claims about the pull of the stars.