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A History Channel documentary purports to reveal “the real face of Jesus” through the same technology that brought us Avatar’s big blue aliens. But the 3D rendering of the Shroud of Turin is only the latest big-ticket appearance of one of history’s most famous relics.

An exhibit now at the New York Institute of Technology features the designs of theoretical architect Jonathan Block Friedman.

The Enlightenment was not, as is often assumed, exclusively secular. In fact, religious Protestants, Jews and Catholics played a key role in imagining a tolerant, but believing, society.

In a poverty-stricken nation with a failed state and rampant political corruption, the recent violence between Christians and Muslims has been blamed solely on religion. But to a reporter who spent two years covering Nigeria, it’s far more complicated than that.

This week’s episode asks big questions about psychology and religion, and reminds us that a dog is a robot’s best friend.

In this third installment of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a born-again teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust in the 1970s, our hero experiences an agape that is equal parts sanctified rapture and endorphin rush at a radical Friday night coffeehouse church. Meanwhile, the hippie Jesus of the Jesus Freaks reaches the big time in mainline protestantism.

For the past half-decade, Scientology has responded to withering attacks with a variety of aggressive and secretive tactics, drawing comparisons to the CIA and FBI. After a recent report alleging the use of violence, however, the church has responded by hiring an ‘independent’ panel of editors and journalists to produce a 20-page assessment of the report.

With his new Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed hopes to simultaneously bury his past and to make the connection he’s been yearning for: to “address a wider range agenda, social issues plus economic issues.” Will that connection and mutual cries of socialism be enough to wed the two most energetic right-wing movements?

Anti-abortion activists are screening an expertly-made documentary to black audiences across the country . Maafa 21 creates a highly selective, distorted history of the reproductive rights movement and frames abortion as a tool of eugenics and genocide.

The one thing that seems able to tame even a hardened cynic like Holden Caufield, in the least overtly religious Salinger book, is an encounter with the innocence of childhood; especially children at play. It is this quest for lost innocence that defines the spiritual trajectory of Salinger’s most memorable characters. They are all teachers, parents, players, children-at-heart.