Christian pastors do it with Muslim imams. High-school seniors do it with each other. Actors and authors do it, as do comedians and combat pilots. It’s interfaith dialogue, and in the world of religion, it’s very much in vogue.

There is at least one moment in every religious person’s life where commitment to faith collides, inconveniently, with desire. For Zeena Altalib, that moment occurred last year at the local swimming pool. An American Muslim of Iraqi descent, Altalib wanted to take her baby son, Yusif, for a swim. But what to do about the […]

In your prayers tonight, you might want to thank God that no one has put you in charge of the Task Force on General Education at Harvard.

When Julie Sandorf’s daughter, Sarah, was 3 years old, she came home from nursery school and declared: “Mommy, I don’t want to be a Jewish, I want to be a Christian.” These words sent Sandorf, an assimilated Jew with almost no grounding in her own religion, running, aghast, to the first place she could think […]

By the standards of episcopal Church meetings, it was a thrilling and entirely unexpected outcome. When the governing body of the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion met in June to elect a new presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, wasn’t high on anybody’s shortlist. There were some moderates, and a conservative or two; […]

Let’s get right to the point, shall we? About halfway through Mel Gibson’s movie “Apocalypto,” which opens this week, viewers are treated to a stomach-turning scene of human sacrifice, set in a Mayan city around 1500. It’s not revealing too much to say that the movie’s hero is captured by a gang of marauders, bound, […]

Let’s get right to the point, shall we? About halfway through Mel Gibson’s movie “Apocalypto,” which opens this week, viewers are treated to a stomach-turning scene of human sacrifice, set in a Mayan city around 1500. It’s not revealing too much to say that the movie’s hero is captured by a gang of marauders, bound, […]

Noah’s Ark is the perfect children’s tale. You have animals, a big boat, bad weather, a happy ending (good luck, though, answering the question: why did God kill all those people?). It’s not difficult to find a charming, well-written, nicely illustrated Noah’s-ark book for children; even Lucy Cousins, the brains behind Maisy the mouse, has […]

he biggest surprise to come out of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ conference in Baltimore was not the bishops’ statements on birth control (against it) or homosexuality (sympathetic, but against it). The biggest surprise last week was a dry, 36-page document, titled “Strategic Plan,” which the bishops approved and which amounts to the biggest overhaul of […]