The Supreme Court ruled that baker Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, could refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs.
AP/David Zalubowski)
There’s been a reversal of power between religious and secular sides of American culture. The Supreme Court is now at the center of that shift.
Young environmentalists are putting the ethical dimensions of climate change at the center of a global debate that has historically focused on politics, efficiency and cost-benefits analysis.
AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Economic and political assessments of climate change have for years helped justify inaction. Now, young environmentalists worldwide are shifting the debate to focus on values, ethics and justice.
Uighurs wait in line at a face scan checkpoint in Turpan, Xinjiang in northwest China on April 11, 2018.
Darren Byler
An anthropologist who interviewed Uighurs in China found different ways in which Chinese authorities used checkpoints, social media and smartphones to identify, categorize and control this group.
Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar, India, where hundreds were killed on April 13, 1919, under British colonial rule.
AP Photo/Prabhjot Gill
Sikh gurus adopted the turban, in part, to remind Sikhs that all humans are sovereign, royal and ultimately equal. But their attire can also lead to misunderstandings and at times, hate crimes.
Echo chambers are resistant to voices from outside.
Beth Kuchera/Shutterstock
Rush Limbaugh is said to have presented the world as a simple binary – as a struggle only between good and evil. That worked, as a philosopher explains, because many people live in echo chambers.
Pope Francis at the Monument Mary Queen of Peace, in Port Louis, Mauritius on Sept. 9, 2019.
AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino
Pope Francis recently completed a tour of three African nations. His visit needs to be understood in the context of the church’s long history in Africa and its modern-day difficulties.
For International Day of Charity on Sept. 5, a history of how the Christian Herald mobilized Americans in the late 19th century to give millions for the relief of global suffering.
Abortion rights supporters in Missouri take part in a protest, after state lawmakers passed rules aimed at closing Missouri’s only abortion clinic, May 30, 2019.
AP Photo/Jeff Roberson
Young, poor, single and a mother of two: This is the profile of most women in the US and Northern Ireland who seek financial assistance to help pay for an abortion.
Taking a whiff of the marijuana flower.
AP Photo/Richard Vogel
A business ethicist explores whether cannabis stocks fit in with a socially responsible approach to investing.
Red Cross forensic specialist Stephen Fonseca, right, searches for bodies in a field of ruined maize in Magaru, Mozambique, after Cyclone Idai, April 4, 2019.
AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
Meet the unsung aid workers who put their lives on the line during war and natural disaster to make sure the dead are treated with respect – and that their grieving families get closure.
President Trump recently pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block the entry of two congresswomen to Israel.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File
President Trump has said American Jews loyal to Israel should support the Republican Party. A scholar explains the historical tensions embedded in the anti-Semitic trope.
The Pennsylvania grand jury report may have played a role in helping survivors come to grips with their past.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Last year, Pennsylvania’s grand jury report uncovered sexual abuse allegations by over 300 priests. A scholar explains how the report may have helped survivors come to terms with a painful past.
Voodoo believers walk during the annual Voodoo festival Fete Gede at Cite Soleil Cemetery in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery
Voodoo is often seen as a practice involving magic. In Haiti, Voodoo is a religion born out of the struggle of slaves. And today, it is used as a form of healing and protection.
Mohammed Morsi, a member of the controversial Islamist political organization the Muslim Brotherhood, was Egypt’s first democratically elected president. He was overthrown in a coup in 2013 and died on trial this June.
Reuters/Amr Dalsh
A few years ago, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s Gulenists were running the show. Now both religious movements face political repression. How did they fall so far, so fast?
Citing scripture and church teachings, ever more Christians are pushing progressive policy positions based in their faith.
Shutterstock
The religious right may have dominated US politics for decades, but progressive Christians are growing louder in their faith-based opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Kashmiri Muslims shout slogans during a protest after Eid prayers in Srinagar.
AP Photo/ Dar Yasin
India recently revoked a special provision that ended the autonomy of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Here’s the history of the constitutional provision, Article 370.
Dalia Yashar, one of the first Saudi female students in training to become commercial pilot, pictured on July 15, 2018. Her future passengers will include solo women travelers, too.
Reuters/Hamad I Mohammed
Saudi women may now travel without a man’s permission, easing one of the most repressive aspects of the country’s ‘guardianship’ system. Women in Saudi Arabia gained the right to drive last year.
Evidence suggests that Muslim men in France have been disproportionately arrested and jailed for cannabis-related crimes since the drug became illegal in 1970.
Francisco Osorio/flickr
Muslims make up 9% of France’s population and half of all its prisoners – many convicted on drug charges. But social justice isn’t part of the country’s growing debate on legalization.
Like any other travelers, Muslim pilgrims review their hajj trips on sites like TripAdvisor — usually with extreme enthusiasm.
AP Photo/Khalil Hamra
Why do even the rich cheat on their taxes? Roesearch suggests some people may be genetically predisposed to break the rules for their own financial gain.
Slavery is not so far removed. Anderson and Minerva Edwards met in the 1860s as enslaved laborers in Texas, had 16 children and lived into their 90s in a cabin a few miles from the plantations they once worked. They are photographed here in 1937.
U.S. Library of Congress
Old injustices don’t simply disappear with time – they tear a nation apart.
Honduran migrant Vicky Chavez with her daughter Issabella on May 31, 2018 in the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, where she sought protection from deportation in late 2017.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Mario Garcia, University of California, Santa Barbara
The number of migrants living in churches has spiked recently in anticipation of threatened immigration raids, but churches have long protected refugees in an act of faith-based civil disobedience.