Activists with Jewish Voice for Peace gather to protest the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and chain themselves to the fence outside the White House on Dec. 11, 2023.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Jewish activists have been central to protests against how Israel is conducting the war with Hamas, and not just on campuses – the movement goes back decades.
An indoor Mary garden at the University of Dayton.
The Marian Library, University of Dayton
In the 20th century, an engineer from Philadelphia encouraged others to create their own Mary gardens and established a company that sold seeds with Marian plant names.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is popular but divisive.
Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images
The Indian prime minister made reference to communities that have “too many children” in a veiled reference to Muslims.
Books whose ideas ran afoul of official church doctrine were sometimes cast into the flames – and literature with queer themes was no stranger to scrutiny.
Pedro Berruguete/Museo del Prado/Wikimedia Commons
This month marks Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, as well as Jewish American Heritage Month.
A march for climate action in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican in June 2015. Pope Francis praised the participants, who included Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus.
AP Photo/Andrew Medichini
Pope Francis and other Catholic leaders committed to raising awareness of environmental issues draw on centuries of tradition.
Moral injury can occur when someone must act against their values – but also when they cannot act in line with their values.
Fly View Productions/E+ via Getty Images
Medical workers navigate their own moral and religious beliefs, professional standards, the law and the realities of clinical work – which can be especially complicated in abortion care.
Rites of passage, such as graduation ceremonies, celebrate the transition to a new state.
JC Olivera/Getty Images
Rites of passage are important. They do not merely celebrate the transition to a new state – they actively create this new state in the eyes of society, an anthropologist writes.
A majority of Americans believe that hell exists.
Hayden Schiff from Cincinnati, USA via Wikimedia Commons.
Spiritualists believed that after shedding the body in death, the spirit would continue on a celestial journey and help those on Earth create a more just world.
‘Christ of the New Jerusalem’ − created in 1915 for the Uranienborg Church, Oslo, by Emanuel Vigeland.
Michel M. Raguin
Images of Christ often represented prevailing cultural beliefs, allowing onlookers to connect in a deep and meaningful way.
Fewer people are affiliated with religion in the United States, but that hardly means that they’re all atheists.
Anthony Bradshaw/Photographer's Choice RF via Getty Images
Events that the media describe as ‘apocalyptic’ reflect changing anxieties about the future.
Stained glass designed by Geoffrey Webb depicts Lewis Carroll’s characters in All Saints Church in Daresbury, Cheshire, England.
Peter I. Vardy/Wikimedia Commons
The Book of Job and ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ both make fun of preachy know-it-alls and resist conventions of their genres.
The Maya used mirrors as channels for supernatural communication. In this image, a supernatural creature speaks into a cracked, black mirror.
K2929 from the Justin Kerr Maya archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
Tina Chronopoulos, Binghamton University, State University of New York
In ancient Rome, male followers of the goddess Cybele, known as Galli, some of whom surgically removed their testicles, were often considered feminine.
The Passover Seder – like this one in Azerbaijan – commemorates the story of the Israelites’ escape from slavery, and the start of their long sojourn in the desert.
Reza/Getty Images
Nancy E. Berg, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
The Passover Seder commemorates the escape from slavery in Egypt. But then came the 40-year wandering in the desert – a story that resonates with much of Jewish history.
Members of the Church of England’s Synod, at Church House in central London, on Feb. 9, 2023.
James Manning/PA Images via Getty Images
A scholar highlights some of the most interesting versions of the Passover text and how they’ve met communities’ changing needs around the world.
Al-Ghazali’s book ‘Alchemy of Happiness,’ held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Al-Ghazali - Bibliothèque nationale de France via Wikimedia Commons
In religious traditions, patience is more than waiting, or even more than enduring a hardship. But what does patience look like? And when should we not exercise patience?