The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks after being released from prison for leading a boycott.
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Purple was highly valued and associated with royalty, power, and prestige in various ancient cultures, including the Roman and Byzantine Empires. So how did red creep its way in?
A mosaic of the Resurrection in the Basilica of St. Paul in Harissa, Lebanon.
FredSeiller/Wikimedia Commons
Ideas about resurrection had been developing for centuries before Jesus’ life, but his followers took them in new directions.
A procession at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed by many Christians to be the site of the crucifixion and burial place of Jesus Christ.
AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner
A Christian Palestinian human rights scholar who grew up in Bethlehem writes about the special time of Easter, but also about the restrictions on Palestinian Christians.
Thousands of Catholics travel by foot to Santuario de Chimayo, in northern New Mexico, during an annual Good Friday pilgrimage.
AP Photo/Morgan Lee
Hundreds of thousands of visitors come to the Santuario de Chimayó throughout the year, but the pilgrimage during the week before the celebration of Easter is the high point.
Tributes left at a memorial for Flaco the owl in Central Park in New York.
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
Owls, once seen as harbingers of death, are now celebrated in popular literature and culture in North America and Britain.
Esther denouncing Haman, who, according to the Purim story, attempted to have all Jews within the Persian Empire massacred.
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Whether thousands of years ago or right now, fans have always created new stories based on familiar characters, weaving their own experiences into the tale.
A Catholic schoolroom in the U.S. around 1930.
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The Therigatha, a collection of poems written in Pāli by Buddhist nuns, reveals that women’s enlightenment may not necessarily require renunciation of domestic life.
Israeli police scuffle with ultra-Orthodox Jews as they block a main road in Jerusalem during an October 2017 protest against Israeli army conscription.
AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File
‘Wabi’ and ‘sabi’ are Japanese words with long histories, but they are rarely used together in the way Western designers have come to use the term.
In advocates’ eyes, expanding access to a medically assisted death helps people protect their autonomy at a crucial time.
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Ramadan encourages acts of charity. This also poses a question for many Muslims as they consider what more could be done to feed the hungriest in the world, many of whom are in Gaza.
An embryologist uses a microscope to view an embryo, visible on a monitor.
AP Photo/Richard Drew, File
The first cherry blossom viewing was organized in Japan by Emperor Saga in 812 C.E. In the ensuing years, poetry on cherry blossoms came to have a special place in Japanese culture.
Seeing the light − at the movies.
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Plenty of movies have explicitly religious themes, but some of the most interesting examples of faith or transcendence on screen are much more subtle.
Christian Palestinian tattoo artist Walid Ayash draws a tattoo on the arm of a Coptic Egyptian pilgrim on April 28, 2016, at his studio in Bethlehem.
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Though only a few of Scorsese’s films focus on religious stories, deeper questions about faith, doubt and living in a violent world tend to haunt his movies.