Vivian Maier was so obscure that her first public notice was a death announcement. Now she has the world wondering why she hid hundreds of photographs.
Narendra Modi, often compared to Hitler and Mussolini, is intelligent and politically astute, and appears to be all things to all people, especially Hindu voters.
The court majority failed the empathy test and lost a chance to balance honor of religion's role in public life with the rights of those of all faiths.
Putin’s annexation of Crimea and threat to Ukraine are causing damage he perhaps did not anticipate: disorientation of the United States and division in Europe.
A new pastor walks a fine line between learning about a parish community and making administrative decisions. It takes time and balance and a lot of prayer.
From 2005 to 2010 adult baptisms fell by 41 percent. Those losses were masked by a gain in adult receptions into full communion; then those totals began to fall too.
It's a sign of how politicized the American Catholic Church has become that its different factions were lobbying over the message the bishop of Rome should send.
His choice of the name 'Francis' was a promising sign he would emulate a saint devoted to the poor and to simplicity, and he has only continued from there.
Republicans are eager to blame Russian aggression and Putin’s grab of Crimea on past Obama failures, even as Obama proposes the same Ukraine policies they are.
Social and religious conservatives should have been the first to oppose the effort to allow businesses to discriminate against same-sex couples on religious grounds.
Nurse a baby in church and you risk dirty looks. Of course, letting a hungry infant cry is also risking disapproval. It’s enough to make a new mom want to stay home.
February 11 marked the end of a dismal experiment during which the right wing did all it could to make the United States look like a country incapable of governing.
Our politics are haunted by principles of Austrian economics and their sweeping hostility to any actions by government to keep downturns from becoming catastrophes.
A fear that the United States not only has decisively lost its power in the region, but is also responsible for why everything seems to be going wrong.
There’s nothing easy about watching one’s father drift out of his own life. Alzheimer’s, old age, senility—whatever you call it—is distressing for everyone.
The re-emergence of a Democratic left will be one of the major stories of 2014. Moderates, don’t be alarmed: Its return is good news for the political center.
When even the pope wonders aloud whether it's appropriate for him to judge, you begin to see the difficulty of deciding what "true Christians" ought to believe.
After years of economic travail caused by Wall Street excesses and increasing worry over rising inequality and declining mobility, the culture shows signs of change.
Falling crime rates mean that prison and sentencing reforms are among the few matters on which there is hope for cooperation across partisan and ideological lines.
Is it a coincidence that this year, which marks the fiftieth anniversary of Maurice Sendak’s 'Where the Wild Things Are,' is also the year our firstborn turned two?
It tells us something about America in 2013 that two successful African American men chose independently to underscore the same truth about Trayvon Martin's killing.
An old pastor once told me he would rather preside at a funeral—even the most tragic funeral—than at a wedding, any day of the week. Now I know just what he meant.
It's not an all-or-nothing debate: We can be far more mindful of privacy than we have been without gutting the government's ability to stop future attacks.
You wanted Father Andrew Greeley as your friend and not your enemy. He was ready to do battle at the first signs of disrespect toward those he cared about.
Many religious people feel a need for clarity. They need to have a sense that they are right, or at least on the right path and relatively sure of their direction.
