The U.S. is one of the most religiously diverse nations in history, and many experts believe it is important that children learn about world religions, even at an early age. But there are not many public forums where they can learn about faith traditions other than their own.

Correspondent Deborah Potter reports on the BDS (boycotts, divestment and, sanctions) movement, intended to pressure Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, and the support it is receiving from some US churches. Last year, the United Church of Christ became the largest Protestant denomination to divest its pension funds from companies doing business in Israeli occupied territories.

This week (February 12) brought an historic moment in the more than one-thousand-year-old divide between Eastern and Western Christianity. On his way to Mexico for a five-day visit, Pope Francis stopped in Cuba, where he met with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. It was the first official meeting between a pope and a Russian Orthodox patriarch since the Great Schism.

Farming is often about homecoming, explains Mary Berry, executive director of the Berry Center. “It doesn’t mean [farmers] have to go to the place they were born,” she says. “The concept of homecoming is simply to take root some place and care about a place, not just for a short amount of time, but forever.”

Hamtramck, Michigan was once the home of Polish Catholics and an auto manufacturing plant that employed 45,000 workers. Today it is a much smaller community, more than half of which is Muslim, and it is the only American town with a Muslim-majority city council. Lucky Severson reports from Hamtramck on how dramatically it has changed.

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly host Bob Abernethy and managing editor Kim Lawton interview Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, about his new book, “America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America” and his challenge to white churches to become multiracial communities of faith.

“American exceptionalism, which I’ve been critical of for years, could be made true if we become a majority of minorities who learn to live together justly, and fairly, and respectfully,” says author and activist Jim Wallis.

Are private yeshivas run by Hasidic Jewish sects providing students with an education equal to that of public schools? New York filmmaker Menachem Daum reports on accusations that ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools are failing to teach secular subjects that would help prepare students for jobs.

Two young women, one Buddhist and one Muslim, help to foster religious tolerance and greater understanding by supporting an annual event on February 1 when non-Muslim women are invited to “experience the hijab” for one day.

Watch two more women, one a Muslim and one a non-Muslim, participate in World Hijab Day, and see what their experiences are like. Say Muslim Yasmine Ison: “Wearing the hijab [gives] me this whole other freedom that I never had. I started to notice this control I had of myself.”

Are social media changing the way we mourn and grieve? As Lucky Severson reports, millions now turn to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to participate digitally in group grieving—especially in the aftermath of events such as recent terrorist attacks, gun violence, and natural disasters; to console and comfort, share sympathies, and memorialize death.

Correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro travels to Delhi to report on recent spasms of religious violence triggered by a controversy over the consumption of beef by Muslims and the sacredness of the cow to Hindus.

Many hospital patients who don't express their end-of-life wishes receive aggressive treatments that even their doctors say they wouldn't want for themselves. According to Dr. Phil Pizzo, dean emeritus of Stanford University School of Medicine, 80 to 95 percent of doctors say “they want to die outside the hospital. They want to die at home. They want to have their family around them."

As the nation observes the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, correspondent Kim Lawton catches up with the Grammy-nominated a capella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, which has been singing about racial inequality, social justice, and inspiring spiritual themes for more than 40 years. The women discuss the group’s music video tribute to King, “Give Love,” and the principles taught by King.

A range of religious groups were among those supporting President Obama’s announcement this week of new measures to curb gun violence. Managing editor Kim Lawton and guest host Hari Sreenivasan discuss the significance of this issue for people of many faiths.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) is a coalition of long-term stockholders who have used their influence as investors for decades, pressing major corporations to divest from apartheid South Africa, end human trafficking, abolish modern slavery, and support human rights, among other social justice issues.

According to a recent Gallup poll, more than two-thirds of Americans say doctors should be allowed to aid the terminally ill in ending their lives. Correspondent Deborah Potter reports on growing support for physician-assisted suicide and talks to both supporters and opponents.

As the New Year begins, three journalists discuss the top religion stories they will be keeping an eye on in 2016 with guest host and correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro, who is joined by managing editor Kim Lawton, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, and Jerome Socolovsky, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service.

In our final show before the New Year, we review the top religion and ethics stories of 2015. Host Fred de Sam Lazaro is joined by R&E managing editor Kim Lawton, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, and Jerome Socolovsky, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service.

Churches across the country have been taking part in a special project for the charity Stop Hunger Now by sending non-perishable meals to children in poverty-stricken areas of the world. We visited Grace Community Church in Arlington, Virginia, where senior pastor John Slye said of those who were packing the meals, “Instead of hearing a sermon, they come here and be the sermon.”