"We do this not to create Catholics, but because we are Catholic. It's the social justice teachings of the church that drive us," says WJA director of counseling services Ann Clark. The tuition-free middle school explicitly addresses the spiritual and moral development of its students.

The New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care is training chaplains, caregivers, and health care professionals in how to listen to patients and lighten the burden of their suffering.

The Republican Party made significant gains with Catholic voters as well as white Protestants. Did the Democrats give up on religious outreach?

Arizona gives tax credits to people who donate money to school tuition organizations that provide student scholarships. A group of taxpayers claims most of the money goes to religious education.

President Barack Obama hosted a White House meeting with about 20 US Christian leaders affiliated with the National Council of Churches and its global humanitarian agency, Church World Service. According to the leaders, the meeting was not political, but rather a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the modern ecumenical movement. Still, participants acknowledged that politics did come up.

Gay marriage is not a campaign issue in Minnesota this season, and it's not on the ballot. But the Catholic archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis sent a message opposing gay marriage to every Catholic family in the state.

Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats, describes Democratic religious outreach this year as "a work in progress."

Watch more of our interview with David Gibson.

Democrats and Faith Voters; Minnesota Bishops on Gay Marriage

The California Council of Churches supports Proposition 19 to legalize marijuana, but there are some religious leaders who do not.

The Catholic Church once excommunicated her for uncovering a case of priestly sex abuse, but now she has been canonized in Rome and celebrated "down under."

Benedict has increased the number of Italians and Vatican bureaucrats in the College of Cardinals, observes Thomas Reese, SJ, a senior fellow at Georgetown Univeristy's Woodstock Theological Center.

A new book chronicles the people and places across Africa and Asia where Islam and Christianity meet and often clash.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a prosperity gospel, according to megachurch leader David Platt. It is "a homeless and wounded gospel" about "adversity, persecution, struggles, poverty, and helping one another out."

Watch extended excerpts from Kim Lawton's interview with Eliza Griswold, author of "The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam."

There is debate and discussion going on within religious communities about rhetoric, teachings, tolerance and anti-gay sentiments in society.

"There is some new energy for religious conservatives that's growing out of the Tea Party," says George Mason University political scientist Mark Rozell, who calls the relationship between the two groups "mutually reinforcing, even though they are not necessarily all the same people."

Should hateful and offensive speech that is religiously motivated be accepted as legitimate public discourse protected by the Constitution?

Two religious conservatives offer their views on political involvement, Glenn Beck, evangelical Christianity, and more. Watch Kim Lawton's conversations with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Rev. Russell Moore, dean of the Southern Baptist Theologicay Seminary.

Gidon Bromberg of Friends of the Earth Middle East says the Jordan River, holy to half of humanity, has become a mixture of sewage water and agricultural runoff unsafe for the pilgrims who come to be baptized in it.