The installation of former Ambassador Andrew Young as the new president of the Protestant-based National Council of Churches was among the highlights of the NCC’s 50th anniversary celebration, but the organization faces financial problems and lack of a clear mission.

These ancient constructs have some very modern advocates, and they're not just religious. Secular institutions have also discovered labyrinths as a meditation tool.

"Mary, Mother of Jesus," a movie airing on NBC, puts a distinctly feminist face on an extraordinary woman largely neglected in the Bible.

To keep up with the skyrocketing demand for life-saving organ donations, Pennsylvania officials are trying an innovative and controversial program to offer financial incentives to organ donors. But it has already raised several ethical concerns about what could happen once money is attached to something that's always been an altruistic act.

American pop culture is rediscovering gargoyles, both their whimsical and their menacing sides. There are several new books out about gargoyles, from children's books to architectural studies to gift books. There are dozens of Web sites about gargoyles, from the scholarly to the offbeat. And gargoyles are rivaling angels as a hot collectible.

As he has since he was 18, Former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school most Sundays at his little Baptist church in Georgia. However, Mr. Carter's primary vocation is trying to prevent conflicts, promote democracy, and fight hunger and disease in the poorest parts of the world.

As the Greek Orthodox enthroned a new archbishop, we looked at the practice of praying with icons. Whether singing or speaking their prayers, whether at home or in church, Orthodox Christians from all ethnic backgrounds use icons in their prayers. We talked to Frederica Mathewes-Green, a convert to Orthodoxy and author of several books about the faith.

With modern neonatal technology and under federal law, doctors can keep alive tiny premature babies, even if the babies' parents want to let them die. But often those babies survive to grow up significantly damaged and in pain. Should they be kept alive? Who should decide?

Many individuals are hoping to make places of worship more accessible to persons with disabilities. The issue goes beyond just being able to get up the steps or hear the sermon; it's about changing attitudes toward the disabled. There is a large pool of disabled worshippers who want to be more than witnesses, who want to participate in or even lead religious services.

Hillary Rodham Clinton stated that, “In Christian theology, there are sins of weakness and sins of malice,” adding that her husband’s adultery was a sin of weakness. Is there a hierarchy of sin? Are we using the insights of modern psychotherapy to excuse bad behavior instead of merely explain it?

Many second generation American Hindus are fascinated by the religion’s philosophy, but rarely go to the temple or practice rituals, and often don’t understand them. There is a danger that the beliefs the rituals embody are at risk.

Three years after the most radical overhaul of the nation’s welfare system ever, the number of people on welfare has been cut in half. Today, 7.3 million Americans remain on welfare, down from more than 14 million when President Clinton took office. But it has not changed other factors that effectively keep people in poverty.

In Washington and in cities across the U.S., followers of the Falun Gong meditation movement are turning out to express solidarity with besieged practitioners in China. Thousands have been detained since China’s Communist government began last week’s crackdown. This week, Falun Gong literature was confiscated and very publicly destroyed.

In Baltimore, Maryland, Tamir Goodman is both an Orthodox Jew and a star basketball player. At 17, in his junior year in high school this past season, he averaged 35 points a game and was offered an athletic scholarship next year by the basketball powerhouse University of Maryland.

Ever since the Immigration Act of 1965 opened up this country to more and more non-Europeans, the U.S. has become a place of ever-greater religious diversity. Alongside Christians and Jews in all their variety, there are now Muslims and Buddhists and Sikhs and Hindus, a million Hindus in all, struggling, as have all other newcomers, to establish their faith and traditions in this country.

Following the Columbine High shootings, the film industry wrestled with whether the violence it presents on the screen encourages violent behavior in real life. Father Ellwood Kieser does think Hollywood bears some responsibility for society's violence. His calling, he says, is nothing less than to persuade America's entertainment industry to celebrate human values as well as money.

As death approaches, hospice care can impose a heavy burden, with great responsibilities on families. Palliative care is a method of treatment for terminally ill patients and their families that provides them with hospice-like care in a hospital.

Part two of our series on the Tibetan Buddhists in exile in India. They’re refugees not only from Chinese oppression in Tibet but also from what the Dalai Lama calls “cultural genocide.” How can the Tibetan refugees preserve the prayer wheels and mandalas of their culture and pass on those traditions to a new generation increasingly influenced by the West?

Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, U.S.-Sino relations are again at a low point, sparked by the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and charges that China stole nuclear secrets. Some activists are concerned the tense political situation will pose increased difficulties for advocacy and human rights, such as religious freedom.

Our special report on the life, the plight, and the humor of the Dalai Lama. Forced out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, living in exile with little apparent chance of returning, the Dalai Lama remains one of the world's foremost symbols of hope and nonviolence. How does he keep from hating those who are destroying his country?