"Has there ever been any occasion around which more songs have been written" than Christmas, asks singer-songwriter Amy Grant. Managing editor Kim Lawton looks at how music—Christmas carols, hymns, and popular songs—embody the meaning of the Christmas story and play a central role in the celebration of the season.

R&E goes to Berkeley, California to visit Zaytuna College, the first fully accredited Muslim liberal arts college in the US. Students study great ideas from both Western and Islamic civilizations, trying to revive the historic liberal arts tradition within Islam.

When the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary burned to the ground in 2010, the school commissioned a new building with a brand new pipe organ. Watch our Advent interview with the chapel's music director, Rev. William Bradley Roberts, and listen to Christmas sounds from a world-class instrument played by Tom Smith, organist and music director at Christ Church Georgetown in Washington, DC.

Passages in the Talmud direct Jews to “publicize the miracle” of Hanukkah. We visit San Antonio, Texas, where the Jewish community holds an annual “Hanukkah on the River” celebration.

Princeton University ethicist and philosopher Peter Singer, author of "The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas about Living Ethically," explains effective altruism as using means-testing and market research to measure the effectiveness of charities, and then giving money to those organizations that can do the most good.

Many in the faith community are condemning Donald Trump's call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" as discriminatory and a violation of religious liberty. Watch our conversation with National Catholic Reporter senior analyst Father Tom Reese and director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding Dalia Mogahed.

Professor Omid Safi, director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center at Duke University in Durham, NC, says the Paris terror attacks were a “harbinger” of more attacks to come. He urges faith communities to build relationships of trust and begin a global conversation about religion so they can be ready to begin the healing process when the next attack occurs.

As the city of Baltimore continues to heal from the racial violence and turmoil that arose last year, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly visits one church that is drawing young people to its ministry with a boxing gym that teaches discipline, respect, and a sense of pride.

Rev. Troy Lawrence Sr. of Reaping the Harvest, a Full Gospel Baptist Church on Dauphine Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, talks about gun violence last summer at a peace festival sponsored by the city.

An estimated 25 percent of Native Americans are Catholic, but there are also longstanding tensions between the Catholic Church and some indigenous tribes.For some Native Americans, their complicated relationship with the Catholic Church is symbolized in its first Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha.