What is the morality of U.S. policy when it comes to balancing national security with individual civil liberties Watch our conversation with Michael Kessler of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs about perspectives of religious and ethical traditions on the government’s massive collection of electronic data and its vast surveillance effort.

This Southern Baptist leader says he will approach public debates and disagreements with a sense of kindness and empathy for one’s neighbor.

Watch more of our interview with Russell Moore, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Dogs, says Tim Hetzner of Lutheran Church Charities, are “a very gifted part of God’s creation.” In disaster situations they sense when someone is hurting, and together with their handlers they minister compassionately to the needs of victims.

Watch more of our interview with the Grammy-award winning artist about his faith and his music.

This Grammy-Award-winning artist’s new album, "spirityouall," includes his interpretations of classic African-American spirituals as well as songs he composed. Through all of them he hears the influence of his father, Robert McFerrin, Sr., who was an operatic baritone.

Economic prosperity and modernity are beginning to have an impact on religious life in Thailand, a country that is 95 percent Buddhist but that in the last 30 years has seen the number of Buddhist monks decrease by about half.

Watch Bobby McFerrin's recent performance of "Fix Me Jesus" in the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis.

“If you’re training gay scouts to be, presumably, gay leaders, but then you don’t want gay leaders in the scouts, that’s an odd message to send,” says United Methodist pastor Charles Parker, a former scout. But opponents of the proposal to accept gay scouts say it flies in the face of a basic scouting tenet: the oath boys take to be “morally straight.”

City governments and programs that help the poor will bear the brunt of the federal budget cuts imposed by sequestration. "Every time we talk about a cut you’re talking about many people who don’t have an expensive lobby in Washington, DC. It’s an economic justice issue, a social justice issue," says Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rollins Blake.

This former White House press secretary wants to change our bitter political climate and restore “real relationships of trust.” After graduating from Wesley Theological Seminary, McCurry, a United Methodist, says he "felt some sense of call, that God was putting on me a challenge to see if I could do something about this broken world of politics that I've worked in for so long."

Watch more of our conversation with recent Wesley Theological Seminary graduate Mike McCurry about how religion can promote more civil political discourse in Washington.

"These are safe men. Not only will they not create conflict and violence in your community, they can help resolve it," says Jacques Verduin. His program in San Quentin prison is helping inmates deal with the emotional pain at the root of their criminal behavior.

Watch more of our interview with sociology professor Samuel Heilman about the difficulties of leaving the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

A support group called Footsteps is providing counsel to those who have chosen to leave the confines of the ultra-Orthodox world in which they were raised.

When former Microsoft executive John Wood discovered the world’s need for books, he was trekking in Nepal and recalling what he had read in the Dalai Lama’s book “The Art of Happiness” about the importance of giving something to someone in need.

"What we can do, number one, is to ensure that there’s a counter narrative, that there’s a narrative of life, of positivity," says Haris Tarin, director the Washington office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

"Just like we help the veterans who come home from the wars, and they have a lot of challenges, so also we have a responsibility and a need to help these folks as well," says Mike McKay, director of refugee services for Catholic Charities in San Diego.

Orthodox Christians mark the final days of Great Lent, a time of repentance, fasting, and prayer in preparation for Orthodox Easter, or Pascha. Iconographer Seraphim O’Keefe talks about how icons play a role similar to fasting in the Orthodox tradition. The interview was filmed at Holy Cross Orthodox Antiochian Orthodox Church in Linthicum, Maryland, where O’Keefe has covered the walls with icons.

In May 1963, hundreds of children—some as young as six years old—faced police dogs, fire hoses and arrest, to march against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. Managing editor Kim Lawton looks at the march's legacy and interviews some of those who marched as children, including University of Maryland, Baltimore County President Freeman Hrabowski.