New government reports show that hunger is on the rise in the US. Forty-nine million Americans struggled to put food on the table this past year—that's an increase of 13 million—and a record number of Americans, 36 million, now receive food stamp assistance.

As the president and Congress wrestle with health care reform, their debate has centered on how to provide health insurance for everyone and how to pay for that. But the president and many others also say the increasing costs of care must come down. Lucky Severson examines why health care costs are so high in one city--Miami, Florida.

As the hajj comes to an end, Muslims distribute meat to the poor and recall Abraham's willingness to offer his son to God.

Many consider Flannery O'Connor one of America's greatest writers, and some say she is America's only great Christian writer.

The most recent statistics are sobering. Three percent of DC residents have HIV or AIDS, triple the number that is generally considered a "severe" epidemic. But among African-Americans residents, the overall rate is above four percent, which is higher even than parts of West Africa. And among the District's black men the infection rate is even more alarming, almost seven percent.

In his book "Gray Land: Soldiers on War," portrait and documentary photographer Barry Goldstein writes that "even at its best, day-to-day life in a combat zone has a corrosive effect on mind, body, and spirit."

There is increasing scrutiny on Muslims in the US military after the tragedy at Fort Hood, even while the Muslim community strongly condemns the shootings. We ask Imam Yahya Hendi about his reaction to the tragedy.

Downtown Salt Lake City is about to be transformed by a massive development project with costs expected to top $1.5 billion. But this is not stimulus money, or even one cent of local taxpayers' money. This project, known as City Creek Center, is funded entirely by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their development partners.

Hastings Center bioethicist and philosopher Daniel Callahan says the common good as a moral value should be the foundation for American health care reform, but it has been largely absent from the current public debate.

Christian Fuhrer became pastor of St. Nikolai Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1980 when Germany was still divided by the Cold War and the Berlin Wall. In the weeks before the wall fell, demonstrators would gather at the church before marching through the city. "In church, people had learned to turn fear into courage, to overcome the fear and to hope, to have strength," Rev. Fuhrer says.

There will always be a purpose to monastic life, say the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, as long as there is a need in the world for silence, prayer, simplicity, and balance.

Another gay rights issue that has divided people of faith is hate crime legislation. President Obama signed an expansion of the hate crime law that makes it a federal offense to attack people because of their sexual orientation. Some faith leaders welcomed the hate crime expansion, but others fear it would inhibit religious speech.

Doctors who pray with patients and family members "puts a sense of comfort in you," says Chris Barkley. "Normally, doctors don't do that, and it makes people feel closer to the doctor. You want them to care just as much as you do."

Watch National Catholic Reporter senior correspondent John L. Allen Jr. and Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton discuss the Roman Catholic Church's plan to absorb unhappy Anglicans wishing to become Catholics.

A partnership between the city of Portland, Oregon and evangelical churches has led to thousands of volunteers completing hundreds of community service projects focused on schools, hunger, homelessness, health, poverty, and the environment.

Watch more of Kim Lawton's interviews with Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, and Rev. Debra Haffner, executive director of the Religious Institute.