From Our Archives

"Señor, me has mirado a los ojos; sonriendo, has dicho mi nombre. (Lord, you have looked into my eyes; smiling, you have called my name.) So goes the refrain of one of the best known Latin American hymns, which poignantly expresses the core Christian belief: God loved us first. When you looked

More than 15 years ago I received a telephone call from a young rabbinic colleague who clearly found herself in a situation of great discomfiture. At the time, I held a position for the Reform Jewish movement not unlike the position I hold today at the Anti-Defamation League, directing interfaith re

Scientists became excited not long ago when new observations suggested that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It had been thought that expansion should be slowing. The new findings give additional support to the theory of the physicist Alan Guth that the universe immediately after its b

Gambling often produces sore losers. This past November, in the town of Sangla Hill in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, it served as the trigger for something worse: religious riots and violence against members of Pakistan’s minority Christian population. Yousuf Masih, a 40-year-old Christian

A Muslim youth in the garb of a suicide bomber protests the Muhammad cartoons outside Denmark’s embassy in London. The chilling image appears in the next day’s newspapers. The same young man then apologizes on television for offending the families of the July 7 bombing victims with his w

Helping professionals, like social workers, psychologists, marriage and family counselors, have discipline-specific codes of conduct that offer guidance about confidentiality, conflicts of interest and boundary violations (e.g., dual relationships, sexual misconduct with clients, and the like). Thei

I stepped out of my small room at the Maryknoll Center House in Tokyo and turned to walk down the hall. In the dim light I could make out three figures kneeling on the floor just before the entrance to the stairwell, eyes closed:two Filipino women and one Filipino man, deep in prayer. The next morni

Forty-some years ago, at the baptism of our fourth infant son, I murmured a half-serious doubt to a fellow graduate student, Should the church really be baptizing babies without their awareness? One month later this question came back with a vengeance, when on my 28th birthday I discovered our baby

When Pope Benedict XVI was elected, and celebrated his inaugural Mass last year, I was in India. Later I visited Thailand and Laos. In all three countries the events in Rome were well covered in the local mediaperhaps less thoroughly in Laosthough only about 1 percent of the populations of these cou