From Our Archives

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq on March 20, 2003, Americans have encountered Shiite Islam in the media more frequently than at any time since the taking of the hostages in Tehran, when the American Embassy in Iran was occupied on Nov. 4, 1979, and Americans were held hostage for 444 days. As

Since the terrorist mass-murder attacks of 9/11, we have seen a growing debate over the use of torture. The famous civil liberties and defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, in Why Terrorism Works, wrote a full chapter to justify the use of an authorized torture warrant under highly controlled conditions

While there are many reasons to worry about what the future may bringwith global warming, oil depletion and international terrorism high on the listit is imaginable, at least for optimists, that these challenges can be dealt with in some fashion or other. One problem, however, should invite no easy,

In the summer of 2004, when more than 60 victims of human trafficking were found in Long Island, local residents were shocked. Human trafficking had been going on in their backyards for two years, and they had not known it. Churches opened their doors; the local bishop provided temporary shelter in

It was good to learn of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Administration (America, 9/26), and its members’ efforts to improve the stewardship of the church. As a city pastor, I see five difficulties in putting the excellent recommendations of the roundtable’s final report into

Some artists whom you think you know well, like some old friends, can surprise you entirely. Perhaps experience has prepared you to share their vision. Or the times have taken a turn that gives the art new urgency. New scholarship uncovers influences and contexts. Radiography and restoration can tel

Placide Tapsoba, a 53-year-old physician, was born at home in the village of Satte outside of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, the landlocked West African country that until 1960 was the French protectorate of Upper Volta. He received his medical education at the University of Padua in Ital

On the bright morning of April 24, in a packed St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI solemnly inaugurated his ministry as universal shepherd in a ceremony filled with symbolic gestures. For hundreds of years, the centerpiece of papal installations had been a coronation, in which the pope was c

Last summer I attended a conference at which a rather distinguished panel of White House correspondents discussedattempted to defend is actually a more accurate descriptionthe coverage by the U.S. media of the Bush administration’s build-up, invasion and continued U.S. military occupation of I