Christmas is my favorite time of the year, and my boys could tell you how much I always want to get to good carol services. It's the amazing Christmas narratives that I love so much. I am a Christian and what Christmas means to me is this: In Christ, God...

Bryan Stevenson, the nation's premier lawyer on mass incarceration and the death penalty, says slavery never ended. It just evolved.

I just spent two days with 50 other faith leaders at Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., where Bryan emphasized four basic essentials for criminal justice reform...

America stands at one side of a bridge right now as a white majority nation -- on the other side, a country comprising a majority of minorities. This change is inevitable, but how our nation responds to it is currently unclear.

Would-be political leaders like Donald Trump...

Our country is in growing danger, and not just from the real threat of terrorist attacks. We are in jeopardy now from the internal fear that capitalizes on America's worst instincts. Caution can be a positive thing in response to serious dangers, but panic and fear can be very dangerous...

On Dec. 2, two people armed in military-style gear shot and killed 14 people and injured 17 others at a holiday party in California. You've no doubt been watching the headlines and reading about people's "thoughts and prayers," but what is stunning is that it wasn't even the...

If we count up the number of people killed or wounded in the ISIS Paris slaughter last weekend, and add all their families and friends, the level of human mourning is staggering. Then include the many other victims murdered in Beirut just days before, or the legions of those raped...

We have witnessed a remarkable series of events on the Columbia, Mo., campus of the University of Missouri this week. The university president and the chancellor of the Columbia campus resigned Nov. 9 in response to protests claiming that university leadership had failed to appropriately address and respond to a...

On their first day in office, newly elected members of the U.S. House of Representatives take an oath on the House floor -- to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States."

But before his election as Speaker of the House, Rep. Paul Ryan took another oath -- this...

The potential of an assembly like the Parliament of the World's Religions -- where I spoke last week in Salt Lake City, Utah -- is its ability not just to celebrate religious diversity, but also to provide the opportunity to get to the heart of urgent matters that...

In case you missed it, a strong and militant group of Republican members of Congress have pushed out their caucus leaders, paralyzed the House of Representatives, and can't seem to find anyone who is as right-wing as they are to be the next Speaker.

These guys -- and they are...

There is nothing we can do to reduce the growing number of mass shootings in America -- except get more people to have guns. Unbelievably, that's what conservative spokespersons and Republican presidential candidates are saying after the latest college massacre in Oregon which killed 10 and wounded 7 others.

Unacceptable.

The first thing the new Pope Francis said to the world in St. Peter's Square when he accepted the papacy was "I am a sinner." In a final mass of one million people in Philadelphia, the last words Francis spoke to the American people were, "Please pray for me; don't...

Stunning is the word that most comes to me after Pope Francis' two-day visit to Washington, D.C. The country and the media was reveling in his presence, using language like "amazing," "incredible," and "wonderful" in response to this extraordinary moral leader who literally transformed our public discourse in the 48...

Next week, the conversation will change in America. All the media attention recently given to political figures will now shift to a moral leader who is changing the global public discussion about what is compassionate, just, good, and right -- and Christian.

This is a fundamental spiritual shift that we...

Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in March 2011, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict between the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, equally brutal jihadist groups such as ISIS, and other rebel groups opposed to Assad's rule. As is all too...

Here are the politics of the Iran nuclear deal: Congress returns next week from its summer recess, and among the first orders of business will be taking up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran's nuclear program, recently negotiated with Iran in Vienna by the five permanent members of...

"This president's foreign policy is the most feckless in American history. It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven." -- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"The Obama administration will become the...

We have a deal. And many of us in the faith community are relieved.

After months of negotiations, missing deadlines, and many stressful final days in Vienna, Iran has agreed to halt its nuclear weapons program for a decade or more, and allow credible international agencies to significantly monitor its...

Donald Trump is a real estate mogul for whom the word "egomaniac" is an understatement. But when America's narcissist in chief says he also wants to become commander in chief, the country pays attention. And that's what Trump wanted to have happen. Here is what Trump said in...

Week after week, we can take on the biggest issues we face as a society -- from continuing racism, mass incarceration, inequality and poverty to gender violence and human trafficking, climate change, ISIS -- and just try to be hopeful.

Or we can start by going deeper, to a more...