The black theologian James H. Cone ripped me open and laid me bare, not with a knife but with his book, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree." And what he exposed was my own personal story of faith connecting -- or failing to connect -- to the issue of race.

What is at stake in constantly requiring that God's name is invoked throughout this political ceremony inaugurating the leader of all Americans?

While secularists may disagree with his extremely public exhibitions of faith, there presently doesn't seem to be much to complain about and a good deal to laud.

Believe it or not, this is a more complicated question than one might imagine. The United States has always been home to a multitude of faith traditions and, indeed, was imagined from the beginning to be a religious haven.

As a Christian who does his best to take reason as seriously as I take faith, I find it impossible to understand America as a "Christian nation" -- and I believe that there are vibrant possibilities in the fact that it is not.

If sitting down and rationally and peacefully talking among people of different religions is unworkable, perhaps creating interfaith families would be a way to bring disparate people together.

American evangelicals, Fox News, and now the Republican Party take their intellectual cues from a roster of remarkably similar populists who head media empires.

There is a long history to the idea that the United States is a Christian nation. The idea has come and gone with the prevailing politics.

Absolute certainty can lead to behaviors that are absolutely wrong. Prior to his conversion the apostle Paul was absolutely certain he was right to persecute Christians.

The Christian Right has claimed from its inception that others -- liberals, secularists and humanists -- were eroding the values of the nation that they sought to affirm and protect. In that claim we find the seeds of the current American crisis.

Rather than being engaged in a divisive cultural war in the hopes of turning back time, Young Christians are engaged in pressing social concerns that benefit the common good -- not just the Christian good.

What ails me to the bone and marrow is that most of my fellow citizens would wear a Jesus cross proudly beneath their flag lapel pin. They boisterously call for our return to being a "Christian nation."

By A. James Rudin Religion News Service (RNS) The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is credited with saying that "everyone is entitled to their own o...

Out of the Ten Commandments, most are not enforced, and several fly directly into the face of our national spirit, so be glad that we live in the country that we do, not the country that Palin imagines or wishes that we had.

Mr. Beck, I would never call a quote from George Washington ridiculous, but I will call the one on that t-shirt what it is -- a fake! Even your new pal David Barton tells his followers not to use this quote.

Why is it necessary for a president not only to have to "prove" his religious beliefs but have them at all? Does being a "believer" make a president that much more likely to be a good leader?