Two votes at this year’s Presbyterian Church USA General Assembly show the favorite mantra of liberal Protestants—”speak truth to power”—is still at work. But who exactly is the power and what is the truth being spoken here?

While it would be wrong to think that the conflict in the Middle East is only about religion, it would be even more wrong to downplay just how much of the conflict actually is just about religion.

The great religious traditions of west Asia, on the one hand, and south and east Asia, on the other, approach the mysteries of the cosmos and human history from very different starting points.

It appears to be. And its hostility is only likely to increase as the regime turns to forces such as nationalism to legitimate itself in the face of an inevitable slowdown in China’s rate of growth.

It is very doubtful whether there are any “laws of history”. However, there are certain recurring sequences of events that make one suspect that similar circumstances are likely to have similar consequences. One such sequence is that movements of liberation result in repressive regimes.

Yoga probably is not a religion—it is too diffuse and under-organized to fit under this concept. But a more important question is, can religious themes be separated from practice? The answer is less clear-cut.

Another defeat for Kemalism: French Canadians roundly rejected a draconian new law preventing all state employees from exhibiting “conspicuous religious symbols” at work.

The recent Supreme Court ruling about prayer before town meetings is a setback for militant Kemalists in the United States.

Spain is welcoming back the descendants of the Sephardic Jews it expelled in 1492, giving out passports to whoever can prove their lineage.

The film Heaven Is For Real has done very well at the box office, in part by tapping into lax modern attitudes about salvation. Some critics are troubled by its message.