Is it that 'new atheists' like Sam Harris simply don't understand religion (beyond assembling everything bad they know to attack it with), or is the failure to distinguish positive and negative deliberate?

Over on the Wall Street Journal blog, Steven Waldman president and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com, has some interesting things to say about Barack Obama and the evangelical vote.

Ex-US President Jimmy Cater, now devoting his time to human rights and peace work, has condemned as a "crime" the treatment of people in Gaza.

The 8 May is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel - something that has occasioned both great hope and great despair.

The Democratic presidential contest has been getting ugly. And Barack Obama's church ties have become both a boon and a bane.

Much of the current public discourse on 'religion' assumes that 'it' (actually a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon) is either a good or a bad thing per se.

Next week is Christian Aid Week. The aim is to raise money, but also awareness of the way the poorest are hit hardest by 'natural disasters'.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has been reflecting on "The Spiritual and the Religious: is the territory changing?"

A short 'relief hearing' will take place at 10.00am on 23 April at the Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London, following the High Court judgment which held that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had acted unlawfully by cutting short a corruption investigation into arms deals between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia.

Barack Obama recently got into trouble for suggesting that alienated rural voters in Pennsylvania seek refuge in religion, rifles and rejection of outsiders.