Church leaders report mistreatment of minorities in areas controlled by Islamist militants.

In recent months Pope Francis has come back time and again to the thought that Christians mdash and Christianity mdash are still being persecuted in the world that all of us sinners live in It conjures up tales of the Middle Ages and the long ago when martyrs were made from those who went about b

The recently re-articulated Obama Doctrine is being put to the test by militants in Iraq.

It was heartbreaking on June 12 to hear Mohammed Al Dulaimy an Iraqi reporter for McClatchy Newspapers speak on ldquo Democracy Now rdquo nbsp As Mosul a city of two million falls to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS and Iraqi soldiers drop their arms and flee we hear that the mi

Christians who remain in Syria 39 s Raqqa province nbsp may now be subject to a quot dhimmi pact quot In classical Islamic law a dhimmi or ldquo protected person rdquo is allowed to live in Muslim lands provided he pays the jizya a residency tax in a state of submission and abides by other

James H. Charlesworth's new book is a massive study of snake symbolism across several millennia.

As a French poet once said, Mary is the sea that no one exhausts.

"Sally Cunneen By Miri Rubin Yale Univ. Press. 560p $35 9780300105001 As a 13th-century French poet once said, Mary is “the sea that no one exhausts.” Yet the remarkable cultural history that the medieval historian Miri Rubin has assembled from worldwide resources seems to challenge that