Lisa Miller

Taking Tiger Mom tactics to radical new heights, these parents are packing up the family for a total Far East Immersion.

With the great evangelist in his twilight, his children jostle over his image and the family name.

With the circus of the 'beer summit' behind him, the high-wattage professor turns his eyes to the black experience in Latin America.

New scholarship on the Good Book's naughty bits and how it deals with adultery, divorce, and same-sex love.

"Why are working mothers so furious all the time?" I was asked recently. An answer, not entirely rational, springs to mind: "Personally, I could use a travel agent." It's a joke, sort of.

Amy Chua's email in-box has become the latest front in the mommy wars. Ever since "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," her warts-and-all book on parenting the Chinese way, inflamed the mommy-blogger universe with its publication last week, Chua has been under attack.

Families don't move to Washington anymore, and lawmakers live on the road. Is this any way to govern?

The imam behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque reflects on the "insanity" of religious radicals.

As recently as 2004, when evangelicals were credited with reelecting George W. Bush, sexual mores defined the culture wars. But as the economy has become the political priority for liberals and conservatives alike, traditional culture-war issues—abortion, gay marriage—have been blunted as weapons in the political theater.

On Nov. 30, about a dozen moderate Christian leaders gathered for a meeting in Washington, D.C. Their colleagues on the religious right had been delivering a potent new message about God and country, of fear and domination, that was resonating among Christians and conservatives nationwide.

These novels raise questions about modern life.

As more of us indulge our passion for local, organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don't have enough nutritious food to eat. How we can bridge the gap.

When politicians start talking about humility, as they do ritualistically after elections, the warning light on the BS detector goes on.

The neuroscientist and rationalist has made his name attacking religious faith. Who knew he was so spiritual?

A mystic and the modern woman.

It's like a Hollywood movie. One spouse goes off to work at the Supreme Court, that most august of institutions, where formality and discretion reign. The other puts on her power suit—and occasionally, a foam Lady Liberty crown—and enters the raucous, chaotic world of Tea Party politics and Fox News pontificating.

An economist and former executive at the World Bank, Beckmann believes it is possible to end world hunger and poverty through good politics and policies.

What exactly is a "mama grizzly"? If the grizzlies are united by an anti-establishment fury rooted in maternal concern, then it's fair to ask what their records show they've done for kids. Not just for their own kids—which in Palin's case, especially, is well documented—but for America's kids, and their families as well. Even some Republicans wonder whether all the fearsome roars are merely election-year antics with little substance.

Conventional wisdom in the last election cycle held that Mitt Romney could never win the hearts of America's conservative evangelicals—the Republican base—because he's Mormon, and evangelicals don't consider Mormons to be properly Christian. "I don't believe conservative Christians will vote for a Mormon, but that remains to be seen," James Dobson, then chairman of Focus on the Family, told radio host Laura Ingraham in the run-up to the 2008 contest.

While researching their forthcoming book about American religion, the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues polled on this hypothetical question: Say a group of Buddhists wanted to build a large temple in your community. How would you feel?

Instead of consoling the victims of priestly sexual abuse or bridging the divide with Anglicans, Pope Benedict is hitting all the wrong notes in his trip to the United Kingdom.

A Greek Orthodox congregation has been waiting longer—and working harder—than Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Park51 Islamic Center to restore the church that was destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Here is the latest semantic assault from the party that brought you "Islamo-facism" (circa 2005) and "Axis of Evil" (2002). The term "stealth jihad" is suddenly voguish among politically ambitious right-wingers who see President Obama's approach to terrorism as insufficient.

If President Obama wants to convince Americans to support the 'Ground Zero mosque' he needs to tie it to our personal tolerance for other faiths.

At the eye of this storm stand two grieving mothers who don't ever want to hear the word "closure." Each remains convinced of the rightness of her position, and it is in their congenial conversation that one sees the issue laid bare.

Do hard times produce more fundamentalists? Do prosperous times produce more do-gooders? Will a lengthy economic slump pull people into the pews to pray for jobs and ladle soup for needier neighbors? Or will it keep people at home on the couch, nursing psychic wounds and cursing their creator?

It sounds like a Catskills-era joke with a Jewish lawyer in the punch line, but among Jewish leaders it's deadly serious. Why does it cost so much to be Jewish? At a time when American families are tightening household budgets, does it really make sense to continue to charge thousands of dollars to participate in Jewish life?

The Vatican has clearly stated that when investigating cases of sex abuse, "civil law concerning the reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed." History shows, however, that such cooperation is not always the norm. For more than a thousand years in Europe, church and state were rarely separate.

To white evangelical women, Sarah Palin is a modern-day prophet, preaching God, flag, and family—while remaking the religious right in her own image.

A growing conversation among Christian fundamentalists asks the question that may have been inevitable: is the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a sign of the coming apocalypse?