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Since our country's founding, Americans have debated the speeches and tracts sacred to our founding, from the Exodus story to the Declaration of Independence. In this election year, politicians and pundits constantly debate the "true" meaning of America's core canon, asking what the founding fathers or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Eleanor Roosevelt would think of immigration reform, or affirmative action, or birth control. In his new book, author and professor Stephen Prothero has collected these core texts in his new book, "The American Bible."

African-American opposition to gay marriage has declined significantly since President Obama's announcement, according to three polls.

Whether you love or hate politics, it’s hard to deny that when it comes to identity and culture, this year’s presidential election is truly historic. The incumbent is, of course, half black and thus, a racial minority. The challenger is Mormon, and thus, a religious minority. What if you’re one of the one million Americans who is both black and Mormon? How does identity factor in? Two African-American Mormons join us today to share their thoughts.

Over the past few years, The Daily Show has grown into a cultural phenomenon and a political powerhouse. But when The Daily Show began in 1996, Comedy Central was a tiny network with few cable subscribers. Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, writes in her new memoir, "Lizz Free or Die," that the show's remarkable success was predicated on the "gold mine of comedy material" on television news.

African-Americans, compared with other groups that make up the Democratic political base, have been the most resistant to an expansion of gay rights.

Last week, we talked with Madeleine Albright about her life, and her discovery in adulthood that she was Jewish. We asked our listeners: Have you ever discovered a secret about your family or identity? We received a lot of responses, including one from Loren Levinson. She was adopted when she was a baby and raised her whole life in a Jewish household. But when she tracked down her birth parents as an adult, she discovered that her paternal ancestry was Muslim and that her birth mother is a born-again Christian. 

Some 1400 years after the Prophet Muhammad first articulated God’s law—the shari‘a—its earthly interpreters are still arguing about what it means. Legal historian and human rights lawyer Sadakat Kadri clarifies what Islamic law is and is not. In Heaven on Earth: A Journey Through Shari'a Law from the Deserts of Ancient Arabia to the Streets of the Modern Muslim World, he describes his search for the facts behind the myths.

Ethan Bronner is a correspondent for our partner The New York Times. He recently announced that he would transition from his role as the paper's Jerusalem Bureau Chief to become a national legal correspondent in New York. The Middle East has changed radically since Bronner accepted the Bureau Chief position in early 2008. Perhaps most visible are the results of the Arab Spring uprisings throughout the region. Bronner reflects on the immense changes in the Middle East since he started reporting there four years ago.

From angels battling demons in heaven to the Beast with the number 666, the Book of Revelation — the apocalyptic conclusion to the New Testament — has been a narrative staple in our popular culture. Elaine Pagels' new book  considers this vivid and controversial text. A religion professor ...

In Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist, says American Christianity has gone astray, leading to an economic, social, and political crisis.

Charles W. Colson, Watergate mastermind turned Evangelical leader, died of a brain hemorrhage on Saturday at the age of 80. Colson, special counsel to the Nixon Administration, served seven months for obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal. But Colson emerged from prison a born-again Christian, promising to devote his life to religious activities. And though he may be remembered most for his role in Watergate, Tim Weiner, journalist and author of "Enemies: A History of the FBI," believes that Colson's true legacy might be his role in forging alliances between Evangelical Protestants and Catholics to create the religious wing of the Republican Party.

Chuck Colson went from being one of the nation's most despised men, who served time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, to a hero of conservative Christians. Following a brief illness, he died Saturday at a Northern Virginia hospital with his wife and family at his bedside.

In the news, Sharia law is frequently depicted as a system that condones women being stoned. In the movies, it’s the reason why petty thieves find their hands on the chopping block. But what, exactly, is Sharia law all about? Sadakat Kadri, author of "Heaven on Earth," a history of Sharia law and its many interpretations, explains.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions, from our intuitions to our morality to our “groupishness.” In The Righteous Mind he investigates Why our political leaders can’t seem to work together to deal with threats and problems and why people so readily assume the worst about their fellow citizens.

Steve Shaw, political science professor at Northwest Nazarene University, and Darrin Grinder, chair of the English department at Northwest Nazarene University, are co-authors of The Presidents & Their Faith: From George Washington to Barack Obama. They look at how the relationship between religion and the presidency has played out in history.

In Iraq, the Christian community continues to suffer from intimidation and threats of violence, and the number of Christians in the country has dropped drastically following the U.S. invasion nine years ago in 2003. Rami Ruhayem is a correspondent for our partner the BBC, who has found that even though the levels of violent attacks have dropped recently, there is still a climate of fear.

The pope said the ban on female priests was part of the church's "divine constitution."

Some Orthodox rabbis say that if you're keeping to the spiritual interpretation of what is kosher, you've got to get the bugs out of your vegetables.

The Haggadah, the Jewish religious text read at Passover, is 3,000 years old. It has been translated more than any Jewish book, from ancient times, to 14th-century Sarajevo, to the just-published "New American Haggadah." Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander have constructed a new Haggadah, religious, yet modern, for the American Jews of their generation.

Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander discuss The New American Haggadah, their take on a traditional Passover prayer book. The Haggadah recounts, through prayer, song, and ritual, the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Safran Foer edited Englander's translation, and major Jewish writers and thinkers like Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch also provide commentary. It is designed and illustrated by the Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer.