John Burnett

Life, death and piety are the recurring themes in hauntingly beautiful alabados preserved by lay brothers called penitentes. "You have to feel them," one says. "You have to feel them in your soul."

A new religious statue in the town of Davidson, N.C., is unlike anything you might see in church.

The statue depicts Jesus as a vagrant sleeping on a park bench. St. Alban's Episcopal Church installed the homeless Jesus statue on its property in the middle of an upscale neighborhood filled ...

President Obama joined families and troops paying tribute to the three soldiers killed last week by a fellow soldier. Obama was there in 2009 after another mass shooting at the base.

President Obama is traveling to Fort Hood, Texas, on Wednesday to attend the memorial service for those killed in last week's shooting.

Attention is focused on the mental state of Army Specialist Ivan Lopez, who's accused of killing 3 people and injuring 16 at Fort Hood on Wednesday. A verbal altercation may have lead to the shooting.

Military officials say a soldier opened fire at the base killing three people before taking his own life. A senior officer says the shooter was being assessed for post-traumatic stress disorder.

After a horrendous October rollout, the ACA is viewed a little more favorably now. But the number of people who intensely oppose the law is 12 percentage points higher than those who strongly back it.

The IRS has not audited a church in five years. Some televangelists are taking advantage of that inaction to shield millions of dollars from public scrutiny.

Texans overwhelmingly choose cars and trucks for their commutes, but in cities like Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, policy leaders have incentives to support cycling. They say it's good for business.

NPR examines previously undisclosed financial records from Daystar Television. Those files raise issues as basic as the definition of "church" and as grand as the role of government in religion.

Drug lords face a recurring problem: what to do with all that cash? Time and again, they have managed to launder their fortunes through some of the world's leading banks.

U.S. border officials are constantly on alert for drugs coming in from Mexico. But they are also on the lookout for huge sums of cash leaving the U.S. and trickling back into Mexican communities.

The intrepid tourist who visits the market in the border city of Matamoros will find her between the onyx chess sets and Yucateca hammocks. She looks like a statue of the Grim Reaper dressed in a flowing gown. She is Santa Muerte, or Saint Death.

Originally revered as an underground ...

Taylor Muse is the 31-year-old bandleader and songwriter of Quiet Company, an indie-rock band from Austin. A native of East Texas raised in a Southern Baptist church, he now reluctantly carries the banner of "that atheist rocker from Austin."

"Every band that I was in up until college ...

They say an oilman has to be a gambler, but can he be a prophet?

Zion Oil & Gas, based in Dallas, is a publicly traded company that believes it is commanded by the Bible to search for oil in Israel, both to help the Holy Land and ...

When I visit Kanniks Kannikeswaran on a weekday evening, he is warming up his choir in the meeting room of a civic center in suburban Cincinnati.

"Breathe in the cosmic energy," he says to the choir. The response is a collective "Ommmmmm ..."

The people in this room ...

With mainline religious congregations dwindling across America, a scattering of churches is trying to attract new members by creating a different sort of Christian community. They are gathering around craft beer.

Some church groups are brewing it themselves, while others are bring the Holy Mysteries to a taproom. The result ...

Every year, the State Fair of Texas awards the most original food that is battered and plunged into a vat of boiling oil.

And it gets weirder every year. The obvious choices came and went in previous competitions — concoctions such as fried ice cream, fried cookie dough and chicken-fried ...