After the shooting of Sikhs in their temple in Wisconsin this summer, the Washington Post ran this pictorial overview of Sikhism that I find interesting and useful in my religion class. In the picture above, a young Sikh attends a ceremony called Dastar Bandi. That ceremony celebrates the occasion when a young Sikh first begins to wear a turban. Read more

The two Bibles that Obama uses at his inauguration are steeped in history as the two short clips below demonstrate. The first discusses the Martin Luther King Bible and the second discusses the history of Lincoln’s Bible. Read more

Teaching Sikhism? This video, put together by the editors of the Huffington Post after the tragedy in Wisconsin this past summer, does a good job describing the faith and what its like for Sikhs living in America. Read more

A bad winter and high unemployment bring a flash mob to a Madrid unemployment office singing “Here Comes the Sun.” Both NPR and On Being picked it up. Read more

NPR interviews six young people (under 30)about their struggle with religion and faith. The big story this year, of course, is that almost 1/5 of Americans say that they are unaffiliated with a religion. Many of those so-called “nones” are under 30. Read more

Documents found in a cave in Afghanistan provide details about the economic, cultural, and religious life of a small group of Jews in the Persian Empire of the 11th century. The New York times reports.  According to the the National Library of Israel, where the documents were unveiled, “This is the first time that we have actual physical evidence of the Jewish life and culture within the Iranian culture of the 11th century.” My thanks to Frances Coffey for sending along the link. Read more

This 55 day festival in Allahabad is expected, according to BBC News  “to be the biggest religious gathering of humanity on Earth, with up to 100 million pilgrims bathing in the holy waters in January and February.” That’s quite a festival and as you can see, if you read the BBC News article, requires great collaboration with sanitation, police, food, medical care and hospitals, and even firewood for warmth at night. It will require about 80 million liters of drinking water,  25,800... Read more

CNN Belief Blog reports that evangelical Christians are betting on 2013 as the year immigration reform will finally happen. Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, and other evangelical leaders plan to make a concerted push for meaningful reform. They have formed a coalition called the Evangelical Immigration Round Table. Read more

The most sacred of all Hindu pilgrimages is taking place later this month. It’s called Kumbh Mela, takes place in Allahabad and Haridwar and is probably the largest gathering of people in the world (over 10 million are expected this month). It takes place every 12 years and during the 55 day festival over 100 million people are expected to visit the cities. Here’s a video clip from Aljazeera and here is a story from the BBC.  Mark Tully, who... Read more

This massive snow Buddha was made in Xinjiang earlier this winter.  Xinjiang is a city along the old Silk Road, in the northwest part of China. You can see more images of the Silk Road here. Read more