When I started studying sociology of religion, one of the interesting human activities I found is what anthropologists call “rites of intensification.” These activities have been found by ...

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's soaring water pollution is threatening the religious rites of its tight-knit Mandaean community, already devastated by 15 years of war that has also affected the country's other ...

(The Conversation) — When the 5,300-year-old mummy of Ötzi the Iceman was found 30 years ago, researchers found 61 tattoos on it. A scholar explains how tattoos have been a sacred part of many ...

Spiritual leaders are called upon to officiate at a variety of celebrations — baptisms, bat and bar mitzvahs, weddings — and, of course, services marking the upcoming religious holidays. This week’s ...

“It’s a neon horseshoe,” sputtered my friend as we stood gazing at the Denver City and County Building last year. “Your city building is lit up like a neon horseshoe. And with a baby Jesus! I didn’t ...

WASHINGTON — Anyone who has ever owned a pet understands Jill Shaffer’s deep sentiments for her cat, Della. She got Della just before her divorce 14 years ago. When she was lonely or ill, her “flabby ...

The debate over the arcane Orthodox ritual of kapparot – in which Jews ritually sacrifice chickens as they purge themselves of their sins before Yom Kippur – has turned into a snarling dog fight ...

THE foremost Jewish seer, the great Greek philosopher, and that Englishman whose “ genius was excellent above all his nation,” tell us, each in his own way, that the ideal commonwealth will have a ...

BAGHDAD – Every Sunday in Iraq, along a strip of embankment on the Tigris River reserved for followers of the obscure and ancient Mandaean faith, worshippers bathe themselves in the waters to purify ...

Ötzi the Iceman remained hidden to the world for millennia until two German tourists discovered it 30 years ago in a glacier in the Italian Alps. This 5,300-year-old mummy is not only perhaps Europe’s ...