The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, in conjunction with its upcoming 2009 lecture series featuring Hans Joas, is offering Georgetown students---graduate and undergraduate---the opportunity to participate in an essay competition on the topic of "the origins and significance of the idea of universal human rights."

Spiegel Online interviews German-Turkish writer Seyran Ates about sexuality in Islam.

In the Washington Post, Bruce Feiler discusses the ubiquity of representations of Moses in America's capital.

Richard Alleyne, science correspondent for the Telegraph, discusses a new interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.

Guardian Belief editor Andrew Brown comes to the defense of Calvin.

Robert Marus and Ken Camp of the Associated Baptist Press take an extended look at the role played by Christians in the near-constant calumny that has become all too characteristic of American public discourse.

Robert Alter at The New Republic reviews R. Crumb's The Book of Genesis, a comic-book rendition of the Bible's first book, which largely makes use of Alter's own translation.

At Progressive Revival, Diana Butler Bass discusses witchcraft in African Christianity and its implications for reading Christianity in Africa and in the United States.

At America's Gods, a tour through former Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan's new blog, which turns out to be devoted far more to spiritual speculation than rock music.