At Progressive Revival, Paul Raushenbush takes the occasion of the Fort Hood tragedy to point out that American culture and media consistently treat "White, Male, Christians" as a normative individual identity, while members of other minority groups often feel pressure to distance themselves from acts performed by people who look or sound like them.

At the New York Times, Sarah Lyall reports on an ongoing British case that centers on complex questions of Jewish identity, religious freedom (or its impossibility), and definitions of religion. By the end of the year, the British Supreme Court is expected to decide whether a school with Jewish roots had the right to deny a prospective student status as Jewish because his mother does not meet Orthodox standards of Jewishness. Without the preferential admissions treatment that such status carries at the oversubscribed London school, the student was denied admission, and his family cried foul. The case could have ramifications not just for other Jewish schools but also for other religious schools in Britain.

Andrew Sullivan commends the LDS Church's decision to support legislation in Salt Lake City banning housing and employment discrimination against homosexuals.

In the Wall Street Journal, Rob Moll discusses the growing number of business missionaries, working outside traditional missionary organizations, as a result of the economic recession.

In the 85th anniversary issue of Commonweal, Mark Jordan reviews The Future Church by Vatican correspondent John L. Allen, Jr.

In the Boston Globe "Ideas" section, Michael Fitzgerald reports on a new Harvard study about how religious belief appear to affect economic behavior.

At Big Think, an interview with Cornel West on renewing a sense of value over above the merely chrematistic.

Over the summer, a Turkish television station announced its plan for a new game show in which leaders from four world religions vie to convert atheists. Roughly translated as Penitents Compete, the show awards successful converts an all-expense-paid pilgrimage to a holy site of their new faith. At Sightings, Joseph Laycock considers what it might mean for the conversation about religion in Turkey.

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Carlin Romano argues that training for journalists needs to be more deeply grounded in philosophical reflection.