Religion

With the football season coming to a close, it’s a great time to apply the wise Jewish teaching that everything one encounters can teach us a lesson in how to serve G-d. Here are four lessons I learned: Every Player is Crucial The star quarterbacks, wide...

I was supposed to be in Israel today. To be precise, this morning, I was going to wake up in a quaint hotel near the Old City of Safed, enjoy a delicious breakfast al fresco while taking in the mountaintop views, tour the Artists' Quarter,...

The Father of our nation, George Washington, had a remarkable correspondence with the first Catholic Bishop in the United States, John Carroll. At the time Catholics were, at best, 1% of the population of the young nation and were living in only two states:...

The meaning of a name is more important in some cultures than others. In Scripture, the meaning of a name can tell you a lot about a person’s character over their story.  Yahweh (or Jehovah) is the personal name of God in Judaism, derived from...

When I was just out of high school, serving a mission for my church, a man once told me that he couldn’t believe that Christ’s death and suffering was all that special. He was a veteran who had witnessed the horrors of war.  He had...

In the San Francisco Bay Area, we seem to be in a bubble of more open-minded thinking and inclusion. There are other places, regions and states that seem to be filled with fear of the outsider and suspicion of neighbors of different ethnicity, national...

I enjoy standing in holy places. In a world filled with chaos, contention and calamity, it’s important to take time to pause and stand in holy places to find peace. One of my favorite scriptures comes from our Doctrine and Covenants, Section 87, verse...

Members of the faith community of South County were disturbed, saddened and angered when we were made aware of a hate incident against our brothers and sisters in the Muslim community. For Muslims, this is the holy month of Ramadan, a time of fasting and...

The Interfaith Clergy Alliance of South County, whose members provide these articles each week, includes Jews, Christians, Muslims and Buddhists. All but the Buddhist share a common scriptural text, what Christians call the Old Testament and what Jews call the Tanakh.  In this, they are...

In a recent article in the New York Times (Dec. 12, 2025), the columnist Thomas L. Friedman said this: “If you ask me what’s the most dangerous statistic in the world today …the Gallup Poll that said fewer people than ever are going to church. Because…...