Social and medical sciences are increasingly finding evidence to support how religion promotes better health, including living longer. This voluminous new wave of research is helping both religious communities and medical professionals to understand the promises and pitfalls of the faith-health connection. The potential for science and religion to work together for the common good holds great promise for improving global health during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond.

It came as a shock when a synagogue in my middle-class suburb in Australia recently was desecrated by Nazi swastikas painted over the front and sides of the building. But these are no longer isolated incidents anywhere. The official reports of rising anti-Semitism in Australia, where Jews number less than half of 1 percent of the nearly 25 million population, have kept pace with those in Europe, America and elsewhere. An ancient evil, defined as words and actions that dehumanize, condemn and promote hatred against Jewish people based on deceitful, false stereotypes, continues to be widespread. The question becomes: What can each of us do?
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This is a perilous period for religious freedom throughout the world. There is no region or world religion or secular government that is exempt from denying religious freedoms. Moreover, a consistent research finding is that religious minorities are the most frequent targets for receiving reduced freedoms, increased discrimination and open persecution. But when freedoms are uniformly secured for all, the freedoms for even the smallest minority become the freedoms for others.

Human beings may be hard-wired since evolution to separate into tribes in response to fear and uncertainty. But science also shows we are capable of working together for the common good when we leave our tribal cocoons and get to know our neighbors in ways that promote understanding. It starts with listening to one another.

Fashion is often viewed as frivolous. But the rise of modest fashion shows another side of the industry, the ability of a major social and economic engine to influence cultural change. Today, stylish women of many faiths that encourage modesty have embraced coverings or other relevant adaptions of dress and behavior as signs of fashion and faith. In so doing, this largely women-led movement is breaking down legal and social barriers to religious freedom. Movement luminaries also are engaging the world’s leading religions with the rights of women to interpret religious texts and religious practices in everyday life in ways informed by their own conscience and authority.

Humor can be offensive and divisive, especially jokes about sensitive issues, such as race and religion. But research is showing religious humor also can have a big upside, one that can help us move past religious stereotypes that divide communities, nations and regions. If humor works, then a key question becomes: Will we choose to laugh together?

Who are the nonreligious? Depending on how they are counted, the nonreligious today may be considered the world’s third largest ‘religion,’ trailing only Christianity and Islam. They exercise an increasingly influential voice on issues from the immigration crisis in Europe to secular-religious tensions in Asia Pacific. Now a developing body of research is shedding critical light on the diversity and complexity of this group in an age when the makeup and balance of religious and nonreligious populations, along with their shared history, matters in ways both small and large.

Across the world, billions of worshippers this weekend will be going to mosques, temples, churches and other places of worship hearing messages declaring that the choices they make in this life can affect their eternal destiny. How each of them, and secular individuals, face the great existential question of the meaning of life in the face of mortality can make a major difference in areas from mental health to preventing terrorism and promoting more generous, compassionate societies less likely to experience civil strife, new research shows.

Religious communities may have come late to the environmental movement, but they are starting to make a major impact. The landmark encyclical from Pope Francis calling on the world to engage in a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet is one example of a growing religious environmentalism. Amid a global financial downturn, religious groups, with their commitments to both caring for the Earth and human development, are uniquely positioned to help seek ways to develop public policies that balance economic needs with the protection of the planet. But do they have the will, and are people ready to listen?

The global refugee crisis represents a potential transformational moment in world history. Nations from Africa to Asia to Europe to North America with troubled pasts of ethnic conflict and of putting political and economic self-interest above humanitarian needs have an opportunity to write new chapters in their national stories. Religion is playing and will play a critical role.