Daniel Heimbach is Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He was a participant in the 2006 First Things online symposium on torture.

Read a Sept. 17, 2005, New York Times article about the spread of Christian and Jewish yoga.

Read an October 1989 letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on the subject of Christian meditation written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. In it, Ratzinger addresses yoga.

Julie A. Mertus is assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service. She has expertise in women, human rights and war.

Read an article about the tensions between secular sports clubs and fitness centers that must pay taxes and their church counterparts (and sometimes competitors) that are tax-exempt.

Tufts University is a private university with campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville & Grafton, Mass., and Talloires, France. It boasts a very large Jewish student population and was named one of the ten “most Jewish” universities by Reform Judaism magazine in 2008. Patrick Collins is the executive director of public relations.

Read a January 5, 2010 essay from The Tablet, an online magazine of Jewish culture, titled “Is Yoga Kosher?” It is about the struggle of a Modern Orthodox Jew to reconcile her yogic practice with her Judaism.

The Rabbinical Assembly, the national association of Conservative rabbis, on Jan. 1, 2010, launched an initiative encouraging its members to “adopt healthy eating, exercise and lifestyle habits,” as this JTA article reports. The initiative is called The Shalem Campaign. “Shalem” is the Hebrew word meaning “whole,” and the philosophy of the Shalem Campaign is holistic and also reflects […]

Many more Americans say they are heavier than their ideal weight (62 percent) or say they would like to lose weight (55 percent) than are seriously trying to shed pounds at this time (27 percent), according to a 2009 Gallup Poll.