Read an article about the influence of leaders and educators on churches and their members from the September/October 2011 issue of Sojourners.

Reuters said the new pontiff must deal with a divided church in the United States.

Shoulder to Shoulder is a national, interfaith campaign “dedicated to ending anti-Muslim sentiment.” More than two dozen faith-based groups have joined the coalition, which has denounced North Carolina’s anti-Shariah law. Christina Warner is campaign director; she can be reached through publicist Samantha Friedman.

Read an Aug. 26, 2013, Religion News Service story about North Carolina becoming the seventh state to prohibit courts from considering Islamic law. The North Carolina restriction applies only to family-law cases.

Read a Jan. 1, 2013, post on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations on why immigration reform was expected to happen at the start of President Obama’s second term.

The Pew Center on the States’ Stateline website tracks immigration news at the state level.

Read an April 21, 2013 interview in America magazine with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a visiting research fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism—The Hague and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

Read a critique of liberation theology in a 1994 article by Edward A. Lynch of Hollins College in Roanoke, Va., from the website CatholicCulture.org.

Read a March 14, 2013, Associated Press article in which Francis’ biographer labels as unfair the Dirty War allegations stirred up in the wake of the conclave.