Read an account of the New Monasticism movement in the fall 2005 issue of the journal Divinity from the Duke Divinity School.

A Feb. 18, 2005, New York Times article describes an Eastern Catholic Maronite monastery in Massachusetts that offers spiritual retreats. The story also has links to other monasteries around the country that open their doors to the public for spiritual retreats.

Robert Wineburg is the Jefferson Pilot Excellence Professor of social work at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro who has looked at IRS investigations of churches for political activities related to elections. He is the author of the Faith-Based Inefficiency: The Follies of Bush’s Initiatives, and he has been writing comprehensively about faith-based politics and social services […]

Many cities and states have enacted laws that target homeless people. Read “A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States,” a January 2006 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Read “What will it take to end homelessness?” an Oct. 1, 2001, report from the Urban Institute that includes facts and causes of homelessness.

Read a transcript of the Urban Institute’s Oct. 4, 2005, panel on homelessness after Hurricane Katrina.

Benedict Giamo is an associate professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. He has written about the spiritual in the works of Jack Kerouac and teaches a course about Kerouac and other Beat writers. He is the author of several books: On the Bowery: Confronting Homelessness in American Society; Beyond […]

Read the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ 29-city survey on hunger and homelessness in 2011.

See a Feb. 4, 2012, New York Times story about the increasing number of people living alone.