Diwali, the festival of lights, is a five-day celebration observed by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. Following the lunar calendar, it usually falls in autumn; this year in October. The name comes from the Sanskrit dipavali, meaning “row of lights.”

​At its heart, Diwali marks the triumph of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, and good over evil. Families celebrate by lighting lamps and candles, exchanging gifts, enjoying festive foods, decorating their homes, and setting off fireworks.

Presbyterian missionary Benjamin Weir was released after sixteen months in captivity on September 15, 1985. He had been a missionary in Lebanon since 1953 when he was kidnapped off the streets of Beirut in May of 1984 by Islamic Jihad, which latter became Hezbollah. His release was negotiated as part of what became known as the Iran-Contra affair.

Press conference about his release (Rev. Weir starts speaking at about 2:37)
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Time article available here.

​Cindy Saladin-Muhammed is the first Muslim to earn the rank of general in the U.S. military. 

Saladin-Muhammed, from Newark, New Jersey, was promoted to the rank of brigadier general on July 3, 2024 and serves as the Deputy Commanding General of the 807th Medical Command.

Saladin-Muhammed’s career began in 1984 when she graduated from high school, joined the U.S. Army, and completed Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. She enlisted as a private, only intending to fulfill her entry obligation of four years. “My goal was to obtain funding to further my studies after high school,” she says. “I never imagined a day I would be a brigadier general” (Rutgers).

​Roger Williams (1603?-1683) was a Puritan minister and a vocal advocate for the separation of church and state.  This conviction would guide Williams to the founding of Rhode Island as part of his quest to provide a haven for religious liberty in the American colonies.  Williams was born and educated in England and moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631 to escape persecution.  Once he arrived, however, he was frustrated with the same type of blending of government with religion that he experienced in England. 

​Judith Kaplan Eisenstein (1909-1996) was the first woman in the United States to publicly celebrate a bat mitzvah, the traditional Jewish coming-of-age ceremony historically available for 13-year-old boys. Becoming a bat mitzvah, or “daughter of the commandments,” signifies that a young woman has attained legal adulthood under Jewish law (PBS). Eisenstein was the daughter of the influential rabbi, Mordecai Kaplan, one of the founding figures of Reconstructionist Judaism. Rabbi Kaplan had his daughter read the Torah on a Shabbat morning at his New York City synagogue.

In 1962 Lou Groen, the owner of a new McDonald’s franchise, was trying to figure out how to save his failing hamburger restaurant in Monfort Heights, Ohio. The problem he was facing was that his clientele was largely Catholic and in the early 1960s, most Catholics abstained from meat every Friday, not just during Lent. Vatican II (1962-1965) did not abolish the requirement to abstain from meat on Fridays. But in 1966 the National Conference of Catholic Bishops removed the obligation for meatless Fridays for Catholics in the United States outside of Lent. In a pre-Vatican II world, Groen had to find something that observant Catholic clients could eat on Fridays that made enough money to keep his restaurant afloat. ​

180 years ago this month, New York-based Baptist preacher William Miller’s predicted date of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ failed to occur. This “Great Disappointment” left thousands to ponder their faith in the months and years afterward and resulted in various new American religious sects, including what would become the Jehovah’s Witnesses and various Adventist movements.​

Years earlier, Miller became fascinated with the biblical book of Daniel and convinced the text contained key prophetic insights into his own time. Starting from the estimated end of the Israelites’ exile in Babylon in 457 BCE, Miller added 2,300 years — an interpretation of Daniel 8:14 — and arrived at the year 1843. Miller initially asserted that Jesus would return at some point in between March 1843 and March 1844, but he eventually provided a date of October 22, 1843, following internal pressure for specification.​

​64 years ago this month, Democrat presidential candidate John F. Kennedy spoke before some 300 members of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, an influential Protestant group. The address, given at Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas, aimed at easing Protestant voters’ fears that electing a Catholic president may pose a threat to religious freedom, as a Catholic president, it was thought, may answer to the Pope first and the American people second.

Kennedy, then a senator from Massachusetts, had been counseled by advisers to reject the group’s invitation to speak, fearing political disaster. The United States had never before had a Catholic president, and prejudice against the church and its adherents ran deep in the strands of American history, especially in the Bible Belt, where Catholics had been frequent targets of the Ku Klux Klan.