Lee Ann Kinkade explains her troubles and travails of Halloween for Slate:

In a grove near you, pagans are gathering to celebrate Samhain, the night when the veil between the living and the dead, between this world and others, is thin. We will wear cloaks and have ritual daggers, called athemes, at our waists. The prerequisite silver jewelry will gleam in the firelight. Natural fabrics flow as freely as the mead. There will be an unfortunate excess of tie-dyed material. In other words, we will look most like your picture of witches.

Christine Bass, who attends church in Alaska with Sarah Palin, feels insults hurled at the Republican vice-presidential candidate as if they were aimed at all evangelical women. She smarts when the governor is demeaned as "caribou Barbie," a nitwit suspected of being controlled by her husband.

Polls show her strongest supporters are evangelical women over 29. In a PBS poll for the program "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly," 65 percent said they had "warm" feelings toward her. One reason may be that Ms. Palin, 44, contradicts caricatures of evangelical women as subservient and dull-witted.

From ABC News:

The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.

What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.

From Time magazine:

Which faith plays the market best when it seems headed for the financial equivalent of purgatory? That may sound like a whimsical question, but there are, in fact, mutual funds tailored to a number of religions and denominations. Their track records won't answer the question of which investment strategy best ensures eternal salvation, but they have certainly had an impact on some believers' nest eggs — and they provide a window into how each faith understands appropriate investment.

From The Los Angeles Times:

Before the year is up, nearly 45 million people will get more than a sermon at their churches -- they'll get a brochure titled "Why We Should Be Concerned About Christian Zionism."

The brochure says Christian Zionism "fosters fear and hatred of Muslims and non-Western Christians" and "can lead to the dehumanization of Israelis and Palestinians." Its distribution reflects the concerns of Christians who are trying to combat what they call the growing influence of Christian Zionism in the U.S.