Will the growing influence of the religious left alter the way we look at business and investment?

FORBES: The Religious Left Returns

Now, members of Congress are asking questions, such as how the suspected terrorist could fly in the first place after his own father had warned authorities his son was possibly under the influence of religious extremists.

CNN: The return of terror politics

The influence of foreign religious organisations seems to be growing along with rising government loans from Gulf states.

ECONOMIST: Cambodia and Islamism

Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society.

CNN: Transcript of Bush statement

While Ireland's religious nationalism is in retreat (because the Catholic Church has lost influence), Greece's Orthodox leaders, like Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, are putting up a harder fight to preserve the nationalist spirit which their predecessors embraced, reluctantly at first, in the 19th century.

ECONOMIST: Learning about the past

Cross-fertilisation between cultures and religions did, of course, take place, often despite the efforts of secular and religious leaders to stop it, or to ensure that influence only flowed one way.

ECONOMIST: History��s most important sea

Is she aware of the fact that my home country of France, just a short century ago, and under a democratic regime, outlawed religious schools and vowed religious orders to replace them with a system of secular public education explicitly designed to undermine the influence of Catholic Church?

FORBES: Things That Make One Side Freak Out

Religious and community leaders were invited to Downing Street because they were thought to have some influence over the zealots.

ECONOMIST: One year on

Catholicism is also a strong cultural influence in Africa's continuing search for answers to the challenges of poverty, diseases, ethnic and religious conflicts, wars, political and economic problems, radical Islamic fundamentalism, and how to mitigate the effects of climate change and natural disasters.

CNN: Why the next pope should be African