Golden Arches by Quimby via Flickr

Are you hung over from an inaugural ball? Neither is David Gibson, who writes a clear headed account of Monday’s inauguration, in his words, “the grandest ritual of America’s civil religion.”

Stephen Prothero gives NPR his take on inaugural religiosity.

Today, United Methodist Rev. Adam Hamilton preaches at the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral, and Adelle Banks is there to tell us about it. Read her story here later today.

One of the most immediate and thorniest legal questions facing the Obama administration involves religious liberty and the Affordable Care Act, writes the Washington Post’s Robert Barnes.

Retired Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony apologized Monday after public documents — which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret — showed that he and other church officials sought to hide the the sexual molestation of children from law enforcement.

A prominent group of Episcopalians is calling for their church to join other mainline Protestant movements asking for greater scrutiny of U.S. aide to Israel, but Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori worries the campaign could be counterproductive.

McDonald’s and one of its franchise owners will pay $700,000 to settle allegations that a Detroit area Mickey D’s falsely advertised its food as being halal.

Bob Jones University is launching its own investigation into allegations of sexual abuse on campus and its responses to them.

A Christian university in Canada is under fire as it tries to establish that nation’s first Christian law school, which — and herein lie the objections — would require its students to take an oath to refrain from any homosexual relationships.

The editor of Catholic World News questions the Vatican’s supportive statement on renewed American gun control efforts. The Vatican’s spokesman “should have foreseen that it would be interpreted as an endorsement of President Obama. How else could it be interpreted?” writes Phil Lawler.

American pastor Saeed Abedini appeared in an Iranian court Monday. His wife fears the court will sentence him to death for exercising his religious liberties.

Israel is considering banning a U.S.-born, far-right candidate, a rabbi, who in a taped 2011 speech wondered what would happen if the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holiest shrine, was “blown up.”

Last week’s controversy over another tape, from 2010, in which Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi advises his countrymen to ”nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews,” has died down some.

Thieves inadvertently stole a Torah scroll valued at $30,000 when they took a Brooklyn rabbi’s car, but the car and the scroll are back with the rabbi, and the thieves seemed not to realize what they had in the trunk.

I’m sorry, why was the Torah in the trunk?

- Lauren Markoe