Paul Elie, author of the award-winning The Life You Save May be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, has joined the Berkley Center as a senior fellow. Elie will lead the American Pilgrimage Project, a partnership with StoryCorps that will aim to document the faith lives of ordinary Americans.

While economic issues overshadow the 2012 election campaign, questions of faith and values have taken on an unanticipated significance. We have begun to track this emerging discourse on the Berkley Center’s Knowledge Resources site.

On November 16 the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; World Faiths Development Dialogue; and the United States Embassy to the Holy See met via live video feed for a conference that explored the intersections of faith and the environment, with a focus on implications for policy. The meeting report summarizes key themes and suggested next steps that emerged from the dialogue.

Last spring President Obama challenged American colleges and universities to take up the question of interfaith dialogue and community service. Georgetown’s response to the President’s challenge is an extensive, year-long program of service in the DC community and reflection on campus focused on improving educational opportunity and reducing poverty, in keeping with the Jesuit ideal of “Men and Women for Others.”

It has been 25 years since the US Bishops’ pastoral letter on the economy. On Tuesday, December 6 a roundtable including EJ Dionne and Ross Douthat explored the legacy of the letter and the relevance of Catholic Social Teaching to today’s economic crisis.