As president, a leader should, I believe, avoid specificity with respect to his faith commitments. He must be president of all the people. He is an inspirational leader and should avoid even a hint of sectarianism. Although President Eisenhower was ridiculed for saying that it is important to believe even if it did not matter what one believed, he was essentially right. These days, however, a statement like that should respect the sensibilities of nonbelievers as well.

Alan Wolfe is a professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.

The Department of Peace is a cabinet-level position with a Secretary of Peace who would be responsible for providing nonviolent alternatives for addressing conflict wherever it may arise. In the international arena, the DOP would look for “hot spots” and work to address the underlying root causes of conflicts before violence erupts. On the domestic front, the DOP would research methods that would address the root causes of things like gang violence, domestic violence, and bullying, and work with practitioners to devise best practices for resolving such issues, and then provide the funding to make sure the tools get implemented effectively. The logic is that addressing the root causes of violence will save tax dollars in the long run—fewer people in prison, for example, and less need for military intervention overseas—and improve quality of life in the process.

There is currently a bill in Congress (H.R. 808) that has 72 co-sponsors in the House. Representative Dennis Kucinich has introduced a DOP bill in the past three sessions, and it seems to get stuck at about 70 co-sponsors. However, various versions of a DOP bill have been introduced more than 90 times since the inception of the United States.

There are campaigns to create ministries or departments of peace in many countries. Canada recently introduced a bill for a Ministry of Peace. Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom have active groups. Three countries already have a Ministry of Peace—Nepal, Solomon Islands, and Costa Rica.

Finally, there is a nationwide grassroots campaign operating in all 50 states with citizen activists lobbying Congress to get support for the DOP legislation.

Yoko Ono has been a big supporter of the DOP campaign and has used her networks to help spread the word and get support for things like the recent Change.org Ideas for Change in America effort. Other celebrities have been supportive, but few have been as committed as Yoko.

Ted Nunn is the Department of Peace campaign coordinator in Maryland.

The short answer to this question is a resounding: Of course! Now, for the slightly longer answer …

The relationship between religion and health has been researched frequently over the past 40 years, with most studies finding that religious people tend to live longer and experience better general health. Yet, despite these generally positive associations between religion and health, numerous studies have suggested that those who are more religious may be more likely to be obese.

Our recent study of a large, demographically and geographically diverse population sample confirmed this association; we found that more frequent prayer, more frequent service attendance, and greater spirituality were each associated with a greater likelihood of obesity. Furthermore, these associations remained significant even after adjustment for demographics. In other words, our findings suggest that if we were to blindly choose two people—one religious and one not—who were otherwise identical in terms of race, sex, age, education, and income, the religious person would be more likely to be obese.

The next logical question is: Why are religious people more likely to be obese? First, it is important to note that our study design precludes us from inferring causality; accordingly, when we say religious people are more likely to be obese, we do not mean that religion actually causes obesity. It is entirely possible that the association we have found between religion and obesity exists partly because obese people may, in fact, be more likely to become religious.

Perhaps the most likely explanation for the association between religion and obesity is that religious organizations tend to place little emphasis on avoidance of gluttony or overeating, while instead emphasizing avoidance of more clearly defined practices like smoking. In fact, fellowship around festive meals is common in religious communities and may be viewed by pious individuals as a well-deserved treat for all the time and energy they devote to religious activities. Unfortunately, we’re often hurting ourselves more than we are treating ourselves at these meals, which tend to center around fatty and calorie-dense meats, cheeses, starches, and baked goods.

Yet, even if religious people are more likely to be obese, we know that religious people still tend to live longer and have better general health than nonreligious people do. Given this, should the religious community even care if it is more obese? My answer, without question, is yes. The adverse health effects of obesity are many, including fatal cardiovascular and metabolic disease and nonfatal but disabling respiratory and musculoskeletal problems. Accordingly, if we can do a better job of preventing, recognizing, and treating obesity in the religious community, we are likely to see religious people lead even longer, healthier lives.

Matthew Feinstein is a medical student at Northwestern University.

People seek many different things in a spiritual experience, a fact attested to by the variety of religions and rituals practiced around the world today. But if there’s one motivation that all faiths seem to share, it’s a desire for transcendence—a wish to rise above mundane concerns and commune with a higher or more complete entity. When we worship, we look to shift our perspective away from the trivial toward the big picture, to put ourselves in context of a larger whole. Can design help us do this?

In short, yes. Design won’t make believers out of atheists, but it can certainly provide conditions for deepening the experience for the spiritually inclined. Researchers studying awe, an emotional state closely linked to transcendence, believe that a key trigger is a sense of vastness. Encountering objects or spaces that are extremely large in scale, from Ayer’s Rock to the Grand Canyon, stimulates what psychologists call a need for accommodation—a need to take this new experience and fit it into our existing mental models, stretching them in the process. As our mental models struggle to accommodate the power behind works of great scale (both natural and manmade), we feel smaller by comparison. Our focus broadens, which effectively minimizes our daily preoccupations. The builders of the great cathedrals, the Angkor temples in Cambodia, and Easter Island’s famous moai statues all understood, whether explicitly or intuitively, the power of great scale to inspire this perspective-shifting, spiritual sense of awe.

Scale can be particularly effective when the exaggerated dimension is height. Earthly existence naturally has a vertical orientation, defined by the gravitational force that holds us to the earth. Upward directionality is associated with lightness, air, and spiritual thoughts, while downward brings connotations of heaviness, earth, and physicality. Some religions conceptualize this vertical dichotomy as a moral one, with heaven above earth and hell below it. And many religions conceive of the spirit as a weightless entity, which is freed upon death from its gravity-bound body. Defying this downward pressure by turning our gaze upward naturally leads many of us to a more spiritual frame of mind. Structures that are upwardly expansive feel more conducive to worship than those with low, dark ceilings. This effect can be enhanced by adorning the ceiling with elements that cause the gaze to drift upward, such as lighting fixtures, ceiling frescos, or skylights.

Turning the gaze upward has another effect: It allows more light into the eye, and light is another aesthetic element that can enhance our spiritual experience. Light is a common metaphor for deities and a proxy for their blessing. In Genesis, God’s first act after creating heaven and earth is to proclaim “Let there be light.” When a religion wins a convert, they say he has “seen the light,” and the object of spiritual quests is “enlightenment.” Many early religions, such as those of ancient Egypt and Greece, featured gods of light or sun as primary deities. It makes sense that light would be so prominent a feature in worship, considering its significance to our survival. Light was certainly on the minds of gothic cathedral builders when they developed the practice of using flying buttresses. By taking pressure off of the walls, these exterior structures allowed for taller, lighter cathedrals with vast expanses of glass windows that were previously impossible. Structures of worship are at their most sublime not just when they’re bright, but when they also call attention to the light and focus our gaze on it. Stained-glass windows are one way architects of religious structures have done this. Others work with natural light. A particularly beautiful example is Osaka’s Church of Light, designed by Tadao Ando. The cuts in the expansive structure shape the light, giving it form and presence. The result is an expansive space with a transcendent glow.

There are other aesthetics more specific to different religions that can enhance the experience of prayer and spiritual contemplation. Features such as the structure’s shape, color treatments, and level of adornment all vary according to belief systems. But these three elements—scale, height, and light—seem to have deep roots in human nature or cultural practice that make them particularly conducive to achieving spiritual communion. Can you pray meaningfully in a dimly lit, underground cave? Surely the answer is yes. But an expansive, well-lit space is more likely to put you in a prayerful mood.

Ingrid Fetell is a designer and writer currently working on Aesthetics of Joy, a book about design and positive emotion.