Religion 34 Law & Order episodes
Faith, clergy and cults at the center of a case.
- Season 1 · Episode 12
Life Choice
A clinic bombing kills a young woman whom police first take for one of the bombers.
- Season 2 · Episode 5
God Bless the Child
A little girl dies of a treatable infection because her parents’ church forbids doctors, and prosecutors must decide whether faith is a defense.
- Season 2 · Episode 17
Sisters of Mercy
A 16-year-old runaway arrested after a shooting accuses a nun at her rehab shelter of molesting her.
- Season 4 · Episode 7
Apocrypha
A car bomb in a Wall Street-area parking garage kills the young woman who planted it, and the prosecutors set out to prove that the leader of her apocalyptic church is responsible.
- Season 4 · Episode 19
Sanctuary
After a Jewish driver avoids charges for killing a Black boy in Harlem, a riot leaves an innocent man dead, and his young killer takes refuge in a church.
- Season 5 · Episode 12
Progeny
The murder of a doctor who performs abortions leads to an anti-abortion activist and the defrocked priest who leads his movement.
- Season 5 · Episode 20
Bad Faith
A sex crimes detective who grew up with Logan is found shot in Riverside Park, and the trail leads to the former priest who abused boys in their old parish.
- Season 6 · Episode 8
Angel
Leah Coleman reports that her eight-month-old daughter was taken from her carriage while she was at confession, but a walk back through her morning with Curtis ends in a confession of a different kind.
- Season 8 · Episode 1
Thrill
A young delivery driver is gunned down on a bogus late-night order, and the two young men who killed him for kicks each insist the other one fired.
- Season 8 · Episode 16
Divorce
A hospital marriage counselor who evaluates Catholic annulments is stabbed in her office, and suspicion falls on an anxious ex-wife fighting her husband’s annulment while their divorce lawyers keep feuding.
- Season 8 · Episode 21
Bad Girl
A young drifter who stabbed an off-duty police officer is sentenced to death, then refuses to appeal after a religious conversion, while Schiff faces a challenger backed by an old friend and Briscoe’s daughter Cathy is arrested on drug charges.
- Season 9 · Episode 15
Disciple
A teenage girl dies of internal injuries after being left in a hospital waiting room, and the trail leads to a homemade exorcism run by a former nun who says she hears the voice of Saint Michael.
- Season 10 · Episode 18
Mega
A helicopter bombing that kills six is traced to a passenger’s wife and to the charismatic couple whose self-improvement circle has collected a fortune from her and her husband.
- Season 11 · Episode 5
Return
When the son of a murdered store owner’s partner flees to Tel Aviv to avoid a murder-for-hire charge, the DA’s office has to fight Israel’s Law of Return to bring him back.
- Season 12 · Episode 11
The Collar
A priest is shot dead while hearing confessions, and the only man who can explain why is a fellow priest who refuses to repeat what the killer once told him.
- Season 13 · Episode 1
American Jihad
When two professors are gunned down at home, a taped telemarketing call points detectives to a 19-year-old convert to Islam, who fires his lawyer, then takes over his own defense and turns the courtroom into a platform.
- Season 13 · Episode 9
The Wheel
A young woman found burning outside a Chinese diplomat’s apartment looks like a Falun Gong protester, but her lawsuit against him suggests murder and pulls Branch’s old law firm into the case.
- Season 13 · Episode 11
Chosen
The killing of a bookie who served wealthy Manhattan gamblers leads to his partner, whose lawyer turns a murder trial into a referendum on support for Israel.
- Season 13 · Episode 12
Under God
The shooting of a dealer blamed for a boy’s overdose points to the grieving father, until the family’s parish priest confesses and claims the killing was God’s will.
- Season 14 · Episode 23
Caviar Emptor
A wealthy Persian Jewish caviar dealer dies in bed the day after his wedding, and a family fight over an autopsy opens a murder case against the daughter he was about to move out of his house.
- Season 15 · Episode 1
Paradigm
When an Army reservist who served as a guard at Abu Ghraib is found smothered and posed like a crusader, the trail leads to the Iraqi-born sister of a former detainee, whose lawyer says she is a prisoner of war.
- Season 15 · Episode 9
All in the Family
A diamond dealer cooperating with federal prosecutors is gunned down on a crowded sidewalk, and the hit leads from Russian mobsters to his wife, who was trapped in a marriage she could not leave.
- Season 15 · Episode 19
Sects
A survivor of a sect that abused its children kills his former nanny and then shoots himself, and McCoy turns the case against the mother who founded the group.
- Season 15 · Episode 23
In God We Trust
A revolver set off by the heat of an arson fire leads to a racially motivated murder from 1996, and the confessed killer, now a devout Christian, asks the court to dismiss the case in the interest of justice.
- Season 16 · Episode 4
Age of Innocence
A husband fighting to end his brain-damaged wife’s life support is killed by a car bomb outside her hospital, and the trail runs from a bomb maker to an outspoken minister and the woman’s own family.
- Season 16 · Episode 11
Bible Story
A burglar is beaten to death outside a Lower East Side synagogue while carrying a desecrated family Chumash, and the investigation uncovers a bitter fight between the two cousins who own the building.
- Season 17 · Episode 4
Fear America
A Muslim American lawyer’s videotaped killing is dressed up as an anti-Muslim hate crime, but he turns out to have been a would-be informant against a terror cell that included his wife’s cousin.
- Season 17 · Episode 14
Church
A young actor’s staged suicide leads to the preacher of an anti-gay megachurch he had threatened to expose, until the case turns to the preacher’s wife.
- Season 17 · Episode 15
Melting Pot
An actress-director found hanged in her office was knocked unconscious first, and the case pits a Muslim sound mixer who hated her film against an undocumented laborer who admits a struggle with her.
- Season 17 · Episode 17
Good Faith
A biology teacher turns up dead in a torched church, and the born-again parent accused of killing him claims he acted to protect his daughter from divine punishment.
- Season 18 · Episode 15
Bogeyman
A novelist’s staged suicide becomes a murder case against her husband, who blames a secretive self-help movement, and his lawyer turns the trial into an attack on the group.
- Season 19 · Episode 3
Lost Boys
A teenager expelled from a fundamentalist Mormon sect is stabbed in Central Park, and the case exposes a plot by the sect’s Prophet to kidnap the young wife who fled him.
- Season 19 · Episode 14
Rapture
The murder of the man behind a website that emails unbelievers after the rapture leads to stolen gold, a Christian charity that sends Jews to Israel, and a suspect who takes shelter in Iran’s diplomatic mission.
- Season 20 · Episode 5
Dignity
A doctor who performs third-trimester abortions is killed during a church service, and the protester who shot him claims he was defending one particular viable fetus.