The Question: Jeremiah Wright's sermons continue to be an issue in the presidential campaign. Why? What do you think of his preaching style? What do you wish you understood better about it?

In these days of YouTube, we can revisit the famous quote about there being various kinds of lies -- with statistics being one of them. Today, video snippets are used to lie. Such is the battle plan being carried out against the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, erstwhile pastor of Senator Barack Obama.

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The Question: How should Barack Obama have responded to inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Are you responsible for what your spiritual leader says from the pulpit?

A mature faith puts trust in God, not in clergy. If Senator Barack Obama distinguishes between the message – which is Christianity – and the messenger – who is all too human – then he has a better grasp of the faith than the talking heads who criticize him. Indeed, his speech on race in Philadelphia was also a speech on faith and patriotism that is not cowed by cowardice.

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It is tempting to believe that the U.S. political system of two parties is an immutable standard for democracy. It is not. Were the historical Jesus in our midst, he would oppose the notion that running within the system would produce a president to change the system. By examining his stance towards the political parties of his day – the Pharisees and the Sadducees – Jesus’ renunciation of both is unmistakable.

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The recent Pew Forum study on religious switching is old hat. The ARIS report (American Religious Identification Survey) reported on this panorama back in 2002. So the authors of ARIS – Drs. Barry Kosmin, Ariela Keysar and the late Egon Meyer – were far ahead of Pew on this issue. I was able the following year (2003) to use this data for the PARAL Study that looked at the nation’s Latinos and Latinas of faith. (It speaks badly of the scholarship from the Pew folks like Luis Lugo to have identified their findings as a “surprise.”)

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Volumes have been written about the meaning of “religion” and “spirituality:” In Barack Obama’s campaign both are clearly at work.

Obama is a religious person, having committed to the Christian faith as an adult and chosen to accept religion in ways that had not been part of his upbringing. As a child, he had seen free-thinkers and Muslims as members of his family, so joining the Afro-centric Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago during his 20s was his own choice. That is his religion. His spirituality is another matter.

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In high school, the Jesuits taught me that to find a principled answer to any question, it had to be stood on its head. So, before responding about Islamic law, we ought to ask first if U.S. law should make room for Christian teachings?

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Atheists like to take credit for having invented secularism; they did – in Europe. Secularism in the U.S., on the other hand, is derivative of a high tolerance for all organized religion and a preference for no particular one. The minds of the Founding Fathers on this one have been explored by so many experts (Jon Meacham is one) that it should be unnecessary to restate it. Seen from the full perspective of its historic beginnings within American exceptionalism, modern secularism is godmother of civil religion rather than the brainchild of atheism.

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One of the pleasures about being a Catholic is the treasure of theology. It enables people of faith to know that the understanding of Jesus Christ handed down in an unbroken line from the Apostles precludes reincarnation. Jesus died once and for all: no second life is necessary. If, as Dostoevsky mused, much has gone awry since the first Ascension Thursday, it is the fault of we who follow him.

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If attitudes of pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth become normal and socially acceptable, they are more deadly than when found scattered among individuals.

One of the contributions to modern religion came from Latin America’s Theology of Liberation. In addition to traditional views of sin as committed by individuals, Liberation Theology added the concept of “structural sin.” The idea is that the social climate fosters sinful attitudes as normal behavior. It can be found in the biblical passages about “having eyes but seeing not” and in St. Paul’s frequent denunciations of “the present age.” It need not sound religious. Take, for instance, the common dictum: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world.” Acceptance of this sentiment makes it OK to be mean and vindictive in the “real world.” Another slogan to the same effect is: “Nice guys finish last.” Verbum satis sapientibus.

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Because Judaism has weathered so many storms and waves of oppression in the past, I cannot think of an American future without Jews. Rather than measure the vitality of the religion by the numbers of its synagogues, the demographics of its membership or the training of clergy, however, I think would judge its endurance with more subtle measures: tribal togetherness and popular religiosity.

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