The central problem with a rigid secularism is simple: it would remove one of the main sources of social reform – the passion for justice – in American history.

For civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., human equality was a requirement of divine law. “A just law,” he wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, “is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. And unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.” And King firmly rejected the privatization of religious belief. “It’s all right to talk about heaven,” he said. “I talk about it because I believe firmly in immortality. But you’ve got to talk about earth…. It’s even all right to talk about the New Jerusalem. But one day we must begin to talk about the new Chicago, the new Atlanta, the new New York, the new America.”

It is easy to talk about the threat of religion to democracy in the abstract. But strict secularism would mean not only no more Pat Robertsons but also no more Martin Luther Kings. Are we really so enlightened and advanced that religious conscious is no longer needed to call attention to the weak and oppressed? Are we really so close to the ideal of justice that a higher conception of divine justice can be banished from public debate? Every society needs a standard of values that stands above the political order, or the political order becomes absolute, and progress toward justice becomes impossible.

Michael Gerson is the author of the new book, "Heroic Conservatism." Gerson is a former Bush White House speech writer, current Newsweek contributor and Washington Post columnist.

I’m probably the only Jew ever named Alexander Frederick Remington.

I’m the product of an interfaith marriage, which means that I struggle with questions of ambiguous identity – like, well, all Jews – but don’t have a last name to remind me of, and announce to the rest of the world, my inherent Jewishness.

A last name is like a secret handshake: it’s how to identify a landsman, a fellow-traveler, someone who will laugh loudly and whose mother will feed one if one is ever truly desperate. A last name is an identifying mark.

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I am 32 and, until this year, I never had many Muslim friends. At first I thought it was because I grew up in a small town and my family didn’t socialize much with other families. Then I blamed my – predominantly white, predominantly middle-class – education and employment choices.

I thought things would change in 2007, when I became the presenter for the Guardian’s Muslim podcast Islamophonic. If anything would bring me closer to the Ummah - it would be this show. True, now most of my Facebook friends are Muslim and my contacts book spilleth over with halal numbers. But, after eight months of networking and bridge building, I remain the outsider and I realize it’s because I am Not Muslim Enough.

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It’s one of the best-trailed conversions in the history of the Catholic Church. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an Anglican, is to be formally received into the Church in the next few weeks, according to The Tablet, a London-based Catholic newspaper. Blair has regularly, though quietly, attended Catholic services with his wife and four children, all of whom are Catholics, over the years, and his conversion was rumored for the 10 years he was in office.

As his biographer Anthony Seldon points out in “Blair Unbound,” post-9/11 security concerns made it increasingly difficult for the Blairs to go to public places of worship. So the Blairs arranged for a Catholic Royal Air Force chaplain to visit Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, virtually every Saturday to say Mass for the family in private.

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One thing that has always struck this veteran about those who serve our nation in the armed forces is the incredible generosity with which they care for each other, the incredible generosity with which they love one another. They do this in sharing meals, in giving burned-out comrades time to catch a bit of sleep, and in simple things like cups of coffee. Although I could not see it as clearly then, God was very present to us in such simple gestures during the First Gulf War. Now that I am a bit more practiced in looking for signs of Him, it is not too hard to figure out. To take care of someone is to love that person, and God is love. Therefore, we can find God’s love in our service members’ care for each other.

Among the many hardships of life in our unit’s deep desert days, one simple joy I found was having a nightly cup of coffee with my comrades-in-arms. Despite the burning heat, the nagging flies, and the ever-present tension of maintaining force protection, we had coffee anywhere we could. In an era before the stateside proliferation of Starbucks and its many clones, my family would mail us little red and white tins full of brown powder and labeled “Café Vienna.” One of our drivers used to call it “the good stuff.” More often than not, we turned it into “mocha,” dumping a pack of MRE cocoa into the mix. We drank coffee from aluminum canteen cups after the entire Brigade “stood-to” on alert in the early desert dawn. We drank it from paper cups while waiting in tactical chow lines, each soldier 20 feet apart “so one artillery round won’t get you all.” As we prepared in our battalion’s jumping-off point for the ground war D-Day in February of 1991, we drank it in a little mobiflex tent and rode out blinding sandstorms that the locals called “Shamals.”

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On more than one occasion someone has said to me, “Robert, you’ve got some mighty big shoes to fill.” I knew what people meant by that, of course, but the fact is I could never fill my father’s shoes -- he wears a size ten-and-half and I wear a size twelve!

Learning how to find and fulfill one’s own calling in life is one of the most important tasks each of us faces in our journey of faith; it’s about learning to “walk in our own shoes.” God created us as unique and significant and he has a purpose in this life for each of us to fulfill.

I recently wrote a book called, “Walking in Your Own Shoes,” which I dedicated to a man named Anthony. Anthony was a farmer who was born at the end of the 19th Century. He wanted to be a preacher when he grew up, but his parents were too poor to send him to school or to college. So he did what his father did – he farmed. But Anthony had a prayer. He prayed that one day he would have a son who would be a preacher. And God answered his prayer and gave him a son. His son’s name was Henry.

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An apology is one of the most powerful means of reconciling conflicts between individuals, groups and nations. The apology process has been described in primates, in preliterate humans, in legal systems over the centuries to address criminal behaviors, and in the world’s great religions as part of the process of repentance. It is said humans are hard wired for violence; it can also be said that humans are hard wired for reconciliation through apology. I believe we can tip the balance from violence to reconciliation by understanding and encouraging the practice of apology.

For 15 years, I have studied over 2,000 apologies, both successful and failed, between individuals, groups, and nations to understand first, how apologies heal, second, how the content and delivery of apologies contribute to the healing mechanisms, and third, why most apologies fail These apologies come from newspaper articles, historical events, the great literature dating back to the Iliad, personal friends and acquaintances, and my family (including 8 children, 11 grandchildren, my wife and myself). My study of these materials brought to my attention the importance of healing mechanisms as a core idea in understanding successful apologies.

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I have been involved for near two decades in efforts at reconciliation between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors. I believe strongly that a negotiated resolution of the conflict is possible, even though the prospects for major progress are not auspicious just now. It is in the interest of both peoples to come to a peaceful and lasting solution of their differences, in the form of the creation of a Palestinian state with the capacity to engage in nation-building toward a sovereign entity that has strong democratic institutions.

It is important to understand that, on the Israeli side, the division between those who favor a negotiated solution leading to the creation of a Palestinian state and those who do not is not a division between antiwar and hawk elements, but rather a disagreement over what steps would best protect Israeli security. The peace camp includes many former senior officials in the Israeli military and intelligence communities who believe that Israel’s future is most endangered by the failure to resolve the continuing conflict.

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To reconcile with one’s enemies, and end the cycle of long-term hatred, has been an elusive, nearly unachievable, goal for mankind. We seem to need enemies. For the victims, there are few examples of peace with forgiveness with the perpetrators, especially when their story is filled with atrocities. For the perpetrators, we rarely see admissions of responsibility with accompanying apologies, the request for forgiveness, and the offering of acceptable reparations.

Typically, the search for peace following hostilities goes the other way for both victim and perpetrator. Both sides feel unjustly treated. Rather than seeking out and ultimately achieving a new tolerance and respect for the other, both sides will hold on to its group’s memories of the injustices done against them, and will especially commemorate the memories of atrocities. The stories of injustice are told to their children, setting in motion the perpetuation of hatred across generations.

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I have a picture in my mind of the traditional Thanksgiving—crisp fall weather, turkey and stuffing, a table laid with china, a blur of extended family and a lifetime of shared memories. And though that picture lingers in my mind as someone’s tradition, it’s never been ours, and certainly will not be this year.

This Thanksgiving we’ll be on the beach, a thousand miles, vaguely, from our various homes, having assembled from even more various points—my dad has been in Europe for almost a month, and my brother and Joe left six weeks ago for a two-year sailing trip, and this is the first time we’re seeing them since their departure. Todd’s girlfriend came in from Los Angeles, and her parents will join us for the holiday. My husband, our son, my mother, and Joe’s girlfriend bring our number to ten.

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BEING BORN IN GEORGIA IN THE MID-1930s, I GREW UP IN AN ERA WHEN THE LIVES OF BLACK AMERICANS WERE SHADOWED BY LIMITATION. THAT WAS ESPECIALLY TRUE IN THE SOUTH WHERE MOST OFTEN THE BEST KIND OF BEHAVIOR ONE COULD EXPECT FROM WHITES WAS INDIFFERENCE. THERE WERE PLENTY OF TIMES DURING MY CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE WHEN WHITE SOUTHERNERS DISPLAYED HUMAN BEHAVIOR AT ITS WORST. BUT, WHILE I WAS AWARE AT AN EARLY AGE OF THE INJUSTICE WHITE AMERICA IMPOSED UPON BLACK AMERICANS, I NEVER FELT INTIMIDATED BY IT. I NEVER FELT I NEEDED TO BOW TO THE WHITE SOCIETY’S INSISTENCE THAT I RADICALLY LIMIT MY ASPIRATIONS.

THE REASON IS I WAS RECONCILED WITH THE FUTURE.

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According to Just War theory, it is war that should be considered only as a “Last Resort.” In practice, however, it seems that peace doesn’t get a chance until everything else has failed. And so, even this President, who has his name attached to the rationale for engaging in pre-emptive war, the so-called “Bush Doctrine,” has now, in the last year of his presidency, decided to engage a peace process for the Middle East.

The good news about peacemaking, however, is that first resort or last, there is never a bad time to choose peace over war. Almost 50 nations have been invited to send representatives to a conference this week meeting at Annapolis. While there are many veterans of the protracted struggle for peace in the Middle East who are skeptical that the long-sought peace in that region can be achieved in what remains of this president’s term, and they are probably right, that does not mean this effort is in vain.

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I grew up outside of Philadelphia in an interfaith family. My mother was Catholic and my father is Jewish. When my parents first met in the late 1950’s, they faced a great deal of opposition- mostly from their own parents. They came from a generation that did not accept interfaith relationships and were deeply opposed to their relationship and pending marriage. After my parents got married, they struggled to mend relations with their families. Both of my grandmothers stopped speaking to my parents and basically disowned them. It took many years to re-establish ties with the family, which caused many painful fights for both of my parents. My mother’s mother came around first, and my sister and I had a very close relationship with her. My father’s mother never accepted my mother, but tried to create a relationship with my sister and me – but it was often tense and strained due to the conflict.

Despite these trials or perhaps because of them, my parents raised my sister and me in an open and accepting environment. We were encouraged to follow our own beliefs and live a life that was good – the religion didn’t matter. We would sometimes go to church with my mom for Easter and Christmas mass, and occasionally with my dad to synagogue. They made it very clear that it was our choice to decide what religion, if any, we would follow.

Last year, I made the decision to convert to Judaism. My husband is Jewish and as I thought about creating a life together and a family, I decided that I wanted to be able to share traditions and build a foundation together.

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In a world in which Islamophobes blur the distinction between the barbaric acts of Muslim extremists and terrorists and the religion of Islam, two recent legal decisions in Sudan and Saudi Arabia will reinforce accusations that Islam is an intolerant religion.

After years of civil war and bloodshed and having failed to effectively respond to what some describe as genocide in Darfur, Sudan’s government and judiciary have captured global attention with an outrageous verdict of guilt for a British school teacher for allegedly insulting Islam.
In a case in which it is clear that Gillian Gibbons did not intend to malign the Prophet Muhammad and that the children in her class had chosen the name Muhammad for their class teddy-bear, some might still question why she was not more culturally sensitive to a potential backlash. That said, school officials or the courts could have asked her to apologize for an inadvertent “mistake” in judgment. But instead, Gibbons who had made the decision and sacrifice to teach in Sudan, was found guilty of ‘insulting religion,’ a victim to a court’s distorted notion of Islamic law and justice.

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