The Pope has begun to build bridges with the Islamic world after a disastrous start, but, despite his attempts to build these bridges, it feels as if the hand of friendship is not being stretched out far enough.

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The question of faith being a private matter looks different from this side of the pond. First, we have an established Church. Second, we have state funded faith schools. Third, we have paid chaplains of a variety of faiths- most, but not all, Christian- in our hospitals and prisons.

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The Question: E-mail: Blessing or Curse?

The problem with E-mail is that it does not go away. In some ways, it reminds me of my conscience-it's always there, nagging at me.

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Religious leaders can make a huge difference to the people in their
communities- you have only to see how dearly Cardinal Heenan was loved, or Cardinal Hume, who become patron of many charities to do with homelessness and was loved within the Catholic Church and beyond.

Often, religious leaders themselves do not realize how much influence they have- they need to use it responsibly, and to inspire their communities, not to be dogmatic with them. I have myself been inspired by the leadership of people like Cardinal Hume, or by the two bishops of Derry in Northern Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, working together, Edward Daly and Jim Mehaffy, not to mention people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoeller. But these are exceptions. The question is really whether religious leaders look up to examples such as these, and try to emulate them, or whether they simply want to control and dominate their communities, which I regard as unsatisfactory in terms of leadership.

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Jewish identity is changing the world over. Traditionally, Jewish status was conferred through the mother- if you had a Jewish mother, you were Jewish. American Reform Judaism established the principle of patirlineality so that the child of a Jewish father, with a Jewish upbringing, was also classed as Jewish by status- but that status was not recognized by orthodox Jews.

With Reform Judaism being such a large component of U.S. Jewry, this has meant that a large proportion of people recognized as Jews by one section of the community are not accepted as such by another -- and yet there are many activities that stretch across the whole gamut of Jewish affiliation in the United States.

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As the presidential primary season begins, Americans increasingly want to know about the religious affiliation and beliefs of the candidates. It's a system very different from ours in the UK.

Just before Christmas, the first item on the BBC and other broadcasters' national news was that former Prime Minister Tony Blair had converted to Roman Catholicism and been received into the Church.

In the UK, the Queen is Defender of the Faith- the Church of England. Her heir, the Prince of Wales, has stated he wishes to be defender of faith, rather than The faith, including other people of faith in his status.

And, when asked, at the end of the week before Christmas, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, Nick Clegg, admitted openly that he was not a believer.

The custom used to be to say that faith was a personal matter. "None of your business," was the standard reply to journalists who asked. But that will no longer do. Faith- of all varieties- plays a much larger role in the largely irreligious UK, and it clearly plays a far greater role in the deeply evangelized United States.

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It's not only in America. We get our sex scandals in the UK, from Mark Oaten as Liberal Democrat leader hopeful who came out as having had a relationship with a rent boy to Simon Hughes, the party president, who had to come out as gay; from Conservative minister David Mellor who apparently wore his football strip when having an affair with a young actress to former prime minister John Major whose affair with Edwina Currie, a minister in his administration, was revealed in her autobiography, to John Profumo, all those years ago, who had a relationship with Christine Keeler, a prostitute..... sexual matters have always been meat and drink to political gossip. Does it matter?

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Halloween seems to me to beg lots of questions, not least the custom of children 'trick or treating' around the streets of London, becoming an increasing nuisance.

For us, it's an American import, and sits uncomfortably with our previously commonplace Guy Fawkes night on November 5, which has a strong anti-Catholic undertone- Guy Fawkes having been one of the so-called Papist plotters of the Gunpowder Plot, who were going to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. On Guy Fawkes (Bonfire) night there are fireworks, a huge bonfire, and a model 'guy' is burned on top of the bonfire, whilst in the weeks before children go around the streets collecting 'a penny for the guy, mister.....'

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A candidate's religious background- whatever faith or none- is not something that would affect my choice in how to vote. However, what would affect my choice is the degree of extremism, the questions about tolerance, religious and otherwise, the way religion is used- or not- in political speeches, and the extent to which religion is seen as a 'defining' factor.

Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, makes much of being a 'son of the manse'- and his attitudes have been strongly shaped by his Scottish Christian upbringing. He does not, however, choose to surround himself with others who share those attitudes alone, nor does he do religion publicly-we do less of that anyway in the UK. His strong moral stance is very welcome, and I warm to it- if he were intolerant, he would drive many of us away- whether that were religious or other intolerance. I think we would also be uncomfortable here in the UK with public prayer breakfasts etc- despite our established Church, religion is quite a private matter here.

Physicians' primary obligations are to their patients, without a doubt.

They have other obligations, of course, including to wider society, to their professional colleagues, both physicians and other health care professionals, to their employing institutions, and to their own ethical codes (which may or may not accord completely with their personal religious convictions.) We know that many physicians have strong moral objections to carrying out certain procedures for religious reasons-- e.g. Catholics and abortion. But they must tell their patients that that is the case, and be honest with them. And they must advise them to go elsewhere if the patients hold other and differing religious views. To pretend that physicians' own religious views trump those of their patients or wider society is both arrogant and wrong headed.

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My favourite verse- or perhaps verses- are Isaiah chapter 42 verses 6-7.
It's really verse 7 I love:

I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and will support you, and set you as a covenant for all peoples, to be a light to the nations, To open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the prison, and those who dwell in darkness out of the dungeon...

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I think the Lutheran church has been courageous in voting that way, but given the gradual realization that same sex relationships are not anything but what is 'normal' in nature, the question is really why other churches and other faiths have been so vicious in their condemnation and persecution of people in same sex relationships.

If the guidance to all people, gay or straight, is to be faithful, supportive, chaste and morally responsible, then the fact that clergy are living in such relationships- gay or straight- should make no difference.There is one other point. There is a complete obsession with sexual mores in Christianity, in my view, at least in part down to the view that sexual knowledge- and awareness- is part of the Fall of Adam and Eve.

But if you do not recognize the 'Fall' but think the story of Adam and Eve is there to tell us how we got into the real world, then you start from a different standpoint If you then take the view that sex is there for humanity to enjoy and to benefit from, and that all the rules that apply to other forms of behavior- integrity, trust, honesty, faithfulness- apply to sexual relationships, we come to a more sensible approach to sex and its undoubted power to move and compel us to behave in a variety of different ways.

Physicians' primary obligations are to their patients, without a doubt.

They have other obligations, of course, including to wider society, to
their professional colleagues, both physicians and other health care
professionals, to their employing institutions, and to their own ethical
codes (which may or may not accord completely with their personal
religious convictions.) We know that many physicians have strong moral
objections to carrying out certain procedures for religious reasons- e.g.
Catholics and abortion. But they must tell their patients that that is
the case, and be honest with them. And they must advise them to go elsewhere
if the patients hold other and differing religious views. To pretend
that physicians' own religious views trump those of their patients or wider
society is both arrogant and wrong-headed.

It is a very good thing if a Hindu chaplain opens the senate proceedings with prayer.

We are just beginning to try to move away from the only prayers (every day, before proceedings start) in the House of the Lords in the UK being conducted by the Church of England bishops. There is no sign of a move. I cannot comment on church and state divides, but in terms of
having prayers at all, it is a huge improvement to have people of all faiths conducting the prayers from time to time, and it works very well in the Scottish parliament.

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There are some who believe that using the same language as one's forebears for prayer is essential- hence many orthodox Jews pray only in Hebrew- or Aramaic- even though we know that at some stages and in some places bits of the vernacular were used- indeed, Aramaic is a case in point. My view is different.

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There is now no absolute moral position. It was clear, in my view, that we
should not have gone into Iraq. We did so on the understanding that there
were 'weapons of mass destruction'.

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Questioning one's faith is absolutely essential.

There is a growth- very unattractive and worrying-in a religious position across the faiths that wants to forget the Enlightenment ever happened, and does not believe we should think for ourselves, use our God-given intelligence to work out, question and generally use the evidence from scientific research, to think for ourselves how to interpret the traditional religious views of how we came to be where we are, and what we know about human life and death.

A creative modern approach to religion requires of us to question, discuss, ask, answer, and listen to others. It also requires us to use the knowledge that exists everywhere around the world in all fields of human endeavor both to question our faith and to strengthen it, for only by questioning and testing one's faith can one be sure it is robust and worth defending.

As a Jew, there is no doubt. I am not even sure I understand what being
saved means, but I certainly know what doing good works means, and doing
good works, carrying out God's wishes on this earth, is why we are here
in the first place.

The world will only be a better place when we all realize
that actions to improve life for everyone else are what matters, and are
less concerned with our personal well being, or even, dare I say it, our
personal salvation.

It's not that it's difficult to keep one's faith in times of war- after
all, war is man-made and the suffering it brings is also man made.

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Of course religion is man-made -- it is a human response-- and
structuring into human organizations- to the awareness of God within and beyond
human beings.

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