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.

Continue »

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.

Continue »