The Question: Which "ism" is more entrenched in America, sexism or racism? Which should religion address?

Both racism and sexism continue to be present in the United States, though in different ways.

To begin with sexism, sexist language is more culturally acceptable than racist language. An example from the presidential primary campaign: a man (I believe in South Carolina) asked John McCain, “What are we going to do about 'the bitch’?” As I recall, McCain did not challenge his use of the word. If a questioner had used the “n-word,” it is hard to imagine that any candidate would have let that go unchallenged. In New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton was heckled, “Iron my shirts.” Again, it is hard to imagine a racial stereotype being used in public in a similar way.

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As the survey itself indicates, most who have changed their religious affiliation have done so within Christianity, changing from one denomination to another.

The percentage may be even greater among people who are commonly known as “progressive” Christians. My experience as a lecturer in all regions of the United States suggests this. Most of my audiences are progressive Christians (or they wouldn’t come to hear me). I often ask my audiences, “How many of you are in the same denomination that you grew up in?” The average: 40 percent. Over half – around 60 percent - have changed their denominational affiliation.

I think this is healthy. It suggests that many people have moved beyond their socialization within a particular form of Christianity to a thoughtful (and sometimes agonizing) re-assessment of what it means to be Christian.

And I suspect that most of these have moved from a more conventional and conservative form of Christianity to a more progressive form. This is encouraging.

I am a committed Christian and a complete agnostic about the afterlife. I use “agnostic” in its precise sense: one who does not know. Moreover, I know that I cannot resolve “not knowing” by “believing” – whatever we believe about an afterlife has nothing to do with whether there is one or what it is like.

There is more to say. I think that conventional Christianity’s emphasis on the afterlife for many centuries is one of its negative features. I have often said that if I were to make a list of Christianity’s ten worst contributions to religion, it would be its emphasis on an afterlife, for more than one reason.

When the afterlife is emphasized, it almost inevitable that Christianity becomes a religion of requirements and rewards. If there is a blessed afterlife, it seems unfair to most people that everyone gets one, regardless of how they have lived. So there must be something that differentiates those who get to go to heaven from those who don’t – and that something must be something we do, either believing or behaving or some combination of both. And this counters the central Christian claim that salvation is by grace, not by meeting requirements.

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Full disclosure: I am among those who opposed the invasion of Iraq before it happened. I opposed it for Christian reasons. Moreover, I think those reasons have a pragmatic function: they would have prevented us from embarking on a pre-emptive war that has proved to be disastrous.

According to the almost two millennia old tradition of Christian teachings about war, there are only two legitimate Christian positions. The first is a commitment to non-violence. Jesus taught non-violence and non-violent resistance to evil. For the next three centuries, Christians were committed to non-violence, and Christian writers explicitly grounded their refusal of violence in the teachings of Jesus. The first three centuries are often referred to as the time of Christian pacifism: Christians were pacifists, loyal to the message they had received from Jesus.

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Without questioning, faith is idolatrous. Just as patriotism without questioning risks becoming idolatrous nationalism, so faith without questioning risks becoming idolatrous religion.

To explain: when faith is defined as unquestioning acceptance of “tenets or traditions,” whether drawn from the Bible or doctrine or both, then the object of faith is no longer God, but the tenets and traditions themselves. Something other than God has been given an absolute status – which is what makes it idolatrous.

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Was Jesus a social revolutionary? In the ordinary sense in which we use the phrase "social revolutionary," yes. Like the Jewish prophets before him, he was passionate about economic justice and peace, and advocated active non-violent resistance to the domination system of his time. He was a voice of peasant social protest against the economic inequity and violence of the imperial domination system, mediated in the Jewish homeland by client rulers of the Roman Empire - in Galilee, Herod Antipas, and in Judea and Jerusalem, the temple authorities. He spoke of God's kingdom on earth, as the Lord's Prayer puts it: Your kingdom come on earth, as it already is in heaven. Heaven is not the problem - earth is.

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The biblical meaning of "repentance" is quite different from an apology. In the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament, "repentance" means "to return" - that is, to return from exile, to return to life in the presence of God, to a life centered in God.

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I believe that God is present everywhere, in everything - that the universe is shot through with the radiant presence of God. Thus we are always "in God," even as God is more than the universe.

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As I understand Easter, to the extent that Easter can be understood, it is not about something happening to the corpse of Jesus, but about the continuing experience of Jesus among his followers after his death.

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Sex is seen as sacred or sinful perhaps for the same reason. Sex has power. Of course, not all sex does. There is great sex, mediocre sex, and bad sex, just as there is great music, mediocre music, and bad music.

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Of course care for creation should be a priority, but when the Bible was written, there was no “environmental issue” as we think of it.

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I pray all the time. I do not mean “every minute,” but many times a day.

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Most cultures have been patriarchal, and the world’s religions have for the most part sanctified patriarchy, legitimating it in their teaching and practice. I illustrate with Christianity, the religion I know best.

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As a Christian who seeks to take Jesus seriously, I have an ultimate commitment to non-violence and a reluctant acceptance of the notion of a “just war.”

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My most formative religious experiences were a series of mystical experiences. They began to occur in my early thirties. They changed my understanding of the meaning of the word “God”-of what that word points to-and gave me an unshakable conviction that God (or “the sacred”) is real and can be experienced.

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Yes, Jesus is the Son of God, Lord and Christ; the Light of the World and the Bread of Life; and the Way, Truth and Life. He is all of this for me, as a Christian who is also a historian of early Christianity.

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The United States has more Christians than any country in the world, both in numbers and as a per cent of our population. Roughly 80% of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Only about half are actively involved in the life of a church, but this is still a large number. But are we a Christian nation?

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Our children deserve to know the stories that matter to us. So tell them the stories of your tradition --and of other traditions, when appropriate.

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Does the Pope have a speech-writer? I do not know, but I suspect so – and more than one. Given the Pope’s schedule, it is difficult to imagine that he sits at a laptop writing his own lectures and pronouncements. If a speechwriter did write the lecture that Pope Benedict gave in Regensburg on September 12, he should be fired.

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