The stand-off between secularism and fundamentalism is getting bigger across the western world -- and the churches are of course caught up in it, on both sides. I'm intrigued, as a British onlooker on the US scene, to observe just how much weight is given to 'religion' in one way or another whereas in my country, despite (or perhaps because of?) or official 'establishment', we more or less don't do it like that...

Both fundamentalism and secularism are of course high modernist features, and both are well capable of being deconstructed within postmodernity (thank goodness). The question is, what will replace them? And when will our politicians, on both sides of the Atlantic, notice that postmodern irony has eaten away at the core of their shrill vote-for-me-and-it'll-all-come-right certainties?