In the 17th century, John Locke published Two Treatises of Government and also A Letter Concerning Toleration. These two essays challenged both the church and the state and made a strong claim for toleration of religious freedom and dissent, in effect, a claim for the freedom of speech. The works were so dangerously controversial that Locke first published them anonymously, and then, in fear of his life, fled England and went to Holland from 1683 to 1689 to avoid being hung.

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There are no non-combatants in war anymore. What the 21st century has brought us, building upon the bloody 20th, is the death of the concept of the non-combatant. Terrorism has destroyed many things, but the chief among them is the compete destruction of the idea that there is anyone innocent, anyone who may not, in good conscience, be targeted in war. The ideology of the terrorist is that all except the pure (i.e. those who are of the same ideology) are guilty and deserve to die.

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Who would you rather follow, a brutal neo-dictator and former KGB member or a guy who claims to be the Siberian Jesus and who teaches that people need to love one and support one another?

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Actually, the title of this post should be, “It’s the Politicized Religion, Stupid.” The overly pious rhetoric by some politicians betrays a superficial faith and a lack of respect for democracy.

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“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” That, of course is the text of the famous cable that Mark Twain sent to the U.S. from London after his obituary had been mistakenly published. Huckabee's strong showing this past weekend shows reports of the death of the Religious Right may also be greatly exaggerated.

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This is a very important question and I wish to be very specific in my answer. In preparation for writing this post, I have re-read Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s very helpful book What’s Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. This is a thoughtful and useful book in many ways and I highly recommend it to our readers. Everyone will benefit if we listen carefully to one another.

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Emily Dickinson called hope “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul”. For those impatient of poetry and who demand pose as the condition of political discourse, I’ll spell it out for you. What Dickinson meant is that hope is the spirit moving among and through us, lifting us up.

Hope is the profoundly religious cord that Obama has struck in the minds and hearts of Americans. Religion is the search for ultimate meaning and purpose in life. So many of us had become so stricken with despair in the last years; Americans were cowering in fear and living down to their worst selves, instead of aspiring to be our best selves. Parts of the Christian faith were even co-opted and dragged down to be a “wedge” to drive us apart and to fear one another.

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The Internal Revenue Service has notified the United Church of Christ that the IRS has opened an investigation into Senator Barack Obama’s address at the UCC’s 2007 General Synod. The IRS is accusing the UCC of engaging in “political activities.”

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It is clear from this Pew study that the old denominational affiliations no longer apply. The religious landscape in the U.S. is best described these days as “post-denominational.” Post-denominational means that it is far less important whether you are Methodist or Baptist, or even Catholic, than where you fall along the continuum of fundamentalist to evangelical to progressive (liberal) to secular or unaligned. While some faiths or denominations generally are more evangelical or more liberal, each tradition has a wide spectrum within it. If you are a liberal Christian in a conservative Protestant denomination, you may have more in common with a Reformed Jew than with the Christians in your own denomination.

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