Did Jesus literally rise from the dead? Twenty-five years after the event St. Paul gave this unambiguous answer: "If Christ has not risen, our preaching is in vain and so too is your faith" (I Cor.15,14).

The message of the first believers was not the Sermon on the Mount; it was Resurrection. "I recall to your minds the gospel I preached...what I also received...that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day." (I Cor.15,1-5). The risen Christ is not a reanimated corpse; "what is sown perishable, is raised imperishable" (I Cor.15,42); but raised he was. An un-risen Jesus is an un-divine Jesus, and instead of Christianity what we have is an ethical teaching shorn of the supernatural, a pallid deism, or what Flannery O'Connor famously called "the Church of Christ without Christ," "where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way.

First of all, it is important to state emphatically that there are no grounds to the rumor that Jesus is a registered Republican. He himself was asked (Matthew 21, 15-23) if he were voting with the Jewish Nationalists or the Herodian (accommodation with Rome) party. ("Should we be paying taxes to Caesar?") His answer, seemingly evasive, made clear that his teaching was not concerned with man's political arrangements, but with the salvation of his soul.

In his recent book "Jesus of Nazareth" Pope Benedict XVI makes the following observation: "While the Torah presents a very definite social order, giving the people a juridical and social framework for war and peace, for just politics and for daily life, there is nothing like that to be found in Jesus' teaching. Discipleship of Jesus offers no politically concrete program for structuring society." (p.114)

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How are we to interpret the Pew survey that more than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood (44% if one counts shifts among Protestant denominations)? It may be one of the more important findings about religion in America to be published in recent years. Is this affiliation switching a good thing? It certainly shows the reality of religious freedom in America. People feel freer now to switch from parish to parish and from denomination to denomination. We have many options, many channels to choose from. It's hard not to argue that having 100 channels to choose from is better than having only two or three, or just one as happens in so many places.

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Do I believe that Barack Obama elicits religious fervor among his followers? The fact that the question is asked would seem to suggest a perception that he does. This is not itself evidence of a significant presence of religion in his or any other candidate's campaign. In fact this phenomenon may really be signaling a lack of real religion in the American electorate.

Many years ago someone complained to Prime Minister McMillan that the people were looking for spiritual inspiration (which he presumably was not providing). If the people want spiritual inspiration, he replied, let them go the Archbishop of Canterbury. His point was that he wasn't there to provide spiritual inspiration, but to address the secular issues. Yet people want more than a parsing of policy. They want to be inspired. They want the "vision thing". And if real religion is missing, they will still need the experience of a redeemer or messiah, and they will look for him in the political arena.

Obama seems to have tapped in to this spiritual hunger. For the time being it has served his candidacy, allowing him to proclaim a message of change and rebirth without having to focus on policy specifics.

Of course we should forgive others, even if they have committed atrocities. To say so is not simply to repeat a religious platitude. Health professionals will be the first to stress the connection between forgiveness and sanity (cfr. Helping Clients Forgive, by Richard Fitzgibbons M.D. and Robert Enright, Ph.D., APA Press).

The perplexing question is how can you do this? You realize how difficult it is when you come up against the anger of the families of victims crying out for vengeance.

The Sermon on the Mount that culminates with the command to love our enemies is full of the new and seemingly impossible logic of Jesus: turn the other cheek, if he asks for your coat, give him your shirt as well, etc. Only God's grace enables us to love those who persecute us, following the example of Jesus, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." The saints also show us the way.

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The short answer to the question of torture is simply "NO." Torture is never justified. Never.

But, of course, no self-respecting blogger is going to be pleased with an answer so brief. And then there is that adverb "never," conjuring up extreme situations. What if intelligence has determined that terrorists plan to blow up a major but undisclosed population center, perhaps Grand Central, Saint Peter's in Rome or the U.S. Capitol, with countless innocent victims? A suspect who has knowledge of the plot is in our custody. Are we saying that we cannot use any means to get this information and save those lives?

Some people, notably Senator John McCain, have offered a pragmatic argument against torture, saying that the information obtained through torture is unreliable. That may well be, but I prefer simply to stand on principle.

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It is unquestionably true that the major religious traditions preach love, compassion and forgiveness. Is that their basic message? Yes and No.

What religion is about is God. Benedict XVI puts it this way is his recent best seller, "Jesus of Nazareth:" “What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God.”

But God is love. This is especially clear in the Christian tradition. When Benedict became Pope he wanted the first major statement of his papacy to be about the essence of Christianity, rather than some peripheral issue. Hence his encyclical, God is Love, in two parts: on the nature of love and on its practice.

Does what Benedict wrote about love express the message of Judaism and Islam, of Buddhists and Hindus? I don’t think so. Their path to love and forgiveness is not going to be as immediate or as obvious as the Son of God dying on a cross for the sake of love and forgiveness.

It would be disingenuous of me to say that I pay no heed to a candidate's religious background. Of course I do. It is one indication among many that a candidate truly seeks justice rather than power. It is true that an unchurched politician can be an outstanding example of justice -- think of Lincoln -- but religion is more likely to make him a just man than not.

That said, I am not too interested in a candidate's religious background as such (as a child he was an altar boy) or in his exhibition of fervor (the Good Book prominently displayed as he departs from Sunday church). I would prefer not to see religion worn on his sleeve, but I do hope that religion, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, inform his words and actions.

Pope Benedict has re-stated what the Church has always taught: Jesus founded the Catholic Church, which has faithfully passed on Christ's message. So what else is new?

What did indeed seem new in 1964 was the Second Vatican Council's declaration (Decree on Ecumenism) that the "separated Churches and Communities" could be regarded as "instruments of salvation." But the sentence where those epoch-making words occur continues "whose value derives from that fullness of grace and of truth which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church."

Pope Benedict's most recent document re-states both aspects of this teaching from the Second Vatican Council. Benedict identifies the Catholic Church with the one Church founded by Christ, but the Pope also states that elements of truth and salvation are present outside the visible confines of the Catholic Church.

I do not believe that Benedict's effort to clearly explain Catholic doctrine will undermine ecumenical efforts. The search for Christian unity is not about glossing over doctrinal differences; it is about trying to clarify points of agreement and disagreement, and going deeper in our understanding of the truth about God.

I would imagine that for most people being saved is paramount. That is assuming, of course, that they think they need to be saved, because they think they are sinners who are lost and unable to save themselves. If they don't see the need to be saved "from outside," then Christ the Savior is irrelevant, as is faith in him. They can do it without him. At most, Jesus Christ is just a good example. We earn our salvation through our good works.

So if I think that God is not involved in my salvation, that I do it myself by my good works, then I have really done away with the faith perspective. I may keep a deist God, perhaps, who may be needed to get the chain of being started, but he does not save me.

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The question implies that when a society is plunged into the chaos and evil of war, faith becomes especially difficult to hold on to. This is undoubtedly true, but many religious writers would say that it is far easier to maintain faith in wartime than in peace.

C.S. Lewis devotes at least one chapter of The Screwtape Letters to this point, and his Mere Christianity, perhaps the best-selling religious book after the Bible, first appeared as radio broadcasts on BBC during the Battle of Britain.

In war human securities and consolations are blown to smithereens and people are moved to seek a more lasting foundation and a more permanent city. After 9/11 there were those whose faith was left in shambles, but there seem to have been many more who were moved by the catastrophe to turn back to God.

In Hemingway's novel of Spain during the civil war, For Whom the Bell Tolls, one of the most vivid scenes depicts a nominally atheist soldier praying the Hail Mary over and over in his foxhole as he is being strafed by enemy planes. The more challenging question may be: How do you keep your faith in times of peace and prosperity?

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