John Kerry says he wants to "rejoin the community of nations." There is no issue on which the United States more fails the global test of international consensus than Israel. Last July, the General Assembly declared Israel's defensive fence illegal by a vote of 150-6. In defending Israel, America stood almost alone.

You want to appease the "international community"? Sacrifice Israel. Gradually, of course, and always under the guise of "peace." Apply relentless pressure on Israel to make concessions to a Palestinian leadership that has proved (at Camp David 2000) it will never make peace.

Lawmaking inevitably involves some group imposing its beliefs on the rest of us. That's the nature of the democratic process. If we say that we "ought" to do something, we are making a moral judgment. When our legislators turn that judgment into law, somebody's ought becomes a "must" for the whole of society. This is not inherently dangerous; it's how pluralism works....

Catholics have an obligation to work for the common good and the dignity of every person. We see abortion as a matter of civil rights and human dignity, not simply as a matter of religious teaching. We are doubly unfaithful -- both to our religious convictions and to our democratic responsibilities -- if we fail to support the right to life of the unborn child. Our duties to social justice by no means end there. But they do always begin there, because the right to life is foundational.

For Catholics to take a "pro-choice" view toward abortion contradicts our identity and makes us complicit in how the choice plays out. The "choice" in abortion always involves the choice to end the life of an unborn human being. For anyone who sees this fact clearly, neutrality, silence or private disapproval are not options. They are evils almost as grave as abortion itself. If religious believers do not advance their convictions about public morality in public debate, they are demonstrating not tolerance but cowardice.

The openly gay Episcopal bishop whose ordination threatens to fracture the worldwide Anglican Communion said Wednesday he "genuinely and deeply regrets" the pain this caused some believers, but he sees no need to repent because "the Holy Spirit led us."...

He said he finds it "astoundingly important" that there was no call to repentance and that the report stresses the great value of remaining in communion -- willing to meet and pray together."

"Unity is not in unanimity over a particular issue, but in Jesus Christ," he said. "The communion is about relationships, not about laws. The report is very Gospel-like in this way. Jesus was always breaking laws and finding ways to love someone and to do the right thing."

Peace is not doing nothing. Peace is not leaving evildoers on the loose. Peace is not passive, but aggressive, engaging in the far more arduous labor of making peace, of reconciling with people who hate you, of sparing no effort to get inside the other's skin and figuring out how to live together on this planet. Am I blaming America? Of course not; I love America. But doesn't our immense power advantage give us the privilege to craft a foreign policy that is more creative than "If you cross us, we will thump you, and hard"? If I treat my wife or raise my children this way, they will cower in fear, but they will never love me, and we will never have peace.

Why not look to the breeding grounds of terrorism, places like Somalia or Kenya, and ask how to make peace with the teenager there who is being fed plenty of propaganda about how evil America is? Extreme Arab groups at least pretend to care about him, for they are the ones putting up clinics and schools. We have the power, the billions, to go into the poorest places in the world, where people envy Americans, and show that would-be terrorist that we are not the enemy, that we really are good. We could befriend our enemies -- but it's a long, challenging, tough-minded task that can't be captured in a soundbite, and isn't half as appealing as a tough politician waving his fist.

My plea is that we once again say the beautiful name out loud: Peace! Do not be mistaken: God still utters that name that must not be spoken. God pleads for peace, for truth, for reconciliation. We just have to learn to care again, and to take to the streets, to sing those old peace anthems, to dream God's dream. It's still relevant.

The Anglican Communion had a relatively minor crisis as new consciousness about homosexuality struggled to be born in the face of ancient prejudice. This commission has taken this minor crisis and turned it into a major revolution that will move Anglicanism toward the literal-mindedness that now threatens not just Christianity, but religious systems all over the world. That is not a future that anyone should welcome. If this report is adopted, it will create a church ill-equipped to live in the 21st century. Death comes in many forms -- the inability to embrace new reality is one of them.

It is now time to measure the mettle of our elected Anglican leaders. Spines will have to stiffen as they are not used to doing. Popularity will have to be sacrificed for the sake of truth and witness. The next years will determine whether our present leadership has the ability to meet the challenge that they themselves have allowed to develop.

It prays for good will, speaks of the challenge of the gospel and the love of Christ. But commission members - indeed many senior Anglicans - are gloomy about the prospect of reconciling the irreconcilable, bridging the gap between those who believe the Bible is perfectly clear in condemning homosexuality and those who would like to see it reinterpreted for modern society.

The trouble is that the church's traditional remedies of evasion and compromise have deserted it over the issue of gays. As in all marriage breakdowns -- and civil wars -- the two sides have stopped talking to each other, both convinced they are right.

To aver that the idea that "faith without works is dead" is "fundamental" to Christianity is, effectively, to say that Protestants aren't Christian.

Kerry, however, has repeated that assertion numerous times on the campaign trail. Protestants ought to call him on it.

Catholics, too, should take issue with Kerry's formulation of the issue. Granted, it is undeniably true that the Catholic Church fought Martin Luther bitterly over his insistence on the primacy of St. Paul's repeated assertion that men are "justified," or saved, through faith alone. The Catholic Church has indeed cited the passage from the Book of James to argue that good works are important. But to be important is not to be fundamental. The passage from James is not a matter of church doctrine. (More on that a little later in this essay.) But what is a matter of fundamental doctrine is the protection of innocent life (or at least life innocent of all but Original Sin). Here's The Catechism of the Catholic Church on abortion: "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law."

That is why it is a flat-out theological error, as well as a fallacy of logic, for Kerry to say that "I believe that choice is a woman's choice. It's between a woman, God, and her doctor." There is no cogent way for a Catholic to say he is compelled to express his faith through "works," and to say that he is certain that those required works include specific policy choices "to clean up the environment," and to achieve "equality and justice" -- imperatives that are not policy-specific either in the Bible or in church teaching -- but that he is not compelled as a Catholic to support laws against what the Catechism effectively defines as infanticide.

When he first testified before Congress on stem-cell research, on April 26, 2000, Mr. Reeve said that only embryonic stem cells could produce "true biological miracles," because adult stem cells "are no longer pluripotent, or capable of transforming into other cell types." Many studies contradicted this claim at the time, and dozens more have appeared since. In fact, a few weeks after his testimony, a study funded by his own Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation was published in The Journal of Neuroscience Research, beginning with the sentence: "Pluripotent stem cells have been detected in multiple tissues in the adult, participating in normal replacement and repair while undergoing self-renewal." The authors cited eleven other studies showing the same thing. They proceeded to show why adult bone-marrow stem cells "may constitute an abundant and accessible cellular reservoir for the treatment of a variety of neurologic diseases."

This study funded by Reeve's foundation had been submitted to the journal in March, almost a month before he testified. I asked myself then: How could Mr. Reeve's own scientists not have known that the testimony they prepared for him was false?

Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority on Monday gave its first public indication of which candidate it would like to see in the White House next year.

"If [President] Bush wins, he said he would renew efforts to resume the peace process," PA foreign minister Nabil Shaath told the BBC in London. "However, with the staff that surrounds him and with his current opinions, it doesn't look promising."

Under a Kerry administration, however, "it would be likely that several staff members during Clinton's administration would return," Shaath said. "That would be a good thing, but it could take at least a year before a policy is formulated."

President Bush's Christianity is not an enemy of his reason or deliberation. It is not an enemy of his fact-based decisions or self-reflection. It is the rock upon which he depends in these exceedingly tough times.

Even extreme church-state separatists, until recently, didn't make the absurd demand that our leaders divorce their faith from their governance. Nor are they requiring it of John Kerry.

What's clear is that secularists like Suskind don't believe that strong, committed Christians are well suited for governance. It's also clear they don't worry about John Kerry in this regard, which speaks volumes about their assessment of the sincerity of Kerry's professions of faith. Self-professing Christians may still hold office, provided they either aren't sincere about their faith or they keep it in the closet with the door closed and the lock secured.

Why should gay and lesbian Americans vote for you, since you don't support same-sex marriage?

Because I have a 35-year lifetime record of fighting for equality. Because the difference between me and George Bush will be the difference to gay and lesbian couples and individuals across this country--whether rights are afforded them or whether or not they are discriminated against.

Would you ever change your mind regarding same-sex marriage?

I have my view, and my view is my view. I can't tell you in 20 years or whenever, if someone made a persuasive argument, the world changes. You know, George Bush just changed his mind on a national security director, and he changed his mind on raiding Social Security, and he changed his mind on homeland security. So I don't predict the future. What I tell you is that my position is what it is.

From the pulpit to the pastures, Kerry is increasingly spreading a more spiritual message and visiting local churches, as he did the past two days in Ohio, to expound on the political lessons of the Bible's James and Saint Paul.

"Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come," Kerry intoned Sunday morning at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church. " 'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home." He told the crowd of 1,500 he wasn't there to preach but went on to, well, preach about the Good Samaritan, the emptiness of a faith devoid of deeds and God's high calling to love one another -- before criticizing from the pulpit President Bush over Social Security and jobs.

"I see deeds and I see a whole lot of things that when you add them up, make you wonder about the public words about values versus the public deeds and works that show values," Kerry said at the Baptist church here.

This, aides say, is Kerry's way of calling into question Bush's commitment to the teachings of the New Testament. In what has become a familiar refrain of Kerry's sermons, he told the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate God's calling to help the least of America's people.

"This," he said, "is how you reach the kingdom of Heaven."

What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent?

All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosity -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness....

Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms. If a president fishes, people buy poles; if he expresses displeasure, aides get busy finding evidence to support the judgment. A staff channels the leader.

A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners. Already Bush was saying, Have faith in me and my decisions, and you'll be rewarded. All through the White House, people were channeling the boss. He didn't second-guess himself; why should they?

The influence of President Bush's faith on his foreign policy has been greatly exaggerated by both friends and foes. Enthusiasts proudly call the president's foreign policy "faith based." Detractors angrily assert that the president invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein because he felt God called on him to do so.

But while Mr. Bush has given a number of reasons for invading Iraq -- from its past and potential use of weapons of mass destruction to its suspected stockpiles of such weapons to its sponsorship and harboring of terrorists -- a belief that the Almighty told him to send in the marines was not among them.

Abortion might be a crime in most states. Gay people could be thrown in prison for having sex in their homes. States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel. The Constitution might no longer protect inmates from being brutalized by prison guards. Family and medical leave and environmental protections could disappear.

It hardly sounds like a winning platform, and of course President Bush isn't openly espousing these positions. But he did say in his last campaign that his favorite Supreme Court justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and the nominations he has made to the lower courts bear that out. Justices Scalia and Thomas are often called "conservative," but that does not begin to capture their philosophies. Both vehemently reject many of the core tenets of modern constitutional law.

For years, Justices Scalia and Thomas have been lobbing their judicial Molotov cocktails from the sidelines, while the court proceeded on its moderate-conservative path. But given the ages and inclinations of the current justices, it is quite possible that if Mr. Bush is re-elected, he will get three appointments, enough to forge a new majority that would turn the extreme Scalia-Thomas worldview into the law of the land.

An issue as crucial as the future of marriage in America deserved more than the three minutes CBS newsman Bob Schieffer allowed it during last week's debate between President Bush and Senator John Kerry. And it deserved a more thoughtful introduction than Schieffer's irrelevant question about whether "homosexuality is a choice." (Do we debate issues of religious liberty by first asking if "religion is a choice?")

Even so, in their brief exchange on what may turn out to be the most critical social question of the next four years, Bush and Kerry each said something significant....

Bush is right: It is not in our national interest for so grave a question to be decided by judicial diktat. Far better that it be decided openly and fairly, with public debate and the participation of Congress and the states. Anything else would be profoundly undemocratic -- and unwise.