And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

Right now, neither party gets the values question right. The Democrats seem uncomfortable with the language of faith and values, preferring in recent decades the secular approach of restricting such matters to the private sphere. But where would we be if Martin Luther King Jr. had kept his faith to himself? The separation of church and state does not require the segregation of moral language and values from public life. The Republicans are comfortable with the language of religion and values. But the GOP wants to narrow the focus to hot-button social issues it then uses as wedges in political campaigns, while ignoring or obstructing the application of such values where they would threaten its agenda.

We should welcome the discussion of "moral values." And I believe the values debate should be the future of American politics. But how narrowly or widely will values be defined and how partisan will the discussion be? Will the moral-values debate cut both ways in politics, challenging both the political left and the political right? Will values be used as wedges and weapons to divide and destroy us, or as bridges to bring us together -- to find common ground by moving to higher ground?

For US columnists, the end-of-year column bemoaning the fanatical efforts to expunge all Christmas traditions from public life has become an annual Christmas tradition in itself. This year, there's no shortage of contenders for silliest Santa suit. In one New Jersey school district, the annual trip to see Dickens's A Christmas Carol has been cancelled after threats of legal action. At another New Jersey school, the policy on not singing any songs mentioning God, Christ, angels, etc, has been expanded to prohibit instrumental performances of music that would mention God if any singers were around to sing the words. So you can't do Silent Night as a piano solo or Handel's Messiah even if you junk the hallelujahs....

Jesus, Mary and Joseph long ago got the heave-ho from the schoolhouse, but the great secular trinity of Santa, Rudolph and Frosty aren't faring much better. Frosty The Snowman and Jingle Bells are offensive to those of a non-Frosty or non-jingly persuasion: they're code for traditional notions of Christmas. The basic rule of thumb is: anything you enjoy singing will probably get you sued. At my little girl's school, the holiday concert is a mélange of multicultural dirges that are parcelled out entirely randomly: she seems to have got stuck with the H's - last year she wound up with a Hannukah song, this year she's landed some Hispanic thing; next year, no doubt, a traditional Hutu disembowelling chant. It would be offensive to inflict Deck the Halls or God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen on any hypothetical Hutu in attendance, but it's not offensive to inflict hot Hutu hits on bewildered moppets.

The Christmas wars seem hotter this year. Listening to conservative talk shows and watching the lawsuits fly around, you'd think there's a conspiracy to block celebrations of the birth of Jesus Christ. Politicians who speak of "the holidays" instead of "Christmas" now face angry Christian protests. What's happening?...

Many of our fights over religious freedom pit those who fear government meddling with faith against those who worry that isolating government from religion interferes with its free exercise. That's the civilized version of the argument. The Christmas confrontations are particularly prickly because they come down to competing struggles for respect. Some Christians see the broader culture as unremittingly hostile to their faith and wonder why it's easier to celebrate Santa, Rudolph and the Grinch than to sing praise to Jesus, Mary and Joseph....

At the personal level: What in the world is "Christian" about insisting on saying "Merry Christmas" to a devout Jew or Hindu who might reasonably view the statement as a sign of disrespect? At the level of government: Is it really "Christian" for a religious majority to press its advantage over religious minorities, including nonbelievers?

We've seen the acceleration of attacks on Christmas throughout the nation...That Christians can't seek to influence the culture, politics or the public square without being of accused of trying to establish a theocracy is maddening. It is precisely because of this nation's Judeo-Christian roots that those of all faiths enjoy unparalleled religious liberty.

Secular leftists constantly recite the statistic that some 80 percent of Americans are Christian. And they proudly concede America's unmatched record on religious liberty. Yet they are blind to the conclusion that those two facts taken together constitute powerful evidence against their misplaced fear that Christians want to suppress the religious liberty of others or shut them out of the political process.

We waged war on teaching and practicing religion in the public schools on the flimsy grounds of separation of church and state and the First Amendment. But there can be no real separation of religion and society. The president, his Cabinet, the Congress and the courts are full of men and women who are members of churches and other religious institutions. Their decisions are influenced in some measure by their religious traditions. The president has made it abundantly clear he feels inspired by his higher power when he makes decisions. Like it or not, a huge number of U.S. citizens say they are members of some religion.

None of them wishes to have an established church like the state churches of England and Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The Founding Fathers went so far as to say there will be no establishment of religion. But nothing prohibits people from expressing their religious beliefs in public, both personally and politically. Yet liberals have said that there must be a separation of religion and society, that anything religious is construed as establishing religion. Thus, liberals in general are seen as anti-religion, and not just for insisting on separation of church and state.

A further trouble is that the worship of science and technology has replaced religion in the hearts of the intelligentsia. People put their faith in these areas in the hope that they will solve our problems. That is indeed an act of faith, as there can be no evidence that it is true.

During the coverage of the crime, the status of the Bobbie Jo Stinnett's unborn girl steadily changed. All at once on AOL News during the weekend, there were headlines tracking events in the case: "Woman Slain, Fetus Stolen"; "Woman Arrested, Baby Returned in Bizarre Murder"; "Infant in Good Health." Note how a "fetus" -- something for which American law and culture has very little respect -- was somehow instantly transformed into a "baby" and "infant" -- for which we have the highest respect. By what strange alchemy does that happen?...

Given that fetuses are routinely destroyed in America (and legally can be destroyed up to the point of delivery), it was odd to see such an uproar about the welfare of one. Indeed, it is tempting to say that from a pure legal point of view, Lisa Montgomery simply killed the wrong victim, taking the life of the mom instead of the fetus.

But that's not entirely true. Earlier this year Congress passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act partly in reaction to the Peterson case, making it a crime to harm an unborn baby while assaulting the mother. Kate Michelman, president of NARAL, complained that President Bush is doing "everything in his power to restrict a woman's right to choose." Right to choose what? To have her baby harmed by an assailant?

Mr. Yushchenko, who typically ends his speeches with "Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the Ukrainian People, and Glory to the Lord, Our God," is a devout Orthodox Christian from northeastern Ukraine who regularly takes confession and communion. His faith is reinforced by his American-born wife, Katya Chumachenko, who last week told the Chicago Tribune: "We're strong believers in God, and we strongly believe that God has a place for each one of us in this world, and that he has put us in this place for a reason."

Such sentiments echo the way that President Bush has spoken of his own faith. And like Mr. Bush, Mr. Yushchenko is careful to sound an ecumenical tone in his public remarks. At a Dec. 6 interfaith gathering, Mr. Yushchenko observed that "the spiritual harmony that rules among religious leaders on the platform is an image of the spiritual harmony present in Independence Square."...

The role of faith in Ukraine's Orange Revolution is hardly surprising. Religion has been on an upswing in Ukraine since the collapse of communism, not least among the young. While both candidates have sought to identify themselves with faith-based values, Mr. Yushchenko's emphasis on ethical principles, dignity and clean government is trumping Mr. Yanukovych's claims to piety and the outreach efforts of his Moscow-backed clerics.

Leaving aside Mr. Donohue (and how I wish we could), Mr. Rich has hit on something profound: It's not the hippie Jesus, the young carpenter with lots of neat things to say, that offends, but the Christ who suffered mutilation and died a horrible death in a cosmic drama that redeems us that is so offensive. It's always been this way, and Mr. Rich's recoil from the Christ who died is both modern and timeless.

As we close the books on 2004, and not a moment too soon, it's clear that, as far as the culture goes, this year belonged to Mel Gibson's mammoth hit. Its prurient and interminable wallow in the Crucifixion, to the point where Jesus' actual teachings become mere passing footnotes to the sumptuously depicted mutilation of his flesh, is as representative of our time as "Godspell" was of terminal-stage hippiedom 30 years ago. The Gibson conflation of religion with violence reflects the universal order of the day — whether the verbal fisticuffs of the culture war within America, as exemplified by Mr. Donohue's rant on national television or, far more lethally, the savagery of the actual war that radical Islam brought to our doorstep on 9/11....

Yet if you watch the news and listen to certain politicians, especially since Election Day, you'll hear an ever-growing drumbeat that Christianity is under siege in America. Like Mr. Gibson, the international movie star who portrayed himself as a powerless martyr to a shadowy anti- Christian conspiracy in the run-up to the release of "The Passion," his fellow travelers on the right detect a sinister plot -- of secularists, "secular Jews" and "elites" -- out to destroy the religion followed by more than four out of every five Americans.

How can those in this country's overwhelming religious majority maintain that they are victims in a fiery battle with forces of darkness? It is certainly not about actual victimization. Christmas is as pervasive as it has ever been in America, where it wasn't even declared a federal holiday until after the Civil War. What's really going on here is yet another example of a post-Election-Day winner-takes-all power grab by the "moral values" brigade. As Mr. Gibson shrewdly contrived his own crucifixion all the way to the bank, trumping up nonexistent threats to his movie to hype it, so the creation of imagined enemies and exaggerated threats to Christianity by "moral values" mongers of the right has its own secular purpose. The idea is to intimidate and marginalize anyone who objects to their efforts to impose the most conservative of Christian dogma on public policy. If you're against their views, you don't have a differing opinion -- you're anti-Christian (even if you are a Christian).

Secularites are in a state of panic about the role of evangelical Christians in the reelection of George Bush. They actually believe that American democracy is in danger, that we are on the verge of becoming a theocracy....

According to this way of thinking, which has become commonplace in academia, evangelicals and jihadists are essentially the same. They both oppose homosexuality (as if opposing gay marriage were the same thing as stoning homosexuals to death). They are both "anti-women" (with opposition to abortion as the moral equivalent of the utter subjugation of women in Muslim countries). They are both opposed to modern science (meaning skepticism about evolution and revulsion at embryonic stem-cell research is the same as Muslim primitivism). Fundamentalists of both sides are violent, murderous, and oppressive (with the war against terrorism as the moral equivalent of terrorism itself)....

Fear is often a prelude to active persecution. This is true particularly with the rise of paranoid fantasies that the group is part of a sinister plot to take over the country, or even the world.

So we should reassure our secularist friends that we are far, far from any kind of Christian theocracy. It was democracy that chose President Bush and that disapproves of gay marriage. The true threat to democracy is not theocracy, but aristocracy, the rule by the "best," which is what our cultural elite consider themselves, as evident in their condescension and disdain for ordinary, mostly religious, Americans.

I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it.

It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.

To insist that the overwhelming majority of this country stifle its religious impulses in public so that minorities can feel "comfortable" not only understandably enrages the majority, but commits two sins. The first is profound ungenerosity toward a majority of fellow citizens who have shown such generosity of spirit toward minority religions.

The second is the sin of incomprehension -- a failure to appreciate the uniqueness of the communal American religious experience. Unlike, for example, the famously tolerant Ottoman Empire or the generally tolerant Europe of today, America does not merely allow minority religions to exist at its sufferance. It celebrates and welcomes and honors them.

When it comes to other topics -- smoking, drinking, drug abuse -- we don't hesitate to give our children the benefit of an unambiguous "no." We tell them flat out that they shouldn't do it. If anyone said, "But kids are going to drink any way, so let's show them how they can minimize the effects of a hangover," most parents would suggest that that person have his head examined.

Yet who can deny that the same logic (or lack thereof) lies behind the push for "comprehensive" sex ed? In the name of "safety," we've allowed a river of pornography to flow through our schools for the last couple of decades. "Condom races," in which teams of teens compete to see who can unroll a condom onto a cucumber the fastest, are only the tip of the truth-is-relative iceberg here, folks...

Seriously, who can deny the dangers of sex for teens? We know that the rates of depression and suicide are higher among teens who are sexually active. We know sexually active kids are more likely to drink, smoke and use drugs. And we know -- as parents, educators and members of the community -- that kids strive to meet the expectations we set for them.

Prayer has become familiar terrain in modern America. It is woven into the daily rhythms of life, its ethos embedded in the public and private experiences of millions. Indeed, a recent Roper poll found that nearly half of all Americans said that they pray or meditate every day--far more than those who regularly participate in religious services.

Over the centuries, its practitioners have included saints and scoundrels, skeptics and believers, the meek and the mighty--people of every creed and culture and of every station in life who, whether out of pious faith or primal fear, have reached out to a reality greater than themselves.

Prayer has been called "the native language" of the soul--the universal expression of an innate human desire to make contact with the divine. The 16th-century Christian mystic St. Teresa of Avila described prayer in its sublimity as "an intimate friendship, a frequent conversation held alone with the Beloved." An Islamic proverb states that to pray and to be Muslim are synonymous. And in Hinduism, devotion to prayer is seen as a route to ecstasy.

The clock is a sacrament of the passage of time, a way to note the movement of one day into the next, a method of location in the otherwise uncharted ocean whose two horizons are the past and the future. Mariners are fond of saying, especially when the ship unexpectedly runs aground, that the chart is not the sea; similarly, the clock is not time.

I propose this image for our new and urgent discussions about religion. In America, a religious divide has suddenly emerged as politically decisive, and in the world, religion is a runaway engine of violence. A fanatic fringe of Islam asserts its doctrine by joining suicide to murder in Allah's name. In Gaza and the West Bank, some hypernationalist religious Jews stake claims to land with God as guarantor -- disastrous consequences to Palestinians and Israel both be damned. Similarly, America's war in Iraq has evolved into a two-sided holy war, even if only one side explicitly defines it as such.

Meanwhile, mainstream churches waste themselves in conflicts over sexual identity, the new meanings of marriage, and mysteries of the medical frontier -- arguments in which "God's will" is invoked as if sacred texts elucidated the biology of genetics, postsexual reproduction, open-ended lifespan. The "religious right" fervently seeks to impose its definitions of the social good on the devout and the indifferent alike. "Bright" nonbelievers, in turn, match the absolutism of the zealots of faith with absolute rejection.

To resolve the problem of Jesus' connection with both Bethlehem and Nazareth, Matthew portrays Mary and Joseph as residents of Bethlehem who were later forced to move north to Nazareth. With a keen dramatic sense, he also adds two stories evoking the memory of God's deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt.

The second "Alfie" was obviously made before folks such as me decided that moral values were what made George Bush the winner of this year's presidential contest. Still, very little about making films is an accident -- movies cost too much -- so I can posit that someone had sensed that the zeitgeist had shifted: Abortion is no longer seen as central to sexual liberation but rather as much more troubling and problematic. Over the years, the so-called right-to-life movement has changed some minds.

Mine among them, I am quick to say. This is especially the case with late-term abortion, which in some cases has been not too unfairly packaged for propaganda reasons as "partial-birth abortion." Whatever it is called, a description of it turns the stomach and makes you wonder whether the procedure should be authorized only under certain circumstances. For the record, I stated my qualms a long time ago.

But the Democratic Party still marches to the tune of "Alfie" ("What's it all about, Alfie?") as if nothing has changed in almost 40 years. Abortion remains a core party principle -- up there with civil rights and, more recently, gay rights. Gay rights is one thing. It is nothing more than an extension of the party's traditional -- and politically costly -- embrace of civil rights. But abortion is a different matter entirely. It is no longer what it was -- simply about women's rights and sexual freedom. It is, as its opponents say, about life -- arguably about the taking of it.

In addition to the standard in vitro fertilization procedure that Kristen underwent, a Fairfax clinic is testing another approach that can sort sperm by sex -- an easier and far less expensive method, albeit not quite as reliable.

The doctors offering the services, as well as some medical ethicists who defend them, argue the procedures make it possible for parents to fulfill a natural desire, harm no one, and enhance the joys of parenthood and family life.

"These are grown-up people expressing their reproductive choices. We cherish that in the United States," said Jeffrey Steinberg, director of the Fertility Institutes, which offers the service at clinics in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. "These people are really happy when they get what they want. These are heartwarming stories."

But others say the practice, which is prohibited in many countries, uses expensive medical care for frivolous purposes, destroys some embryos just because they are the "wrong" sex, and promotes gender discrimination. Moreover, the critics say, the trend is a dangerous first step toward transforming childbirth from a natural process full of surprise and wonder into just another commodity in which a baby's features are picked like options on a new car....

A small number of clinics have begun offering the procedures to couples with no medical reasons -- who simply want to do the kind of "family balancing" the Magills sought or to plan the birth order of their children.

"The overwhelming number of couples who come in for this are couples who have three, four, five children in one gender and come to us and say, 'Will you guarantee us the opposite?' " said Norbert Gleicher, medical director of the Center for Human Reproduction, which has clinics in the New York and Chicago areas. "Why shouldn't patients have the right to choose this? It's one of the most basic rights in our society that we can build our families the way we wish."

The ACLU said its lawsuit will be the first to challenge whether public schools should teach "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power.

The Dover Area School District was believed to be the first in the nation to mandate intelligent design when it voted 6-3 in October in favor of including the concept in the science curriculum....

The ACLU has said intelligent design is a more secular form of creationism, a Biblical-based view that credits the origin of species to God, and may violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

When Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle learned he must sacrifice either his ring finger or the wedding band he wore, he told doctors at a field hospital in Iraq to cut off the finger.

The 19-year-old former high school football star suffered a mangled left hand and serious wounds to his legs in a Nov. 13 firefight in Fallujah. Battle, who is recovering at his parents' home in this city 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, came under attack as he and fellow Marines entered a building. Eleven other Marines were wounded.

Doctors were preparing to cut off Battle's ring to save as much of his finger as they could.

"But that would mean destroying my wedding ring," he said. "My wife is the strongest woman I know. She's basically running two people's lives since I've been gone. I don't think I could ever repay her or show her how grateful...how much I love my wife, my soul mate."

Prime Minister Paul Martin was cool yesterday to the idea of a national referendum on same-sex marriage and said handling the controversial issue should be left to Parliament. "I think that this is an issue that Parliamentarians ought to decide," Martin said before addressing a brunch in his Montreal-area riding.

"The courts have now given their direction. I think it's one for Parliament and I think that Parliament ought to accept their responsibility."

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has said he wants a national referendum on gay marriage but his proposal has already been dismissed by Justice Minister Irwin Cotler.

It's heck being a Christian in America these days. Insults and ostracism confront us daily.

An "orthodox Christian" teacher at a public California elementary school has accused his principal of barring him from using historical documents naming God.

Target Corp. has stopped letting Salvation Army bell-ringers put a guilt trip on harried shoppers so they'll drop spare change into the familiar red kettles....

So many slights, so little time.

But I wonder: Why are we so easily offended?

Protests and chest-beating and indignant news releases might feel empowering as political tools.

But if religion's influence comes from spreading peace, justice, mercy and love, don't we wield more power by devoting our time, money and hearts to directly serving others in ways that can make a difference in individual lives?

Of the two, the Newsweek article is more problematic by far. TIME's article, "Secrets of the Nativity," is written by reporter David Van Biema, a skilled writer who often covers religious stories for the magazine. Even as the article opens with questions about the identity of the wise men, the nature of the star, and whether or not Jesus was born in Nazareth, rather than Bethleham. Van Biema goes on to report: "In the debates over the literal truth of the Gospels, just about everyone acknowledges that major conclusions about Jesus' life are not based on forensic clues. There is no specific physical evidence for the key points of the story."...

But, if TIME's article raises questions about the historical truthfulness of the New Testament, Newsweek goes on to deny many essential biblical truth claims out of hand. In "The Birth of Jesus," writer Jon Meacham goes right to the heart of the matter, arguing that the infancy and birth narratives were simply invented by the early church in order to answer awkward questions and develop a fully-orbed theology and understanding of Jesus. He argues that "the Nativity narratives are the subject of ongoing scholarly debate over their historical accuracy" and that "almost nothing in Luke's stories stands up to close historical scrutiny."

The first thing that opponents of the research should learn from the proponents is that there have to be solid reasons to prohibit something: an aesthetic dislike for it -- the "ick factor" -- isn't enough. The second thing is that research is, in general, desirable, unless there are good reasons for blocking it.

It is also important for opponents to remember the reasons that they think some kinds of research should be prohibited. The first is that the human embryo is a human being with a right not to be killed. One of the premises behind that reason is that the human embryo is a living human organism, a member of the human species. It is not simply that the human embryo is alive and has human DNA -- that much is true of a living human skin cell, which nobody regards as a human being. It is also necessary that the entity in question be distinct, not a part of some other organism, and capable of directing its own integral functioning and development. The second is that it is wrong and dangerous to reduce in principle a living human being, as defined above, to the status of a product of manufacture.

A dilemma is defined as a choice between alternatives that are equally undesirable. Adding more undesirable choices doesn't solve a dilemma; it deepens it. One gets the sense that the conservatives on this commission wouldn't be proposing these ideas if the "political impasse" hadn't stimulated such straining. Why, first of all, does the council treat a traditional scruple -- science should not treat embryos as material for manipulation -- as one horn of the dilemma? Once bioethicists treat adherence to traditional morality as just one more undesirable choice among many the debate is over. And why do they assume these novel proposals would arrest a scientific culture that regards human embryos as expendable? The first proposal would expand, not eliminate, the IVF limbo of hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos, since it completely depends on it....

Forming reengineered entities is playing God without the wisdom of God, a certain way to lose a sense of one's own dignity. The commission seemed to say, no embryo, no indignity. The commission never considered the question of its own dignity. Science can not only degrade the dignity of its subjects. It can also degrade the dignity of scientists and the culture supporting them. If modern man must commit freakish acts to achieve a "normal" life, what dignity is left by the end of it?

Canada's top court says Ottawa has the authority to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, but religious officials cannot be forced to perform unions against their beliefs.

The Supreme Court of Canada refused to say whether the traditional definition of marriage -- between one man and one woman -- violates equality rights.

It noted the federal government has already accepted lower-court judgments that excluding gays from marrying is discriminatory....

The court says times have changed and the legal definition of marriage should change with them.

"Several centuries ago, it would have been understood that marriage be available only to opposite-sex couples.

"The recognition of same-sex marriage in several Canadian jurisdictions as well as two European countries belies the assertion that the same is true today."

In reality, many Muslims contest such a definition of jihad and say that a Muslim can fight and be rewarded by Allah only when defending Islamic lands. But that should be the beginning rather than the end of discussion: It's vital to find out which lands a Muslim sees as Islam's. Is Israel a Muslim land? What about Spain and the Balkans, which Islam ruled for centuries?

Similarly, when a Muslim says he opposes the murder of civilians, it's vital to ask: What do you mean by civilian? Is a non-soldier Israeli who has military training and could be called into active service a civilian? A worker at the Pentagon? How about those at the World Trade Center who advanced the capitalism that undergirds U.S. military efforts?

Many American Muslims are peaceful and define jihad primarily as an internal struggle to improve. Some talk more of military jihad and say it's allowable to regain lands that once were Islamic. Muslim terrorists peel away all the layers and go down deep enough to blast away small children who could eventually become soldiers occupying land that properly belongs to Islam.

Many of the state's largest employers are dropping health benefits for unmarried gay couples, seven months after Massachusetts became the only state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Massachusetts companies, some of which pioneered so-called domestic-partner benefits for unmarried, same-sex partners, said they are now withdrawing them for reasons of fairness: If gays and lesbians can now marry, they should no longer receive special treatment in the form of health benefits that were not made available to unmarried, opposite-sex couples....

"We're saying if you're a same-sex domestic partner, you now have the same option heterosexuals have, so we have to apply the same rules to you," said Larry Emerson, Baystate's vice president of human resources.

A week in the United States, such as I have just spent, is enough to make anybody feel a trifle fed up with God, or rather with the relentless invocation of the deity by American politicians, led by their president. No public occasion would be complete without the blessing of the Almighty being besought for whatever endeavour tops the agenda, most prominently the war in Iraq. The appeal to faith, seldom mere ritual, is usually founded upon conviction.

There is an attractive rationalist case for insisting that candidates for election anywhere in the world are required to sign a declaration forswearing religious affiliation....I am not in the least anti-religious. If pressed I would describe myself as a social Anglican. Yet I find myself increasingly eager to be governed by politicians who profess no pretensions to a hot line to a higher power.

The west may find that the struggle against militant Islam is an inescapable challenge of the 21st century, extending far more widely than the present engagement with a few thousand fanatics. Most of us wish to explore every avenue of accommodation before reconciling ourselves to armed conflict. Yet we now face another four years at the mercy of a US president who perceives his own God as foremost among White House advisers and regards the contest with Islam as already begun.

Justice Teresi ruled that state laws barring same-sex marriage do not discriminate on the basis of gender because men and women are treated alike under the marriage laws; they both are permitted to marry someone of the opposite gender.

The court also found that same-sex couples do not have a fundamental right to marry under the New York or United States Constitutions. And the court rejected the couples' claims that barring same-sex marriage violates their right to free expression.

But what's all this about light and candles? What about the heroes who are remembered during Chanukah -- Judah Maccabee and his father Mattathias? Are not their deeds the thread that runs through all of Chanukah?

Yes, but not exactly. Their exploits are referred to in prayers and rituals only by indirection. Heroic feats are transmuted in the glow of the candles; they become acts of divine intervention.

The blessing over the candles recited each night of the holiday goes: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who wrought miracles for our fathers in days of old." Miracles, not victories. As in the Exodus from Egypt, it is He who delivered us. Freedom is a gift from God, not men.

By mostly removing the issue from the democratic process, Roe created the current polarization over abortion, in which both parties are officially committed to extreme positions. The Republican platform calls for a Human Life Amendment, which would presumably ban all or most abortions, while the Democratic platform backs "a woman's right to choose...regardless of her ability to pay"--meaning abortion on demand, at taxpayer expense.

Opinion polls consistently show that only a small proportion of Americans favor either of these extremes. But because Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions take off the table any restriction that imposes an "undue burden" on a woman seeking to abort her pregnancy, Republicans are an extreme antiabortion party only in theory. When it comes to actual legislation, the GOP favors only modest--and popular--regulations. The Democrats, on the other hand, must defend such unpopular practices as partial-birth abortion, taxpayer-subsidized abortion, and abortions for 13-year-olds without their parents' knowledge.

If the Supreme Court overturned Roe, legislators would have to consider the legality of abortion itself. Antiabortion absolutists would demand action from Republicans--but the GOP would be unable to comply without putting off moderate voters, who are much more numerous. Thus the battle would shift to terrain far more favorable to the Democrats.

A Christmas campaign for an "immaculate contraception" morning-after birth control pill has been scrapped by a drug company in Britain after causing offence on religious grounds.

The poster, which appeared on London Underground trains, asked: "Immaculate contraception? If only."

"It might be Christmas time," it read, "but condoms still split and pills still get forgotten. So if your contraception lets you down, ask your pharmacist...."

Imagine a driver's education course in which teachers show students grisly photos of traffic accidents but never tell them to stop at red lights or buckle their seat belts, and you've a pretty good idea of what abstinence-only sex education is like. Abstinence-only programs try to scare and shame teens, teaching only the negative consequences of sexuality without telling young people what they can do to stay safe and healthy.

Palestinians and Israelis have agreed in principle to proposals which could serve as the basis of a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Egypt's official news agency MENA said on Tuesday.

Quoting unidentified high-level sources, it said the steps, including an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, had the support of both the United States and the European Union.

There was no immediate official comment from Israel or from Egypt, which has tried to play the role of mediator in previous efforts to ease Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Palestinian sources said reports of an Israeli-PA truce agreement were inexact, but gave no further details, Israel Radio said late Tuesday

With Arafat's death, there has been an unprecedented amount of optimism in the West regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state and the possibility of peace. Yet amongst Palestinian officials there is little talk of such a peace, the continuation of Yasser Arafat's "jihad" against the Jewish state instead being endorsed....

The Palestinian leadership is not alone in stating in public that terrorist attacks against Israel must continue. The Arabic and Iranian press have been particularly vocal. In response to an interviewer's question as to whether the Intifada will continue and grow stronger, Lebanese MP Zaher Al-Khatib said on November 13: "It will escalate and develop technologically. The martyrdom operations are no longer the only kind of operations in Palestine. The martyrdom operations have become a strategy. A strategy doesn't mean that we carry out these operations whenever possible; it means [real] military operations.... There is an infrastructure of resistance that wages battles, enters Ashdod, crosses borders, penetrates military zones, conducts operations as in Ashdod, and so on."

American officials intimately involved in the Oslo Accords now publicly state that more attention should have been paid to the issue of Palestinian incitement, and what the Arabs were saying amongst themselves about peace in Arabic. With Yasser Arafat gone, the U.S. should be paying close attention to his heirs to understand their true intentions.

The vast majority of scientists agree that evolution is a proven major unifying concept in science and should be not only included in science education in kindergarten through 12th grade but also better imbedded in school standards. Many scientists grow infuriated at evolution challenges by people they believe are trying to infuse religion into a strictly scientific process.

At the classroom level, many scientists say, evolution is too often taught as its own unit when it should be the guiding foundation for everything that happens in biology. "We could describe orchid shapes, but it's much more accurate and much more interesting to recognize that orchids and insects that pollinate them co-evolved," said William McComas, director of the Program to Advance Science Education at the University of Southern California.

Teachers don't teach that way for several reasons, he and other educators and scientists agreed.

Many don't fully understand the complicated process of evolution because of deficiencies in their own education. And some feel intimidated by their communities, which may not support evolution, according to the National Science Teachers Association. A national Gallup poll taken last month showed that 35 percent of the respondents believe that evolution is well-supported by the evidence, 35 percent said it is not and 29 percent said they didn't know enough to reply; 1 percent did not reply.

We approve of government addressing poverty, providing desperately needed retirement security, education, health care and housing, protecting the environment, keeping the peace and avoiding unnecessary wars. Surely, the strength of this long list of enacted positive values, and all of our other progressive collaborative efforts, should be a sufficiently cohesive force to prevent us from being seriously divided by the few prohibitions pointed to by the analysts.

That will be especially true if we take the opportunity to have the "conversation" about values President Bush has talked about more than once. The president now has the opportunity, for example, to lead the nation in a discussion concerning abortion and embryonic stem cells, beginning with the answers to some of the critical underlying questions.

The president says he is opposed to abortion and the taking of stem cells from embryos because human life begins at conception. But John Marburger, the president's authority on bioethics, tells us that the president sees this as a "sacred" issue, and not a scientific one. So Marburger has no science-based answer to offer.

Aren't the people of this nation who do not share the president's religious views on what is "sacred" entitled to reasons for denying the benefits of stem cells that are based on science and not just his personal religious commitments? Why not inquire as to what the biologists, embryologists and other scientists say?

It's that time of year again, the time when much of the grown-up world conspires in a fun game of "let's pretend," a time when normally serious people think, act, and behave as if something fantastic, something wonderful, something make-believe is actually true. I'm not talking of the "jolly old elf" you might be expecting. I am referring to that much more mythical of things, the "Holiday Season," as proclaimed in "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings."...

Each December, America's Christians are persuaded, subtly, indirectly, and, more and more, directly, to deny and hide their belief. They must celebrate, not the joyous birth of a Redeemer, but rather the multicultural confusion of approved holidays representing different sentiments promoting a vague human kindliness. They are instructed and encouraged to pretend to believe in things an honest eight year-old would laugh at with derision.

Against the stupendous Incarnation and the accompanying two thousand years of tradition and devotion what do we have arrayed? One genuine and two ginned-up alternative holidays.

Obviously, it is best for teens to wait until they are mature enough to make wise decisions before engaging in sexual activity. Some will not wait, despite abstinence education. The best practice is to give honest and accurate information. Abstinence should be the first and most forceful message they hear, but it should not be the only element of sex education.

"Many teens may plan on abstinence, but if their abstinence fails, they have no information to protect themselves," says Judy Harris, an educator for Planned Parenthood of Indiana in Fort Wayne. Teaching only abstinence leaves students who do become sexually active less informed about how to prevent pregnancy and disease....

It is important that students are told that abstinence is the only way to guarantee against unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. But abstinence-based education should not exclude other useful medical information. And federal dollars should only go to effective programs that provide accurate information.

Little attention is given to those of us who feel incredibly threatened by the move towards a right to die when what we want is the right to live.

Over the past few years, the campaign for euthanasia has gained momentum, as can be seen in the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill which is being debated in the House of Lords. The momentum comes from people who do not want to die in pain or become a burden. It is also driven by a culture which, despite advances in modern medicine, still dreads any impairment that may reduce physical or mental capacity -- including ageing. Those of us who look physically different challenge socie