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.