Every Saturday, journalist David Brooks and his family can choose between three services at their synagogue in Washington, D.C. Rabbis lead a mainstream, almost Protestant, rite in the sanctuary. Then there is an informal “Havurah (fellowship)” service led by lay people, including a 45-minute talk-back session. The erudite leaders often pause to explain why the Torah’s more judgmental and dogmatic passages don’t mean what they seem to mean. Finally, throngs of young adults pack the wonderfully named “Traditional Egalitarian” service,... Read more

The landscape was buried in snow, but there wasn’t a ski slope in sight. The 19,000 students gathered on the University of Illinois campus last week were asking what to do with their lives, but they weren’t networking with corporate recruiters. A multi-racial rock band was shaking the concrete clamshell called Assembly Hall, but the lyrics were not MTV-friendly. “Oh God, break our hearts,” sang the standing-room-only crowd at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s 19th Urbana Mission Convention. “For the sin in... Read more

The Year of our Lord 2000 was the year of The Map. You know the one: red states, blue states, false states, true states, me states, you states. No, this isn’t one of those fake Dr. Seuss poems that flooded the Internet during the White House war that threatened to steal Christmas. This column is about the annual Religion Newswriters Association poll to determine its top 10 news stories. Religion specialists in the secular press said the top story was... Read more

There are only 365 shopping days, give or take a few, until next Christmas. And all the people said, “Oh joy.” “Honestly, there’s an argument to be made for Christians pretty much conceding Dec. 25th — just handing it over to the secular world — because we’re just not getting anywhere,” said Dan Andriacco, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. “I’m not saying that we give up on Christmas. I’m saying that we need to stop thinking of... Read more

It’s almost time to fire up the big menorah in the public square. It’s time for office workers to mix blue-and-silver Hanukkah decorations with symbols of Christmas, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice and, this year, Ramadan. It’s time for school children to fry potato-and-onion pancakes and spin four-sided dreidels with Hebrew letters that stand for “a great miracle happened here.” It’s time for parents to max out their charge cards. Party planners can find many alleged “carols” on the Internet, such... Read more

A glance down from an incoming airplane is all it takes to see that Washington, D.C., is messed up. Long ago, architect Pierre L’Enfant had of vision of grand plazas combined with a simple, logical grid of streets. But now visitors see politics all over the place. The Supreme Court sits in judgment across the street from the U.S. Capitol, which wrestles with the White House for symbolic supremacy on the map. Highways run into rivers and the National Mall,... Read more

One wave of warriors came out of the mountains while another came in boats from the sea, crushing the harbor villages on the island of Haruku. “I heard a grenade and the house went up in an explosion at about 5:30 a.m.,” said an Indonesian pastor, in testimony read in the British House of Lords. “Nine people died at the football pitch. … Some were injured, but still alive, when the military came with bayonets and stabbed them in the... Read more

Russians use a special term to describe the state officials who pay brief visits to the glorious liturgies that mark the holy days of Orthodox Christianity. This politician is called a “podsvechnik,” or “candlestick holder.” “He walks in, lights a candle at an icon, stands around awhile, makes the sign of the cross, and he usually messes that part up, and then leaves as soon as the photographers have taken his picture,” said journalist Lawrence Uzzell, who leads the Keston... Read more

The King James Version of the Bible is a masterpiece of the English language and one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization, as we know it. So sociologist John Heeren perked up when he was watching The Simpsons and heard a reference to a “St. James Version.” Was this a nod to an obscure translation? An inside-baseball joke about fundamentalists who confuse the King James of 1611 with the ancient St. James? Eventually he decided it was merely a mistake,... Read more

One thing is certain amid the chaos and nail biting of the White House race — the religious left now knows that Mount Sinai has not been erased from the political map. “The tablets that Moses brought down from the top of Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions. … (They) were the Ten Commandments. But more and more people feel free to pick and choose from them,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman at Notre Dame University, in a key speech... Read more