Then, you are caught and physically examined to ensure your enduring virginal state. No matter what the doctor finds, it is too late. You have disgraced your family you are sent to a Catholic laundry to work from dawn to dusk. You wash filthy clothes, make lace handkerchiefs and linen tablecloths for export for profit but you see none of the money. You cannot leave or escape. You are paid nothing. This is the story of thousands of Irish women and girls in the Magdalene laundries run by the Catholic Church until 1994.

Originally the laundries were set up in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the rescue movement to rehabilitate sex workers. However, in Ireland the mandate was extended to include unmarried mothers, girls who had been raped, survivors of incest, girls deemed at risk of falling into sin (becoming sexually active) and girls who were considered to pretty to be pious – the jezebels of the country. Girls were denounced from the altar, in front of the congregation, for unnamed mortal sins because sex and sexuality were utterly taboo.The Catholic Church, which enjoyed a special relationship to the government and within the Constitution, scapegoated female sexuality over and over again, with devastating results.

To understand how Irish parents could withdraw all contact and send their daughters to slave in the laundries, the issue of keeping face must be understood. In a rural Irish village, any action that could bring shame to the family or even cause the neighbours to gossip was ruthlessly crushed. Of course, this dictate was enforced more stringently on women and girls. No proof was required or defence allowed.

Girls in institutional care, run by the Church and funded by the State, were often committed to laundries from which there was no escape. The laundries acted as a sword of Damocles to keep the girls in line. However, with puberty, few could hide their bodies. The nuns seemed to view this development as a personal affront. Many of the estimated 30 000 inmates were already in institutional care.

The conspiracy of silence between the church and the state resulted in a system of slavery. The girls and women would be committed by a priest, nun or family member. They were forced into hard labour, without pay or rest, without the capacity to leave or refuse to work. Physical punishment was routine and harsh. On arrival, each penitent, as they were referred to, received a new name to symbolise her rebirth from sin. If a penitent died in the laundry, she was buried in a communal grave.

The extent of the abuse was revealed in 1993 when the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity sold land in Glasnevin to a property developer. Upon exhumation of a communal grave it was discovered that only 75 of the 133 bodies were named. Since that time, the survivors of the Magdalene laundries and their supporters have been trying to get an apology and compensation from the government. Neither has been forthcoming.

The issue came to a head when last week, the Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe, issued a statement to make the point that

“In terms of establishing a distinct scheme for former employees of the Magdalen laundries, the situation in relation to children who were taken into the laundries privately or who entered the laundries as adults is quite different to persons who were resident in State-run institutions.” [source - The Irish Times]

Naturally, women who slaved in the laundries took exception to being referred to as employees. As a result, people from all over Ireland have been ringing the national broadcaster with their stories and the stories of their parents.

Still from "The Magdalene Sisters." A 2002 film by Peter Mullan.

One such account comes from a woman who, following assurances of an education, left her daughter in a Magdalene laundry. The mother was not gone fifteen minutes before the child was at hard labour. The religious order running the laundry, sent term reports to the mother on the faked educational progress of her daughter. Her daughter never received a day’s education.

In a further ham-fisted attempt to cover up his gaffe, Minister O’Keeffe released a non-apology apology. This has added to the ire of the public. There are calls for his resignation.

The Irish people have a long way to go in terms of admitting what happened behind those closed doors. The conspiracy of silence included many public servants. Nobody blew the whistle on the crimes inflicted on the soul of the country and on the bodies of our children, girls and women. The physical, emotional and sexual abuse that was systemic in institutional care, coupled with the slavery of the Magdalenes, is a trauma that cannot be swept conveniently under the carpet.

An apology from the government and compensation for their suffering is the bare minimum of action. However, I have written to the government to urge the expelling the religious orders involved, the seizing their properties and their records, providing for the needs of the survivors, and constructing a full picture of what happened. The religious orders are immune to prosecution at the moment, but all is takes is a new piece of legislation. I believe the Minister for Education needs to resign as well. Those forced to labour without payment are not “employees.” If the Minister cannot understand this point then perhaps he is not suited to his position.

Perhaps these actions might go some way to showing the survivors take their suffering is recognised and that they are entitled to the same protection as any other citizen, no matter how badly we failed them in the past.

The majority of them are aged, infirm, with bloated ankles, using the numerous rocking chairs provided to them out of the kindness of the administration. The presence of these women, if they can really be called this, in this palace of art, is anomalous. Their presence does not give affirmation to the things they so jealously guard.

They represent change, age, wrinkles, flaws, sweat, and disfiguration – imperfection. Some are, undoubtedly, beautiful – with fine Castillian features, small angular noses one would pay to trace with his tongue, the pert neck of a swan, curly hair springing with life. Still, their staid standoffish conservatism weighs against the dance, the mirth, the laughter, the flowers, the cherubs, the saints, lechery, hedonism, and lust on display in so many paintings.

In a place where so much is given over to celebrating the glorious sacrifice of Christ, the desensitized omniscience, the ossified haughtiness, the indolent emptiness of these women is a slap in the face. In comparison to the affirmation around them, their lifelessness gives the impression that beauty doesn’t exist today; that it is only a purview of bygone times.

I would like a museum to be dedicated to nurturing every kind of beauty; a place where the mix of divine and human perfection is not just on display upon walls – but found in a more perfect, timeless, eternal form among the living. Why does immortality only belong to the dead?

II. When you look upon the walls of the Prado, you will see astonishing amounts of Christianity. Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints dominate the walls in unheralded numbers.

The initial impulse – especially for a Muslim who is used to religion being so front and center – is to immediately declare that this place called “the West” isn’t really as irreligious, as secular, as divorced from the clerics and saints as everyone pretends it is; that Christianity is still a powerful and omnipresent force. “After all, just look at the walls,” you might say, “these people were really religious!” I imagine the conservative Christians who’d like to take pride and ownership in so much of this sacred art would probably have the same response.

This is completely the wrong reaction.

If you take a close look at much of this “sacred” art, you realize that it is really quite profane. These artists, painters, and architects did what subversives in every society have ever done: they took the popular myths and slogans among the people, and then introduced their own particular ironies and mysteries and critiques and nuances and whispers and lecheries and desires into them.

Just as an example, consider the vast amount of paintings featuring a bare tit. I had never previously been exposed to so much Christian art in one place so never had a chance to make a survey of how much play, pun intended, the breast gets. I am not speaking about the breast in the mythic works – featuring Venus or the Sabine women – where female nudity is found. Nor am I referring to the portraits of villagers or courtesans – like Goya’s Nude Maja. Nudity there is expected and to an extent, trivial.

I am talking about the making bare of the breast of The Virgin, perhaps the second most important religious figure in Christianity.

There is a painting called The Virgin of the Milk, by Orley. There is a painting called The Virgin With the Souls of Purgatory, by Manchuca. There is a painting by Ribera, one of the foremost Spanish painters, called Man with Breast, which in style is very similar to the paintings of The Virgin with breast. They all contain a very meticulously depicted tit, usually just one, the left one, ready to feed the babe.

The breast is pornographically perfect. Its youthful and lively and inviting. It doesn’t evoke a bit of maternal warmth. Its bright and pronounced and pert, looking nothing like a breast full of milk. Had I not started to feel self-conscious about the fact that I was looking at Mary’s nudity I probably would have been able to make a survey of all the paintings in the Prado – yes there were more – that render her naked (note that 5000 paintings are not even currently hanging).

To see the Virgin Mary exposed, over and over again, makes it very easy to conclude that these so called religious painters were anything but. One is, in other words, able to see that dissent and subversion within Christianity have been going on for centuries. This gives you pause.

You then start looking at the paintings of the saints, even the paintings of Christ, with a suspicious eye. Does this starving saint represent the oppression he suffered or is this a critique of Christian asceticism? Is this garish depiction of a broken and bloodied Christ supposed to make me feel religious fervor, or is it actually supposed to arouse contempt?

This is, at least, the evolution that my gaze underwent. I went into the Prado, astonished at how pious historical Christianity was, and, I left astonished at how impious they might have been.

Then it occurred to me that this is pretty much how things within Islam are as well. For example, looking back at the astonishing mosques and minarets we are wont to think that the Caliphs and Sultans that patronized them were vanguards of piety, only to realize, either from studying their lives, or hearing of their harems, or just from understanding human nature, that they were often far more lascivious, lusty and wanton than any of us even conceive of being.

Just the other day I learned there were cross-dressing Caliphs…

Although the raid was part of an ongoing child abuse probe (hence my desire to destroy a perfectly innocent coffee cup), the issue of polygamy once again took center stage as Americans and everyone else who watched the news coming out of Texas began a new round of debating the subject.

Let me put this as succinctly as possible: If you advocate for the legalization of polygamy in the States, I will only take you seriously if you advocate polyandry as well. Now for the caveat:

You don’t have to advocate polyandry within your own sect. All you have to do is be able to say that, “I’m from group X, and we do it like this, but if someone from group Y does the opposite, well, I’m not going to fire-bomb/harass/defame them.”

I live in a Muslim country at the moment, and to me, polygamy is nothing shocking. It’s just there, like the weather. I don’t judge people who engage in it, although I understand that coercion and disparate power dynamics can play a big role in polygamous families.

Regardless of religion, people have different reasons for engaging in polygamy. It’s always interesting and important to read female accounts on the subject: whether they liked it, hated it, or both, or whether they merely say “eh” about it.

Some women do not agree with me on the subject of polyandry. Many will defend the practice of marrying multiple partners as strictly a man’s right. The arguments in regards to that can be quite unexpected.

“Think about all those men and that one poor woman!” One lady told me. “She’ll be forced to have sex every day! What if she doesn’t want that?”

“Well,” I’d say, “if she doesn’t want it, it’s rape, and I’m not pushing to legalize rape.”

“But she will feel obligated!”

Perhaps some women would feel obligated, in that sort of situation. A relationship which involves only two people is tricky enough to navigate, and I can’t presume to be well-educated on the subject of relationship where more people are involved. All I can say is that the state should at least try to stay out of adult people’s bedrooms. To a reasonable degree, that is.

Yearning for Zion presents a very specific and yet chillingly familiar situation. Scandal and speculation drive television ratings, I can only wish that Texas law enforcement will be allowed to do its job, and do it well. If thirteen-year-old girls are getting impregnated, freedom of religion is no longer an issue.

Many people argue that fundamentalist communities are the ideal breeding ground for rape and abuse. Although I strive to be tolerant of individual spiritual beliefs, I tend to agree. For all its emphasis on purity, fundamentalist interpretation of religious texts tends to achieve the opposite in its adherents.

Isolating people (especially women and children) “for their own good” has always struck me as just a tad disingenuous.

Fundamentalism and polygamy, meanwhile, often seem to go hand-in-hand with one another. This isn’t always the case, but it happens frequently enough. While I wouldn’t want to extrapolate all this to something like “polygamists are prone to child abuse! Egads!” – it can, and should, be useful to examine the different kinds of polygamists out there, and whether or not the basic tenets of their personal beliefs can create an atmosphere where the impregnation of thirteen-year-old girls is considered just fine and dandy.

If you, as a polygamist, strive to “own” as many women as possible, if you enjoy the idea of controlling your own little “corral” of passive females, well, buddy, you are suspicious in my book. If you believe that wives are there merely for your pleasure and consumption, if that’s all that they are to you, I don’t doubt that your position will enable you to commit crimes against the helpless. After all, you are entitled, aren’t you? You’re the center of the universe, and women orbit you as lesser satellites!

If you’re a woman who believes the above about herself, there is a pretty good chance that you will stand idly by as God-knows-what is done to your daughter. If you do not value yourself, why should you expect anything different for your child, especially if she is female?

Think about it.

Once again, it’s not my intention to generalize about all polygamists. Neither do I believe that we know everything there is to know about Yearning for Zion. So far, it’s just a media spectacle to those of us who are lucky enough to be mere observers. The lived reality of the vast majority of community members cannot be transmuted in a soundbite, or even a Larry King segment.

Are things as bad inside that compound as the media has made it seem so far? I hope the answer is “no,” but my own experiences have taught me to expect a “yes.”

Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is a more open and productive national dialogue on the subject of marriage, family, abuse, and the possibilities of prevention. A family that exists strictly behind a closed door is a family where abuse can thrive like pond-scum, undetected, and unchecked.

According to most reports, the Neumanns are a normal American family. They are not members of some weird death-cult. They didn’t show up at military funerals with signs that read “God Hates Fags.” This is, in a way, all the more troubling.

My initial response to this story cannot be published here on account of the vast number of obscenities it involved. I was shocked, and outraged, and demanded immediate removal of the Neumanns’ other children from their home. While breaking up a family in the wake of a tragedy is grim business to say the least, one does hope that law enforcement will keep an eye on the Neumanns. Imposing probation and ordering counseling is the least that can be done.

The fact that the Neumanns’ other children have indeed, for now, been removed from their home may ultimately serve to educate the parents on the fact that their actions, or, rather, their inaction, was indeed wrong.

I am not Christopher Hitchens, and do not wish to use this death to score a point. Let’s put it this way, most parents, religious or not, would take their child to a hospital at the first sign of serious trouble. When it comes to religion, the Neumanns are the exception, not the rule.

As a person of (some) faith, I find that the Neumanns are the perfect illustration to the saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Clearly, the Neumanns “knew” certain passages from the Bible concerning God’s omnipotence and power to heal, etc. And yet did they also not realize that if God allowed His or Her children to create life-saving penicillin, He or She might just want us to use it? Considering that life is a gift and all?

My atheist friends often shrug and say, “well, how can you argue with the crazy crazies?” I consider this position to be defeatist. Why, you can argue with them in all sorts of ways.

The Neumanns, by all accounts, lived a thoroughly modern life. They ran a coffee shop. I’ve worked in several coffee shops, and I can tell you that human invention is a staple of coffee shop life. Your beans won’t grind themselves if you shut your eyes and pray really hard. Neither will your milk steam itself, or your iced drinks blend themselves.

It can be said that the human spirit operates on faith – the same cannot be said for the human body or, for that matter, a 21st century coffee shop. Coffee shops have safety regulations. For example, employees must wear close-toed shoes while at work, so that if they do accidentally spill a giant hot mocha, their feet won’t get scalded. I seriously doubt that the Neumanns would tell a barista, “honey, it’s OK to wear sandals, God’ll heal you if anything goes wrong.”

Likewise, the human body also comes with a safety instructions. Lethargy and vomiting are code-words for Big Trouble- Let’s Go To Hospital Now, for example. So why follow one instruction and not the other?

Human anxiety over medicine is as old as medicine itself. And hey, we have reason to worry. Centuries ago, unscrupulous physicians used the poor as lab rats. Nowadays, unscrupulous drug companies push potentially dangerous products onto an unsuspecting populace. This is all besides the giant farce that HMO’s and other such abominations have made out of American medicine in general.

Like all things in life, medicine can be a double-edged sword. And yet, the medical establishment is a cornerstone of any society that wishes to survive. If you read the Bible and, instead of cherry-picking quotes for your own self-rationalization or, for that matter, amusement, you may notice that God steps in with medical miracles when human innovation fails. Jesus didn’t elbow some midwife out of the way, for example, yelling “I can do it better!”

Is there a lesson in that? Perhaps.

And as for young Madeline, did she die as the result of someone else’s malicious intent? No, she died because her parents were ignorant – not only of health issues, but of their own faith. I can only hope that someone will be able to help them educate themselves on the matter.

Social ostracism is the worst thing that can happen to the Neumanns right now; it will only serve to radicalize their position even further. Remember, they have three other children, children who ought to be able to live out the rest of their lives to their fullest potential.

Please remember to enjoy the genius of Sim Stafford responsibly.

Sincerely,
The Editor

We sat in our seats awaiting His return,
“In the meantime, a word from out pastor.”

It’s the same thing every Sunday, man:
What the devil are we here for?
When the collection plate goes by I remember
Why I leave my wallet at home: Sitting on it
So long throws my hips out of line. Good thing
We kneel, stand, kneel, stand, kneel, stand, but
Not before setting our tongues on autopilot
To reaffirm our ability to memorize and recite
In the drone of unison. Man, I can’t wait—
Oh! There they go, robes and all: Damn,
That’s my jam! A free (for me) live show
Every Sunday, and all I have to do is sit,
Kneel, stand, kneel, stand, sit, listen, nod,
Throw my hands up, nod, and repeat
After the loud guy with the complex
Stitching on his robe (the one at the microphone).
He’s read the Book front to back, back to front
At least thirteen dozen times; he’s visited
Us in the hospital; he speaks of love and hope
And redemption, but why is he yelling
At me, and commanding me to
Kneel and stand so much?
Why is he telling me what I did last
Night will ruin my plan (resting) for the afterlife?
It’s like going to a concert and getting bad vibes
After the man in the spotlight bites
Off a bat’s head. Will I be the next mammal
In the room to perish in the jaws of a
Mythical land of lions and tigers and
Rivers filled with sticks?—
Oh my Goodness!
There is no place
Like my home church.

See you next Sunday for communion.
Rounds of plasma are on me.

Islamic presence in Spain between the 7th and 14th centuries has long been considered a controversial topic. The ex-Spanish Prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, for example, added fire to the already intense discussions two years ago. He argued Muslims have never apologized for “conquering Spain and staying for eight centuries”.

Modern Conservative scholars such as Victor Davis Hanson, Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer suggested that Muslim rule in Spain were despots who subjected people of other faiths to heavy taxation and religious persecution. David Levering Lewis thinks otherwise. This New York University professor places the relationship between Muslim nations and and Europe at the center of his latest book. His book inspires one to re-think the Islamic contribution to Europe.

The biggest accomplishment of Lewis’s book lies in its attempt to challenge conventional thinking regarding the victory of Charles Martel, the leader of the Franks. He rebukes historians such as Edward Gibbons and Victor Davis Hanson for their simplistic views on the Battle of Poitiers:

“Today, Charles Martel’s defeat of ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Ghafiqi is buried deep in the collective memory of the West, a marker of an important happening seldom recalled with the hyperbole typical of an earlier, more cultural self-aggrandizing age…However, it probably occurs to few, if any of the contemporary descendants of the “Europenses” to credit the existence of the European Union to the Battle of Poitiers.”

Lewis does an excellent job of asking the question as to what served to create Europe as we know it. He believes that years of Western-dominated thinking on the war have made us blind to the idea that Martel’s victory may have actually hurt Europe of those days by paving the way for an intolerant feudal age. At present times, the re-education Lewis offers us is of vital importance.

For me, the most surprising discovery in Lewis’s book concerns how the struggle between two civilizations actually improved welfare of women. It’s an intriguing premise, since conflict usually means setbacks wherein women’s rights are concerned.

Lewis blames Pope Innocent III and Pope Urban II for ending the long history of co-existence between Arabs, Jews and Christians. He beautifully summarizes the impact of the Pope’s Fourth Lateran Council’s call for wars against unbelievers and heresy:

“Difference, immemorially accommodated for better and worse by Western Europe’s peoples as the way of the world, was institutionalized henceforth as unassailable “otherness”

Lewis’s condemnation of Catholic Church is practically confrontational. He made me wonder whether even the present-day Vatican has the credibility to initiate dialogue with different faiths. In his book, Lewis gives a glimpse of the world of Christendom whose defeat of the Islamic faith slowed down the development of technology, culture, and science. It’s a grim picture, to say the least.

This book makes one consider the possibility that bad luck is likely to befall Europe if it decides to turn away from its Muslim neighbors in Turkey and Morocco. These neighbors may just offer some solutions to the aging crisis of the Great Continent.

The book suffers from a dearth of Spanish and Arabic source materials and a surplus of academic language. Having said that, Lewis still stands well above many colleagues who have tackled similar subjects.

Above all else, God’s Crucible is full of useful information for advocates of inter-faith dialogue; it’s main message is that freedom of exchange of ideas, tolerance of dissidents, and respect for diversity are will make a society prosperous.

In Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations, the author envisioned that, after the collapse of communism, the Christian West inevitably would start conflicts with Islam, due to different values, traditions and ideologies. His prediction, seemingly, has become real for lots of people since the attack of 9/11. The Iraq war and the bombings in London in July 2005 have intensified this belief. Religions, which were once becoming irrelevant in our lives, have again proven to be crucial factors in the long negotiation toward some semblance of peace and harmony in the world. The emergence of Islamic fundamentalists and the Christian Right in the United States have made people doubt the very possibility of co-existence.

In his latest book, Zachary Karabell (who obtained his doctorate degree from Columbia and published books on American college education and politics before the previous book on the Suez Canal), tries to present the history of happy co-existence among Muslims, Christians and Jews: from the era of Muhammad till twenty-first century Dubai.

Karabell suggests that the decline of relationships among Muslims, Christians and Jews can be traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Western-educated Arab intellectuals imported nationalism into their homes. Zionism, an ideology that began to grow popular after the First World War, further altered the former friendship between Muslims and Jews.

Rather than blaming Muslims for prejudice against Jews and Christians, Karabell asks us to think about the responsibility Christian Europe should bear for recent violence. What caused the departure of European Jews and, therefore, resulted in conflicts between Muslims and Jews? What brought about the plight of Palestinians? For Karabell, it would be easy to point a finger at Arabs, but he believes that without the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust, violence would not plague both Muslims and Jews.

As an example of restoration of harmony between followers of Muhammad and People of the Book, Karabell speaks about the city of Dubai, suggesting that the path to co-existence can be shaped by global-minded business strategy.

Obviously, Karabell understands that this is easier said than done. He illustrates his point by bringing up the enormous voting power of the American Christian Right, whose support was instrumental to the George W. Bush White House. The stronghold of religious parties in the Israeli government is another example he uses.

Karabell’s bibliography is well-stocked, from Turkish and Arabic sources, to publications of English-language conservative scholars, including Robert Spencer and Bat Ye’or. Both Spencer and Ye’or are contributors to Jihad Watch, a famous site, and have been accused of sparking Islamophobia. By going straight to such sources, Karabell has exposed the heart of present religious hostilities.

Chronicling the history of encounters between Islam and the West in the last fourteen hundred years, Karabell attempts to see a path toward peaceful co-existence today. I am not entirely sure that he has found a useful solution to the crises we face. Yet he has delivered a fascinating exploration of the good and bad that is to be found in the expressions of the Abrahamic faiths. There is some hope that we can get along yet, even if some of us continue to believe that killing people is the only answer.

Let’s see here: The two-party system stifles diversity of thought in one of the most diverse countries in the world. The Electoral College is undemocratic and an insult to every single one of my fellow American citizens. And the soundbite-driven media provides us with a 24-hour sideshow circus wherein deep, provocative issues such as “OMIGOD Hillary showed cleavage” are somberly discussed. Despite some much-needed new blood (*cough* Obama *cough*), this is still a popularity contest in a dingy school lunchroom, not an election.

If I were to pick one element of Popularity Contest 2008 that, above all else, makes me want to despair, it would be former Arkansas governor and Iowa Caucus golden boy Mike Huckabee.

I know, I know, you’re all waiting for the standard screed of “OMIGOD he’s a religious nut-job, burn him!” Yet, I believe things to be more complicated than that. For me, Mike Huckabee represents the ultimate flaw in the way that political identity is shaped in America: the false dichotomy between religion and secularism, the immaturity of the discourse on what it means to be an American politician in the first place.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: I do, in fact, heart Huckabee, or would like to heart him, as the case may be. I am a woman protective of my right to choose an abortion, a liberal Christian bewildered by conservative Protestantism, and an immigrant horrified by the dehumanizing language used against illegals, and yet I find this particular presidential candidate to be weirdly likeable. Huckabee was not propelled into politics as the result of being born into a wealthy family. He’s a gifted, charismatic speaker. He is straightforward; he eschews all slickness. He isn’t self-aggrandizing (*cough* Giuliani *cough*), and he strikes me as a genuinely intelligent human being.

It is my belief that the Huckabees of America, talented individuals from comparatively humble backgrounds, are crippled by a simplistic political system that substitutes televangelism (the love-child of Cotton Mather and big media) for faith, and infantilizes officials and electorate alike. Huckabee has stated that his initial involvement in politics stemmed directly from his opposition to abortion. Why? Probably because his community was encouraged to mobilize around an issue whose very nuances make it impossible to effectively discuss it in a group setting without first turning it into a kind of grim joke, an orgy of splattered-fetus imagery that does not begin to address modern anxieties over gender, ethics, and autonomy.

Abortion, and other topics of discussion, have become meaningless rallying points in a society where one’s political identity is shaped by a clutch of buzzwords. “Abortion!” We shout. “Economy! Iraq! Israel! Gay Marriage!” – hardly ever stopping to consider what these words really mean to us.

As Americans of all religious and ethnic backgrounds, we worry about radical Islam (with good reason, because it is first and foremost a threat to moderate Islam, a much-needed ally), but somehow manage to ignore the fact that we lose millions of folks to peddlers of Old Testament Lite. For many of my fellow liberals, these individuals are “crazies,” “wingers,” and “godbags.” To me, they are first and foremost tragic figures, indicative of our failures as a society. In the 21st Century, in the richest nation in the world, we have created a set of entirely arbitrary ideological divisions that prevent us from enacting any meaningful change to the way we live and the way we interact with each other and the rest of the world. It’s a stupid tug-of-war between Democrat and Republican, “godbag” and “godless,” Chuck Norris and the rest of the universe – and it’s costing us everything.

It is not my wish to patronize Mike Huckabee. I have simply read up on his stances regarding various political issue, and found them not only wanting, but puzzling, considering what I perceive to be his obvious intelligence. And wherein in the years before, I have been tempted to shrug off such puzzlement with a simple “this is a conservative, what can you expect?” – I have since begun to question my response.

The truth is, if we had a diversified political party system that meant anything, Mike Huckabee would be interacting with GLBTQ rights activists, various feminists, various atheists, and other potential opponents on a regular basis. This wouldn’t mean that Huckabee would have to give up his principles – but that he would be counter-weighed and challenged, and be allowed to counter-weigh and challenge in return, all in a setting that required actual interaction.

If, in our society, we were allowed to talk to each other, instead of at each other, we could begin to reach important deals on our quietly rotting economy, embarrassing foreign policy, and so on. And we would focus less on defining each other with brutal stereotypes – “redneck,” “baby-killer,” “welfare queen” – because real pluralism would encourage us to face each other. It is a whole lot harder to stereotype the person you closely work with, in government and beyond, as opposed to some nebulous Other somewhere. The rigid, artificial divide of Republican vs. Democrat, however, ensures that we continue to engage each other rather superficially.

I admire Mike Huckabee’s drive. I admire his tenacity, humility, and sense of humour. I admire what appears to be his genuine commitment to his faith. I admire his clever, streamlined campaign. I can’t say the same about the shallow two-party system and the evangelical theatrics that have influenced his politics.

What remains of my tattered hope is reserved for Obama, though I fear that in our country, prejudice runs too deep for him to win. Ditto for Clinton. My heart would be a trifle (or, actually, more than a trifle) thawed by the sight of the first black or female candidate taking office, but we’ve miles to go before we sleep yet.

“You don’t have to believe in God to sit in the Chapel and talk. Tell me what’s on your mind,” I offered him a chair and some chocolate to share while we talked.

<

“Miss, I don’t really want to believe in God. I guess you could say that I got angry at God a while ago, and I can’t believe anymore.” Jon proceeded to tell me a story that I can’t forget.

“I was out at a club, hanging out with my boys, having a good time, dancing with girls. Then, I started dancing with this one girl. She had a boyfriend who was there, and he got mad and tried to start something.” When that boy started a fight with Jon, Jon broke a bottle over his head, and they were kicked out of the club. Jon and his brother got as far as their car before the other boys met them again.

“And, then, I told my brother, ‘Let’s just go. Let’s just get out of here.’” Trying to stand up for Jon, his brother got out of the car to confront the other young men.

“Then, he got into a fight. I got went to help him. Then they shot him.” As Jon was telling me this, his voice was flat. “I watched my brother die that night. He died while I was holding him.”

At this point, I was praying to myself, “God, what do I say? How am I supposed to help in this situation?” The Holy Spirit had to have been there, guiding both of us.

“So, after that happened, I started getting angry with God.” Jon continued. “If God was really there, I don’t think he would have let my brother die like that. I should have been able to do something, something to stop that from happening.”

“Sometimes, God lets things happen, and we don’t have any control over them,”

Jon put his head in his hands, and covered his eyes with his bandana. “I started that fight, and I don’t think my brother or God could ever forgive me.” I have never seen a dear friend die, but I have known that deepest feeling of regret and remorse – when your life seems worthless compared to the guilt you feel.

“Jon, whether or not you believe, God loves you. God forgave you for what happened with your brother a long time ago. And, God even forgives you for not believing in him. God can wait, and He will wait for you.”

Unconditional forgiveness is gift that’s hard for us to give, but even harder to accept. I don’t know where Jon is now, but I thank God for the chance to hear his story and the privilege of reminding him of the power of God’s love.

Spending a summer working with the young men and women at Covenant House taught me lessons I would never hear in a university lecture hall—lessons about life, love, and human nature. Though they come from widely diverse situations, all of the youth living at Covenant House feel rejected, used, hurt, and alone. When I joined Covenant House Faith Community that summer, I thought I was signing up for three months of helping kids—teaching them about prayer and hope and faith. But, as it turned out, they were teaching me about courage, persistence, and the incomparable joy of being loved unconditionally.

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“Seriously.”

Ah, the Christmas season and the critics it inevitably spawns… You overhear them in the shops (much like I did in the case above); you go to grab a coffee on your lunch-break only to find yourself in the middle of an argument as to whether or not it is actually OK to buy one’s children iPods when there’s a war going on in Iraq, etc. And when talk of war dries up, people will go on to debate whether or not a Christmas ornament featuring Homer Simpson and a giant bottle of Duff Beer is in poor taste or not, and be just as grave and serious about it.

Its a Wonderful Life movie It seems to me that Americans are forever divided over the holiday season: either we are out at 5:30 a.m., eagerly waiting for that ornament sale to start, or we’re rolling our eyes at the neighbours’ outlandish decorations and dumping liters of rum into that eggnog, just to keep ourselves from killing someone after the 100th time we hear “Little Drummer Boy.”

We debate spirituality and materialism, various churches and recipes, paganism and Saviour-ism. Last year, the conservative media came up with a catchy phrase – “The War on Christmas” -meant to highlight the way in which the “pinkos and the homos and the witches” want to destroy proud Christian tradition in this great nation of ours. But the truth of the matter is – Christmas, and winter holidays in general, have always meant different things for different people. Even modern-day pagans complain about how their Winter Solstice was hijacked by Christianity all those years ago. The lost Golden Age of Christmas that evangelicals want us to turn back to never existed in the first place.

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And then there are the continued discussions concerning the lost “spirit” of the season, and how this is, supposedly, a modern phenomenon. The capitalist appropriation of the gift giving ritual has debased the holiday, erasing the “spirit” and replacing it with “spending” – all in the last few decades, apparently!

Yet perhaps there is nothing new about the commercialization of religious holidays. The concept did not arise out of a vacuum, and the evil corporations are not necessarily the first to exploit this phenomenon. The Christmas celebrations of centuries past were not bereft of materialist pursuits, as Ebenezer Scrooge would attest. Even the Three Magi did not show up to worship the baby Jesus empty-handed, as the Bible claims. And the pagan predecessors of Christmas – Saturnalia, Brumalia, etc. – included gift giving.

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While no international conglomerate was charging tax on the myrrh offered to Jesus, for example, the actual ritual has remained, in many ways, the same. It has its negative aspects and its positive ones. It is not “evil,” but neither is it problem-free, especially when thousands of people, it seems, begin treating their holiday shopping list as some sort of status symbol. Discourse on the commercial aspects of Christmas is needed, but an in-depth, economically literate approach would be best. Shrill diatribes on why all Christmas shoppers ought to be drawn and quartered are getting just a little bit trite at this point in our capitalist history.

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Most people will agree that, on Christmas, while the world’s elite roasts the goose and trades the aforementioned iPods, other people are busy starving and suffering and this is, indeed, unseemly. Problem is: the ideas on fixing the situation vary wildly. Do we take a sledgehammer to the economy, or do we try to revolutionize it? Christmas, perhaps more so than other times of year, brings such questions into sharper focus with its contrast of goodwill and rabid expenditure. The economics of the holiday season are a fascinating subject – not just for pundits and academics, but for all of the revelers.

It is my belief that, whether or not one can reconcile capitalism with Christianity in the end, this season is what you make it. The holidays do not belong to anyone in particular, no matter how many people will argue otherwise (and they will, on FOX News and AM radio, and everywhere else they can manage to get a word in). This is the way it’s always been, even during the days when Christmas was an official, even mandatory occasion.

When it comes to the magic of this season, people’s hearts react to it differently. The winter festivities can be about the birth of a Saviour, it can be about the beauty and terror of winter, a season of excitement, or reflection, or crowded malls, or combating irresponsible consumption, or drunken French-kissing under the mistletoe in full view of the relatives.

So Happy Holidays to you, and may you make the best of them, if you so choose. I, for example, hope to see my family this Christmas. The rest is mere window dressing – attractive as it is.