Religious

Re "How the Dems lost their faith," Opinion, July 16 Contrary to Gregory Rodriguez's thesis, Democrats didn't lose their faith. Republicans simply were better at articulating theirs. Americans are openly religious. Nearly two-thirds describe themselves as strongly active in a church, synagogue or spiritual group. Up to now, Democrats have been reluctant to impose their beliefs on others. Today there is an emerging social morality that is both traditional and progressive. To win national office, Democrats will need to find a way to merge the older, absolute morality with a newer tolerance for individual differences.

Re "Bill to Protect Religious Expression on the Job Causes Concern," May 10: If I entertained for a moment a vote for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for president, he just lost it. Co-sponsoring a ridiculous religious expression bill with the likes of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) while running for president is nothing more than pandering to the conservative religious right. That group doesn't need any more support with President Bush at the helm -- especially from the likes of Kerry. Are we, too, becoming a theocracy?

Mary Rourke showed a lot of courage in writing about the Virgin Mary ("Mary Revisited," Nov. 3) and showing a side of Mary hardly known to general readership. It is not easy to write on a subject that has so many ethnic sensitivities. As we enter the new millennium, we need to expand our horizons and study about great personalities such as Mary in light of scriptures from all faiths, including Islamic teachings about the revered mother of Jesus. On Oct. 24 there was an ecumenical forum in Palos Verdes Peninsula.

A church historian who for 25 years has kept in touch with Soviet religion says it is gaining stature and prerogatives never deemed possible under communism. "The pace of change is really quite startling," said the Rev. V. Bruce Rigdon of Grosse Pointe, Mich. "One could have never predicted these changes would come so quickly." Rigdon, a Presbyterian and chairman of the National Council of Churches' U.S-Soviet Church Relations Working Group, added in a telephone interview: "There is some evidence of something that is beginning to look like a religious revival occurring in many places in the Soviet Union, especially among young people."

Southern California religious and political leaders Friday remembered Cardinal Timothy Manning as a man of quiet, persuasive spirituality who influenced those he met with warmth. Rabbi Alfred Wolf, director of the Skirball Institute of American Values and rabbi emeritus of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, said: "I mourn Cardinal Manning's death as a personal loss. The cardinal was a man of great learning and of deep faith. His love of people transcended denominational divisions.

Barry Goldman's objections to religious and spiritual diversity, as articulated in his Jan. 3 Times Op-Ed article, are too cynical and trite to even merit space in this newspaper. His Aunt Mary's quotation, "Whatever Jews believe, that's what I believe," is the policy of someone without intellectual or spiritual hunger. For Goldman to laud this attitude as proper shows an amazing amount of disdain on his part for the curiosity and exploration that religious growth requires. Using terms such as "superstitious hocus pocus" is simply another way of calling unfamiliar beliefs unfounded.

There's nothing more cutting edge than fundamentalism. The women swathed in veils in Picadilly Circus, the "facts on the ground" settlers in Jerusalem, the values voters who never give an inch. They wrap themselves in tradition and rage at the godlessness of modernity, but ultimately they are products of the very modernity they hate. Not that long ago it was the secularists who thought they were ahead of the curve, in the vanguard of progress. They wrapped themselves in the illusion that modernity would eradicate religion.

When Akasha Lonsdale was a child in London, her agnostic family prohibited her from participating in religious services at the Church of England school she attended. Required to sit at the back of a Hebrew class for the school's Jewish students, she befriended a girl whose family invited her to the Friday night Sabbath meal. "I found it an enriching experience," says Lonsdale, who years later became a therapist and then an interfaith minister. "Even from age 4, I was aware there was something more than this earthly life.

I see that Brenda Allaman from the Radical Religious Right has sent in a "Godless- liberals- are- picking- on- us- Christians- because- we're- becoming- politically- involved" letter (Aug. 15). It's full of name calling, distortions and untruths. The attempt to demonize liberals by claiming they are anti-religious is laughable. There's nothing mutually exclusive about being religious and being liberal. Jesse Jackson and Jimmy Carter are both devout Christians and are about as liberal as they come.