Reverse.

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?  That’s the question posed by Ross Douthat, the always interesting conservative NY Times columnist and a committed Roman Catholic.  Of course, the same can be asked about Liberal Judaism or Islam. Better yet, would be to question if liberal religion is viable in the first place.  Taking the long view, a strong argument can be made that it is not.  The orthodox across all religions share one thing in common.  For them religion is essential to their being, as natural and necessary as breathing air.  They make no real distinction between the holy and the profane.  Consequently, life is a cohesive and integrated whole where religious practice is not an option but a necessity.  In contrast, the non-orthodox (while certainly not monolithic) generally approach religion as something to be done, often at a specific time and place.  I like to describe it as by appointment.  Appointments are meant to be kept but, the best intentions notwithstanding, they are often to be missed, something that can become a habit, feeding on itself.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that orthodox leaders like the Pope whom Douthat references, stand fast against any liberalization.  They pushback against Vatican II-like reforms, seeing them as dilutive and ultimately destructive.  It’s hard to argue with that conclusion.  And that’s precisely what concerns Douthat even though he recognizes that progressive religion has played a key role in civil rights and other efforts aimed at bettering our society, what Jews call tikun olam.

At the same time, just as taken to its logical conclusion, liberalization may lead to destruction, we should not overlook the chicken and egg question.  Liberal religion may be positioned as modernizing belief and practice, but is it rather reactive — aimed at saving something that would otherwise be lost?  There is considerable data suggesting that people in the West (including the United States) are moving from religion at an accelerating pace.  They may be exiting from liberal churches and synagogues but also from the orthodox.  Only the influx of Hispanics can mask the full dimension of Catholic Church losses better seen in the forced closing of many parishes and schools.  Only 40% of those brought up as Orthodox Jews remain so as adults.

So the question posed by Ross Douthat may be interesting but it is ultimately the wrong one.  Considering current trends — the doubling of the no-religion-at-all group in the last decade — shouldn’t we be asking if religion can be saved?  I’d suggest both orthodox and liberal religious leaders, admit it or not, have that question top of mind and have developed different strategies in response to the perceived danger.

The orthodox are turning inward, hitting the reverse button if you will.  Their religion is becoming narrower, more doctrinaire and often more militant (in some cases violent).  They are closing all windows and drawing all shades to avoid even a trickle of air or light that might disrupt their way.  It is why Rome is reining in their nuns, which Douthat sees as something being done for their own protection.  I don’t buy it.  By the same token, liberals are desperately trying to find innovative ways that will engage their constituents while simultaneously hitting their own reverse button.  For them this means dipping into the tradition and in some instances reinstating customs if not ideas that had been previously abandoned.  All the while, they know that without embracing modernity they can’t sustain the flock or themselves.  A conundrum to which there is no easy response.

These are very different strategies and both may ultimately constitute short-term fixes.  The Higgs bosom is not the God particle, but a bit of matter that will give scientists greater insight into our origins; insights that obviate any Let there be.  Religion has been around a long time and it is sure survive far into the future.  It remains more resilient in some places than others, in some pockets even in places hostile to its teaching.  It survived Stalin.  But, as life itself, religion — the adherence to what some of us believe — is likely to be finite not eternal.  Measured against the rigors of scientific testing, it falls short.  The radical idea of religion as finite, is something its followers don’t dare consider because that, not liberalism or orthodoxy, is a real game changer.

Affirmation with attendant questions.

It’s unsurprising that the religious right leaders gathered in Brenham Texas voted to endorse Rick Santorum.  Unlike Newt, whose religiosity comes off as opportunistic, and the other Rick who has shown himself unpredictable, Santorum is clearly and consistently one of them.  That said, what they perceive as his strength — an unabashed religious fervor — is precisely what makes the former senator so problematic to those of us concerned about any erosion in the Jefferson’s Wall of Separation.  Indeed Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, and the gathering’s spokesman epitomizes those theocrats that would have us tear much of it down and submit to their ideas and ways.

As Republican candidates actively seek support of those who by word and action challenge it, last week the Supreme Court issued a significant, albeit narrow, ruling affirming the Establishment Clause.   At issue in Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was whether a religious institution, in this case a Lutheran church school, is covered by a ministerial exception in dealing with one of its employees. Hosanna-Tabor had fired Cheryl Perish a called (ordained as minister) teacher who suffered from narcolepsy rather than let her return to work.  She brought suit under The Americans with Disabilities Act.   Speaking for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Roberts wrote: When a minister who has been fired sues her church alleging that her termination was discriminatory, the First Amendment has struck a balance for us.  The church must be free to choose who will guide it on its way.

When our highest court upholds church-state separation, especially in the current political climate, we all have good reason to celebrate.  At the same time, the ministerial exception invoked and confirmed in this case seems to fly in the face of the protections embodied in the ADA, protections most of us value.  Had Ms. Perish worked for anyone else, her suit would have been judged solely on its merits — was she fired because she was ill — and nothing else.  To me, this case presents a troubling conundrum.  On the one hand, we absolutely don’t want the government dictating who religious institutions chose to lead them, on the other we want all employees, regardless of who they are and where they work, to be protected.  So the Court was faced with a really tough choice.  It came down on the separation side deciding that while the interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is important, that is trumped by the interest of religious groups in choosing who will teach their beliefs. Trumped but limited to this case or assumably ones exactly like it.  Clearly their decision reflects that they too understood the conundrum. As Chief Roberts put it: ...We express no view on whether the [ministerial] exception bars other types of suits, including actions by employees alleging breach of contract or tortious conduct by their religious employers.  There will be time enough to address the applicability of the exception to other circumstances if and when they arise.

Whenever we set up protections for one class of people not accorded to others we walk a fine line.  The Establishment Clause was aimed at protecting against a government that would subvert religious freedom and independence.  Roberts methodically recounts that background in his decision referencing, among others, The Act of Supremacy of 1534 [that] made the English monarch the supreme head of the Church.  He reminds us that, seeking to escape the control of the national church, the Puritans fled to New England.  They were not alone in seeking religious freedom.  But who exactly should have that protection?  Should it be limited to those groups who believe in a god, or who profess following divine teaching and direction or should it also protect, say a group that challenges a god’s existence or more pointedly speaks against such a deity?  The organized Secular Humanists have skirted that important issue by presenting themselves as a church — in effect a godless-religion. 

In 2005 a Federal Appeals Court, faced with the plea of a prison inmate, ruled that that atheism is equivalent to a religion for the purposes of the First Amendment.  It follows then that courts are likely to protect the rights of an individual atheist, though perhaps more on the grounds of the Frist Amendment’s free speech guarantee than necessarily its establishment clause.  If so, that’s too bad because in my view her lack of belief in God should be treated identically as would be the case for a theist follower an organized religion, and for the same legal reason.  But would an organized group of atheists who refuse to follow the secular humanist route in calling themselves either a church or a religion be accorded the same ministerial exception that the Court gave Hosanna-Tabor?  I’m talking here about an organization made up of people coming from what Pew and others characterize as the fastest growing group on the religious landscape.  What criteria might the Court use to make that judgment?  Would it be sufficient for the group to designate leaders or would they need to have established a formal set of beliefs and/or rules of governance?  Would they have to have incorporated?  Given where we’re actually headed in this assumed religious country, this is not a far-fetched question.   Associations of atheists already exist likey to both promulgate and then effectively transmit their beliefs to the next generation.  Others may be formed in the future even if only to get the seat they deserve at the table of public discourse.  How would the Court treat these non-churches — how would they as institutions be protected by the Establishment Clause?

Given the militant reaction of the religious right to the so-called value issues currently focused on what they call traditional marriage, it’s fair to wonder how they would feel if an atheist entity were accorded, or even to claim, a ministerial exception?  Think about it.   The very idea that atheism could be placed on the same legal plane as theism would be no less troubling than allowing abortions or same-sex unions.  That God isn’t ultimately more important to evangelicals and other orthodox religious than terminating a pregnancy or allowing gay and lesbians — mere mortals — to marry would be mystifying.  In fact, I would think that in their worldview according atheists equal establishment clause status would be nothing short of blasphemy.  It would be seen as the ultimate slippery slope.

Courts generally don’t answer unasked questions and, to inoculate themselves, are loath to publically speculate on issues and cases that might be.  Who knows whether in the privacy of their conference or individual chambers these questions have been discussed or even considered?  There is no evidence that any member of the Court is an active atheist or even an agnostic.  Their rulings on the establishment clause aren’t theologically grounded other than to protect freedom of those who are.  It may take a long time, if ever, for this issue to present itself.  And the questions raised in Hosanna-Tabor are by no means limited to the ones just posed.

Having personally experienced being employed as a clergyman and then as a business executive, I come to this issue with a little different perspective than those who don’t share that experience.  Of course the purposes of my different employers were different as was the work.  Many churches and clergy see the ministry as a calling (sometimes literally the result of divine intervention or purpose) — The Lutheran’s gave Ms. Perish the title: called-teacher.   I never saw it that way, and not all religions do either.  The fact is that, regardless or the job description or work, both as a rabbi and as an executive I was an employee.  I was expected to perform and in return expected a salary check to reach me when promised, to have appropriate working conditions and to be treated fairly and equitably by my employers; synagogue board or company.   We all know that doesn’t always go well.  And we know from the sexual abuse scandal, both the criminal acts and the cover-up, that religious institutions are not immune from wrongdoing.  Ms. Perish’s employers dodged a bullet that would likely have hit its target had she worked for any other kind of school, public or private.  I don’t think the ADA was meant to exclude any employer or not to protect the rights of any individual.  The Court’s decision certainly re-affirmed the establishment clause, but it’s hard to deny it raised as many questions as it answered.

Extinction: probably not, but.

A new and provocative study presented to the American Physical Society last week by a trio of mathematicians predicts that organized religion is on its way to extinction in nine countries.  Their work (using census data going back a century) was based on the same mathematical model employed in 2003 by the lead author Daniel Abrams to predict the extinction of little used languages.  What stimulated Abrams interest this time was learning that none is the fastest growing religious group in many countries around the world including here in America.  Moreover, those who have left religion behind represent a significant portion of their populations — already a 60% majority in the Czech Republic.  In a CNN interview, Abrams said that he and his colleagues were not trying to make any commentary about religion or whether people should be religious or not.  Rather they wanted to understand the long-term implications of the growing disaffiliation, particularly in Western-style democracies.  The United States was not included in the study because its census doesn’t ask about religion, but among the countries that do and where the researchers posit religion is likely to become extinct are Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and our neighbor Canada.

The trio developed a model to study competition between religious and irreligious segments of modern secular societies.  Again, as in America, none is the fastest growing group and trending higher.  The model, they write in their conclusion, indicates that in these societies the perceived utility of religious non-affiliation is greater than that of adhering to a religion, and therefore predicts continued growth of non-affiliation, tending toward the disappearance of religion.  Talking to the BBC, co-author Richard Wiener said, the study posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join.

Higher mathematics is far above my pay level, so I have no way of knowing if the trio’s model holds water.  My own sense is that their extinction prediction may be overstated.  That said, there is little doubt that in many countries trends are going against religion not for it.  What intrigues me about this work is that it leans so heavily on social dynamics, which I would argue under the umbrella of community has played a critical role in building and then protecting religion throughout history.  One of the questions with which I have been wrestling in my own work regarding those who have left religion behind is how and if non-religion can be viable without community?  It’s complicated because many people have left religion precisely, sometimes mostly, because they are rejecting community — religion in its organized form.  Lack of community may suit their immediate and personal needs, but their no religion stance may be difficult to carry into future generations.  Also, and hardly inconsequential when the Religious Right is again (Iowa’s Conservative Conference) raising its ugly head, the absence of community translates into having no place at the table.  Simply put, those without community lack political clout.

For that reason alone — there are others — I think some semblance of community engagement may be required.  The question is how, absent creating the very kind of organizational structure that is so anathema to them, can the nones both survive ideologically and protect their rights in the larger society?  When starting to think about this some years back, there was no good answer.  That may have changed in the face of social networking and the emergence of virtual communities.  And that’s exactly what Abrams suggested to CNN.  It's more attractive, he said, to be part of the majority than the minority, so as religious affiliation declines, it becomes more popular not to be a churchgoer than to be one — the majority effect.  People are more likely to switch to groups with more members.  Social networks can have a powerful influence.  Just a few connections to people who are (religiously) unaffiliated is enough to drive the effect. 

I would add that the rise of social networks could potentially accelerate the move from religion for a number of reasons.  First, because it may give voice to people who identify with religion solely because they’ve been told it’s what everyone does or should do.  Through social networking they may discover that the everyone in question is a myth.  Second, social networks often benefit from the viral effect, spreading the word in a way heretofore unknown and doing so instantaneously.  It’s not reading or hearing that some statistic says an amorphous 16% of Americans have moved beyond religion, it is that a someone specific to whom you can relate personally, call it a friend, shares your views.  Finally, social networks can lead to action — old fashion people power — influencing perceptions and conventional wisdom.  Just look at what’s happening in the Middle East where the idea that everyone is loyal to the dictator is being debunked across the landscape.  That no such everyone loyalty exists empowers those who thought themselves to be in the minority but are not — think Abrams’ majority effect.

Community has been essential to the world’s religions and might well be equally so for those who have left religion behind.  It may simply require rethinking what it takes to make and be a community, and clearly that’s no longer restricted to a village.

It's our business too.

While still the most unfinished business, much ink has been spilled
over the past twenty-five years trying to make sense of the Roman Church’s
horrendous predator priest scandal. 
The Pope certainly is having what Queen Elizabeth famously described as
an annus horribilis.  Beyond a lot of first rate
investigative reporting — that gossip of
the moment — we have seen moving and poignant columns by lay Catholic
columnists, a combination of both rage and deep sadness.  Maureen
Dowd has taken the Church to task in a recent series of powerful pieces, as
she has often over the years.  Her
colleague Ross Douthat, suggesting that Benedict in fact may be the better pope
tries to put some perspective on his verses predecessor John Paul’s response
(or lack of it).  It’s impossible
to improve on what they have written, much less have their special in family authority in doing so.

It is shocking that this story has gone on for such a long time — a
quarter of a century is an eternity in our fast paced short news cycle
era.  Reading current news from
Germany, including the thousands of calls coming in daily to its recently
established abuse hotline, gives one a definite sense of déjà vu.  Much talk, shamefully modest progress.  One has to think that another
generation of unsuspecting youngsters are in present and clear danger from
still unexposed or still free floating serial predators.  Interestingly, it is a problem not
decades old but with deep roots as documented
in some detail by a relentless priest, Rev. Thomas Doyle, whose career has paid
the usual whistle blower price. 

All this trouble is generally attributed to Church hierarchy and a
bunch of bad apples rather than to the majority of individual priests and
parishioners whom the writer (and Catholic) Anna Quindlan characterized in a
recent interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm as “good people doing good things”.   That is undoubtedly the case, but
in our politically correct effort of avoiding making this an anti-Catholic
thing, we shouldn’t simply give them a pass.  Pope Benedict attributes his membership in the Hitler Youth to
a situation beyond his control as a subject of the Nazi regime.  I have no reason don’t doubt him.  But I also know well that Hitler
survived in part because of citizen acquiescence, excused often as “only
following orders” or “we didn’t know”.  The Roman Church is an authoritarian institution led by an infallible monarch.  The Pope and his surrogates down the
line rule in the “name of God” and with that claimed credential take on special
authority.  So it would seem the
faithful have chosen to avert their eyes and carry on business as usual.  They see themselves as good people
doing good things and justify their silence by not wanting anything to get in
the way of that.  A billion people
verses a top-heavy handful of leaders. 
You be the judge.

Of course large numbers of Catholics have protested with their
feet.  According to Pew’s 2008
Religious Landscape Survey one third of those who were born Catholic in
the United States have left the church. 
On April 25, 2005, the day Benedict XVI was elected — the abuse scandal
already in its twentieth year — the New
York Times ran a front-page story entitled Europeans Fast Falling Away From Church.  As Elaine Sciolino reported then,
“Among Catholics, only 10 percent in the Netherlands, 12 percent in France, 15
percent in Germany and Austria, 18 percent in Spain and 25 percent in Italy
attend Mass weekly.”  That’s right,
in Benedict’s homeland, now the focus of attention, 85% of Catholics rarely, if
ever, set foot in their churches and even in Italy where he blesses throngs
gathered in St. Peter’s Square 75% of local Catholics are Sunday no-shows.  So, if you want to understand the
larger story of why the Roman Church hierarchy has been going ballistic about
renewed bad press coverage, I’d suggest you might want to look beyond the
scandal of predatory priests to those statistics.  The
Church is under siege in the developed world.  Were it not for the large influx of Hispanic immigrants, it
would actually be showing a loss of market share (for the first time) in the
already shrinking American religious landscape. 

One could legitimately say that as non-Catholics we have no business
treading in these waters, much less judging the Church or its leaders.  Perhaps that’s so, but let’s remember
abusing priests have broken our civil law, committing what our larger society views
the most heinous of crimes.  The
Church hierarchy, in taking the law into its own hands might well be accused of
vigilantism, something we generally deplore, and which again is illegal.  Their cover-up certainly constitutes
obstruction of justice, a serious violation of civil code, especially in
criminal cases.  But in the end the
real damage — the one about which we probably should care most — is to our
general faith in institutions. 
Here all people and groups, religious or not, are affected.

Societies are dependent on their institutions — their organized we.  Institutions facilitate functioning effectively and
furthering our collective agendas.  
When we lose our trust in institutions both they, and logically we, are
imperiled.  It is now well known
and often repeated that we Americans hold our principal governmental institutions
in low esteem and by larger margins each year.  Think Tea Party. 
What may be less so is that, according to the 2008 General
Social Survey, high confidence in organized religion has fallen to a paltry
20% — only marginally better than our discredited banks.  That is an important number to the obviously
worried Vatican, but is no less so to any of us.  To say that the Pope's annus
horribilis is wholly to blame for undermining our institutions would be
ridiculous; to say what’s been going these past decades plays no role would be
naïve.  And it’s not merely what
the Church has or has not done, it is also the misguided respectful silence of
many of its own and of the larger religious community, which, aside from woeful head-shaking, has remained mostly silent and continues to be.  None of our business you might say.  Wrong!

 

Where was God?

Last Thursday, the NY Times reported that a commission established by Prime Minister Bertie Ahern back in 2000 finally issued its long awaited report.  It confirmed “tens of thousands of Irish children were regularly sexually and physically abused by nuns, priests and others for more than sixty years in hundreds of [Church run] residential institutions that housed the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted”.   The last of these horrific places were closed only in the 1990s and there was, and remains, great resistance by both the Church and the Irish Department of Education to investigating, much less reporting, what occurred within their walls.  Sadly, as anyone who has followed the news in recent years knows, this is by no means an isolated case.   Even its breathtaking scope is not without peer.  William Lobdell in his recently published book “Losing my Religion” recounts the story of remote St. Michael Island “where a single Catholic missionary raped an entire generation of Alaska Native boys,” and he was not the sole abuser.  I had just finished reading Lobdell's book when the Dublin findings were made public.

Bill Lobdell has lost his faith, one that had been methodically and urgently won as an adult.  His is the story of a highly personal intensive religious pursuit, a journey that ultimately led him from being “born again” to the doorstep of a Catholic conversion.  Already a seasoned journalist, he felt triumphant in landing the religious beat for the LA Times.  At the time, he saw it as a made-in-heaven symbiotic dream job that combined a concurrent quest for personal faith and an equally dedicated professional pursuit as a reporter.  It morphed into a nightmare that would give him many troubled and sleepless hours.  What he hoped would be uplifting and reassuring turned to be just the opposite, beginning with his reporting on the fall of Michael Harris, a fabled Hollywood priest, and culminating on that Alaskan island.  What made the many stories of abuse he covered ultimately overwhelming were not so much the acts of the predatory priests, which could be explained on an individual basis, but the complicity and duplicity of the institutional Church.  It, he and others were to discover, engaged in a systematic effort to cover-up wrong doing that made Watergate pale in comparison, and it did so at the highest levels.

So where was God in all of this?  The great and classic religious question, one posed across all faiths, is, “why do bad things happen to good people?”  The bottom line answer to this question is some version of “God works in mysterious ways”. Not really a satisfactory response, but adequate for most believers.  The religious generally are willing to give God a pass, accepting that divine action is not always understood.  The widespread abuse that has enveloped the Catholic Church, actions of an institution as Lobdell puts it, that God “is supposed to be guiding”, can’t simply be construed as mysterious.  So they pose a much far more profound theological dilemma.  We may bemoan, but can accept, many of those bad things happening to good or innocent people by attributing them to “accidents” or illness-causing genetic flaws.  But the willful evil acts of those who claim to speak for God and act in God’s name are something totally different.  After all, Catholic doctrine views the Pope as Christ’s direct representative – he speaks and acts for God. The Cardinals, Bishops and priests (some of each class were involved) are his surrogates, exercising substantial power.  Only a priest can offer a Mass reenacting the sacrifice of Christ and it is the priest who is empowered to grant God’s absolution for human sin.  Lobdell understood that, and the underlying and corrosive question posed or implied by his book is, how could God allow divine surrogates to behave in that way, or condone the institutional behavior of the Church?  He finally submitted to this painful but logical Occam Razor answer, “the simplest explanation kept boomeranging back to me: there was no God.”

Let’s put that in a larger perspective.  If, as is the case with so many people, one believes that God has a hand in everything that happens – for example that he both spares and takes lives – then he must have a hand in approving the actions of his representatives here on earth.  You can’t believe that a priest can act in God’s name, and presumably approval, one minute and not in the next.  That’s precisely why the broad scale scandal that has overtaken the Catholic Church in recent years has turned so many Catholics away from their religion, and not inconsequentially has had a ripple effect of making many non-Catholics question their faith as well.  Where was God when all of this was going on?  Were the divine “eyes” simply averted, as someone once suggested was the case with the Holocaust?  If God is God, that’s hard, if not impossible, to believe.  God was clearly absent when everyone assumed the divine is always on watch, or as Bill Lobdell suggests, perhaps there is no God.

Family Gathering

Abigail Pogrebin, the gifted writer, has published a fascinating and beautifully written book called, Stars of David (see www.amazon.com or your local bookstore).  In it she reports on her interviews with sixty-two Jewish women and men who have made their public mark in the arts, politics, academia, journalism and letters.  What struck me at once about these overachievers was that while, with very few exceptions, all are disengaged from organized religious life, most consider their Jewishness integral to who they are.  A number do attend services on occasion (usually once a year) or have shepherded their child through a bar or bat mitzvah.  But that’s about it with one major exception.  The majority of those interviewed participate in, or host, a Passover Seder. I wasn’t surprised to read of that strong connection.

People often think that generally inactive Jews connect with their religion only on the High Holy Days (particularly Yom Kippur), if at all.  The fact is that Passover and particularly the Seder seems to have a much broader pull.  While those who pass on religous services altogether may do so without qualm, even the tangentially involved often feel they’ve missed something if they don’t participate in a Seder.  Ours have always involved extended and non-family members (often including Christian friends) who were eager and active participants.  There is something compelling about this holiday.

The prayers embodied in it the notwithstanding, the Hagaddah text strikes more of a universal rather than narrowly religious theme.  Its message of freedom resonates with everyone and not inconsequentially because it remains remarkably current.  The notion that setting people free will potentially have a generational impact – not merely Moses was set free but that I was set free with him – continues to be powerful.  Whatever residual problems and prejudices remain (and they can be significant), it is certainly a message to which African Americans can relate and which compelled so many Jews to join in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and before.  It’s also a message to which the authors of current American foreign policy might point to justify their actions aimed at bringing freedom (and democracy) to Iraq and elsewhere.  Of course, as is often the case, religious texts and messages are read and taken selectively.  The underlying message of the Exodus is that freedom resulted from a self motivated indigenous effort.  Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and eventually determined the need for laws to govern their everyday life.  Freedom can be taken (or sometimes given under duress), but can’t be imposed.

Perhaps even more compelling and in a profound way more enduring than the message (what probably brings Pogrebin’s Stars to the table) is the pull of family.  While other Holy Days and Festivals on the Jewish religious calendar are synagogue centered, the main event at Passover takes place at home.  While a certain historic order (Seder) is brought the proceedings, it is largly under full family control, often involving “proprietary” customs that are unique to each clan.  This may include how the Seder is conducted (my own family Hagaddah can be downloaded at www.jjprinz.com ) to what food is consumed.  For many people (and not only Jews) family is often the only remaining connection to their historic identity.  This is just another reason why promoting the existing family and the building of new families, including gay families, is so very important in our society, and ultimately to its survival.

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving because it is our most shared holiday, the one time religious and demographic differences melt away.  Passover is in its way the Jewish Thanksgiving that draws us in for many of the same reasons.  Even if no formal Seder is conducted in its observance (which is a pity), the importance of getting together with family and friends should in itself never be discounted.  Abby Pogrebin (whose mother was my college classmate) was motivated to write this book by her own journey in reassessing her roots.  Some of its most moving passages are found in the prologue and epilogue.  Her subjects, like so many contemporary children of religious backgrounds no longer have active contact with that side of their life (or of their ancestors' lives), but nonetheless want to maintain some thread of connection.  Passover and specifically the Seder seems to be a good place to start, and thus is a celebration not wisely cast aside.