When I was a child it seemed to me that people’s religions were very important to them. There seemed to be a strong consensus in the community on ethical values, but again, there was rarely any explicit talk about it in public. It was a matter of course that we went to church every Sunday unless someone was sick, and I know that I had to attend religious education classes every week, during the entire school year. Though there was plenty of talk about it in church and sometimes at home, people never seemed to speak about their religious views in public and that certainly included school. Even so, we seemed to know what the general religious orientations of our fellow students were. For good or ill the particular religions that we adhered to were compartmentalized into a private sector of our lives, which included church, home and the scout troops we belonged to. No mention was made of religious affiliations were ever made in public, except, unfortunately, bigoted slurs directed at some Jewish kids at school. Otherwise we kept it all to our selves, and religion never explicitly entered into the public debate or domain at all. In fact it was thought to be in bad taste and rather odd. It’s forty years later, and all that’s changed.

Religion has entered the public domain with a vengeance and I mean that literally. Rarely does a day go by without articles in the press or on the Internet featuring religious ideas, activists, terrorists or conflicts.

These are just a few stories from the past two weeks. American Evangelicals are urging parents to remove their children from public schools. Several denominations, including the conservative Presbyterian Church of America and the Southern Baptist Church have just barely kept from passing resolutions at their annual conventions urging their members to abandon public education for home schooling or Christian schools. Dr. James Kennedy, pastor of the 10,000-member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida said, “Public education is hostile to Christianity and undermines children’s faith. Public schools are secular, humanistic, pro-homosexual, immoral, Socialist, Communist, anti-American, anti-Israel, and in favor of a one world order setting the stage for Antichrist.” This is stunningly strong language, directed at one of the traditional foundations of American society. And who can forget Pat Robertson’s pronouncement that God might just smite a particular town, pardon me, that God would remove His protection from a particular town in the case of a disaster because they voted out of office a bloc of School Committee members, who had been pushing for “Intelligent Design” to be added to the science curriculum?

Two weeks ago, too, the Vatican was quick to speak out against the new method of removing stem cells from an embryo, which will not harm the embryo. Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, the top Vatican official for bioethics, said, and I quote verbatim: “That, from a point of view that is not only Catholic, but from a point of view of bioethical reasons is a negative factor.” In other words all in-vitro fertilization is morally wrong because the embryo is not the result of conjugal union between a husband and wife. And who can forget that two years ago, for the first time ever, some Roman Catholic bishops in this country threatened to excommunicate Catholic politicians, who voted to retain the legal right of abortion – declaring that Catholics in good standing may not vote for pro-choice candidates.

Last week Saudi Arabia imposed new laws forbidding Muslim women to pray or practice certain religious acts within specific distances from holy shrines and mosques in Mecca, Medina and elsewhere. And who can forget that most terrorist acts – whether against non-Muslims or among Muslims of different sects – have been inspired or justified on religious grounds.

In recent years people’s religious orientations haven’t merely come out of the closet, but, in fact, several religions have become more extreme in their positions and actually are embroiled in two-front wars. One front of the religious wars taking place, in our time, is on what might be called the religious home front. That is to say, several religions have been at war within themselves. There have been several clear examples of this phenomenon. The Southern Baptist Church, which is the largest Protestant denomination in this country, has been at war within itself for the better part of 20 years. That has been played out on at least two levels – in higher education and denominational convention. High profile battles have taken place at Southern Baptist seminaries and colleges at which the focus of the battle has been over such matters as how to understand the Bible as God’s Word. Moderates at Southern Baptist seminaries and colleges understand the Bible as God’s Word interpreted in the light of the historical contexts within which scripture’s human authors wrote. Conservatives understand the Bible as God’s literal Word without any conditions or qualifications. Over a period of 10-15 years nothing short of a power play took place to reform Southern Baptist institutions of higher education, especially seminaries, during which teachers and administrators, who couldn’t subscribe to a literalist understanding of God’s inspiration of the Bible were pushed out. At this time virtually all Southern Baptist schools adhere to a homogeneous doctrine of inspiration and interpretation of sacred scripture. Boiled down to a single slogan that doctrine could fairly be stated as “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” That power struggle naturally also played itself out within Southern Baptist Conventions, where, during the same period of time, new and clearer definitions of Southern Baptist doctrine, practice and politics have been adopted. Consequently, a minority of churches, which had previously been Southern Baptist left that denomination either because they were more moderate in their perspectives or because they objected to the increased denominational control of individual congregations – something unprecedented of in prior generations. Jimmy Carter is probably the best-known defector from the new Southern Baptist Church, and his express reason for leaving was his objection to the loss of liberty within that denomination, which had been one of the distinguishing characteristics of that Church.

The same power struggle has been acted out internationally in denominations like the Roman Catholic Church. 12 years or so ago, in his encyclical on human life, Pope John Paul II made it very clear that the single-most galvanizing precept around which ethical decisions must be made by Catholics is life. What promotes human life and its dignity must always be upheld as the standard of ethical decision-making. That not only included the obvious prohibition of abortion, but also any manipulation of the human reproductive process – whether artificial means of birth control, any in vitro fertilization other than between a husband and wife, any use of embryos, zygotes or fetal tissue for purposes of research or medical treatment, as well as any form of euthanasia for any reason. It has consistently been made very clear that one cannot be a Catholic in good standing if one participates in any way in any of those sins against the dignity of human life. Apart from the realm of human reproduction, the hierarchy of the Roman Church during the pontificate of John Paul II has intentionally reserved the elevation of clergy to the level of Bishop, Archbishop or Cardinal to those of a conservative theological and ecclesiastical orientation, thereby ensuring the doctrinal homogeneity of the College of Cardinals and subsequent popes.

This same struggle is also being acted out within the Anglican Church and its local expression – the Episcopal Church – relative to sexuality and the authority of Scripture and tradition in ecclesiastical decisions of that sort, albeit in a more courteous way.

Similarly, in the past several years, Conservative and Orthodox Jewish leaders have made unprecedented public declarations that while Reformed Jews were still to be considered Jewish in the ethnic sense, they could not technically be considered Jews in the religious sense. That position mirrors what Conservative Protestant Christians have long since claimed about liberal Christians.

Likewise Islam is at war within itself – not only between Sunnis and Shiites – but also between moderate Muslims, Fundamentalist Muslims and radical or militant Fundamentalist Muslims, whether Sunni or Shiite. The conflict within Islam has clearly gone beyond the war of words and political power struggles for control to organized armed violence.

Those are only a handful of examples of the home front wars taking place within the monotheistic world religions. There is little doubt but that Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholic Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism, have all taken a hard turn to the right within the past twenty years and that power struggles between conservatives and liberals within there own ranks have reflected that turn.

There is also a war taking place between each of those religions and what they identify to be their external enemies. Surely those external enemies include adherents to other religions to a certain extent. Many Muslims – especially Fundamentalist and radical Fundamentalist Muslims – see Jews and particularly Israelis as an enemy, and they have been explicitly involved in armed and political conflict with Israel for the better part of the past 60 years. Likewise, and also understandably, Jews around the world and particularly Israelis regard Muslims as enemies with whom they’ve been embroiled in military conflict or potential enemies. But some Muslims also regard Christians as enemies, and some Christians see some Muslims as enemies as well. This doesn’t merely apply to Al Qaida and American Christians, but even more blatantly and violently to Muslims and Christians in Su-Saharan Africa and Pacific Oceania.

But there’s another enemy that all the conservative adherents to all the aforementioned religions share in common. That enemy is known by different names, of course, but it’s the same enemy just the same. Whether it’s called secularism, Humanism, naturalism, modernism, materialism, New Age, or relativism, the enemy is the same and all these religions see this movement, in its several manifestations as the ultimate enemy, together with its handmaidens – Liberalism and Religious Liberalism. It is this force that is seen as the ultimate adversary in the now famous so-called culture wars in this country and in Islamic countries alike, and that is what impels religious folks in our time (of whatever faith) to be more inclined to theocracy than at any time in the past 300 years or so.

As if to underscore the point for this class, last Tuesday, President Bush said that he sees “a third Great Awakening of religious devotion in the U.S.” which he believes coincides with our current war against terrorism, and which he calls “a confrontation between good and evil.” And in his speech at ground zero on 9/11 he spoke of the struggle in Iraq as “a war for civilization”. The awareness of the concept of a third Great Awakening can only come from Conservative Christian circles, since it’s a technical term from church history with which the president is likely to be unfamiliar. I would argue, provocatively, that our current national leadership is influenced by Christian leaders of a distinctly conservative perspective, who envision the role and destiny of America to be the spearheading of a new, modern-day Holy Roman Empire, which will either prepare the world for the Lord’s Second Coming or safeguard Western ascendancy and help to spread Christian faith and values throughout the world.