President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case - and most Americans would agree with him on this - then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people?

If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?

But I contend that if we're providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn't we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States?

And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons.

Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years, when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program.

While a case can be made for intelligent design, I can't figure out why some Christians are so thrilled about that possibility. First of all, it doesn't prove there's a God. If anything, intelligent design lends support to some form of pantheism that defines God as immanent within nature.

There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

So after the Lewinsky scandal, everything changed, and we moved from using the Bible to address the moral issues of our time, which were social, to moral issues of our time that were very personal. I have continued that relationship up until the present.

Red Letter Christians believe in the doctrines of the Apostle's Creed, are convinced that the Scriptures have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, and make having a personal transforming relationship with the resurrected Christ the touchtone of their faith.