If you consider readings from the Bible making the Bible into an "active worship book," I get your point. That is not primarily how we think of it, but, like I said, I can see your point.

In your post before that, you said that Jesus came only for the Jews. You probably get this from the story of the Cannanite woman in Matthew's gospel. You might be interested that, after this passage in Matthew, Jesus' vision expands beyond the Jews.

The point is that Jesus was open to a foreign woman, identified as "Canaanite" by Matthew, a word that hadn't been used for hundreds of years. Not only was she a foreign woman, but she was identified as an ancient enemy of Israel. She appears, according to Matthew, to have expanded Jesus' vision.

Which just goes to show that the bible can be used to promote just about any religious viewpoint and its opposite, however thinly.

Oh, that's definitely true. As someone once said, "The Bible, like Thomas Jefferson, can be quoted on both sides of most any topic." No less a theologian than Martin Luther said the Bible has a "wax nose."

Fundies like to invoke the Bible, even while completely misreading it. We mainline protestants respect the Bible, but we don't genuflect in its direction. We measure the Bible by Christ, not Christ by the Bible.

No help there, eh? Maybe you should go in for Scientology. You could meet Tom Cruise. How's that for an inducement?

He's no nuttier than a lot of celebs, although my wife can't stand him now because he ran out on Nicole. (What WAS he thinking?) I think I'll stick with my own faith tradition as opposed to something some guy cooked up in the 1950's. Best wishes.

Joanna, I didn't mean to diss your previous association, and, believe me, I know how pervasive the evangelical stuff is. In fact, you could say it is now the "default position" for protestantism in the US. How the Christian faith has fallen!

Walter, hang in there. Peace be with you both.

He was the best president of my lifetime, and I'm getting up there.

Truly. I'm going to use it to bolster my own arguments in various conversations I have on the subject.

I can't help mentioning, however, that I remember your laudatory words about Obama during the campaign. Frankly, none of this comes as much of a surprise to us Clinton supporters.

Whatever else you may think of him, Bill Clinton is a smart politician. He wouldn't "race-bait" because, in the Democratic Party, he knows it would backfire.

Besides, the comment about Jesse Jackson was made on the day of the South Carolina primary. If you were going to do it, you'd do it a day or two before when it might have some impact on the actual vote. Also, he was speaking of people who had made notable victories in SC. There are only two who had big victories--Clinton and Jackson. If he'd mentioned himself, the media would have been all over him for tooting his own horn.

You guys aren't taking this drivel seriously, are you? Virtually every sentence Paglia writes is not only sweeping and general, but demonstrably wrong as well. The media hid Hillary Clinton's bomb-out on health care? Please, tell me another one.

And that's saying something since I was born during the Truman administration. Clinton got things done for poor people--not so much through Congress, since the GOP controlled that and they don't like poor people, but through dozens of other means and ways. Poverty declined, real wages went up. We're Democrats. What's not to like?

Secondly, I vote partly on character, and I don't care what anybody says, Clinton was also the one of the more trustworthy presidents of my lifetime.

Everybody knows where Clinton's heart is on many issues, including homosexual rights. This is why gays support both Clintons in overwhelming numbers.

The true joy of Clinton is watching him manuever on behalf of those beliefs. He's a master. He beat the Republicans, keep in mind, time and time again. When he didn't win it was usually because he gets emotional sometimes which clouds his judgment.

He usually does win, though, which is why the Republicans hated both Clintons so much. Now, however, their hatred seems to have ratcheted back a notch or two, and they seem to be giving the Clintons grudging respect, which is more than our side does sometimes.