Faith

A year ago, propelled into action by a wave of killings, an association of church ushers started spending one hour, one night a week on some of the city's most dangerous corners, calling for peace. Since then, the violence has subsided somewhat - so far this year, there have been 11 homicides in Chester, compared with 27 in all of 1993. But violence is only one symptom of a lost sense of community that continues to trouble the ushers. "My heart goes out for the people, the young people especially," said Willie Rawls, president of the Chester Ushers Association and one of the organizers of the vigils.

OK, the "under God" is going to stay. For now. A Wednesday ruling by a three-judge panel in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco held the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it contained the phrase "under God. " But courts can buckle to pressure, too, and now the head judge of the court has stayed that decision indefinitely. The question is, how can we possibly have gotten even this far with such foolishness? As with so many federal court decisions before, including the recent shrouding of the Ten Commandments in Chester County, the juggernaut of secularization continues to grind along within American culture.

Consider Christianity. It is a faith broad enough to encompass everything from a pope in Rome to a missionary in South America to a snake handler in Appalachia. Apparently, however, it is not broad enough to encompass a Democrat in North Carolina. That, at least, is the inference to be gleaned from the experience of nine people who say they were kicked out of their church last week because they voted for John Kerry in the 2004 election. The nine former members of East Waynesville Baptist say the Rev. Chan Chandler led the drive to oust them.

This is about faith. Larry Brown's faith in Kevin Ollie, a point guard who began the season with the Connecticut Pride in the Continental basketball Association. Brown's faith in Aaron McKie as the starter in place of the injured Eric Snow. McKie contributed 12 points and five assists and dutifully chased Eddie Jones into a 5-for-18 shooting performance in the 76ers' 81-76 victory in Game 3 of their NBA best-of-five first round playoff series. But Ollie's eight points, four assists and four rebounds in 15 minutes might have been even more critical.

These are the last days of Santa Claus. At my house, at least. My daughter is 8 now and if precedent is any guide, this is the final year she'll believe that a man in a flying sleigh can traverse the world in a single night, bringing toys to all the boys and girls who were good all year long. Already you can see cracks in the foundation of faith - the suspicious questions, the not-so-casual mention that this kid or that says Santa is just a myth. So it won't be long now. Sometime before next Christmas, she'll ask me to level with her, to give her the scoop on Santa Claus.

The very title of Bill T. Jones' latest work, presented this week during the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, suggests its scope. Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land is about oppression in America and the possibility of having faith. If the issues raised by this three-hour extravaganza can be summed up at all, the summation occurs when Jones conducts a spontaneous interview with a real-life preacher, whose identity varies from night to night. Thursday's preacher was Paul Abels.

Todd McNair sat at his locker with his head down and looked for the right words. Every move Temple's junior tailback made turned his face into a mask of pain. His most noticeable injury was a grapefruit-sized lump on his right forearm that was slowly growing to the size of a pineapple. McNair had a bruise or two for each of his 27 carries Saturday, when he rushed for 153 yards in the Owls' 17-14 loss to Rutgers at frigid Veterans Stadium. But it also hurt afterward when he was asked whether he thought he had played under coach Bruce Arians for the last time.

in the building of a parish faith comes first in the building of a holiday in the building of new subdivisions in the building of high spirits and the building of morale in the building of ourselves in the building of a family or a flock in the building of a building in the building of a faith Kirsten Thorpe Kirsten Thorpe is resident intern at the Kelly Writers House. This is the fourth in a year-end series of commissioned poems based on Inquirer headlines.

One of the many fascinating things about evolution is that it generates disputes that can help us all better understand what science is and how it differs from religion or other areas of human endeavor. Just such an enlightening dispute cropped up recently between two readers who were kind enough to let me share some of their correspondence. It all started when Elisa Winterstein wrote a letter to The Inquirer, stating that scientists rely on faith just as religious people do by accepting the idea of abiogenesis - the notion that life arose from non-living matter.

Following the death from AIDS of a close friend and seminary school classmate, Macky Alston was haunted by doubts, profound and disturbing, faced by many whose belief in God has been shaken. And so, in Alston's earnest and probing Questioning Faith, he sets out - camera crew at his side - to try to figure out "how do you believe in a good God, a God who loves you" when friends and family members are struck down in seemingly senseless ways. For Alston, the personal loss of his fellow seminary student, Alan Smith, threw the would-be minister into a crisis of faith - and set him on a journey to examine and explore people's beliefs both inside and out of the church.