After Sept. 11 – What good? What evil?

There was never any question whether the hellish events of Sept. 11 would be selected as the most important news story in the Religion Newswriters Association's annual poll.

The question was which Sept. 11 religion story would receive the most votes.

There were so many - from the prayers of the bombers to the prayers of those who fought them. In the end, five of the RNA poll's top 10 stories were linked to Sept. 11 in some way. The secular journalists who cover religion named Osama bin Laden as 2001's most significant religion newsmaker, with President Bush placing second.

"Osama bin Laden has demonstrated, not for the first time in history, how easily religion and religious fervor can be hijacked to serve political ends," noted one journalist.

Was this attack merely about politics? Armies of experts said it was part of an ancient clash between civilizations and religions. Some saw evidence of a pivotal struggle within Islam, a fight requiring sermons and fatwas as well as bullets and bombs. President Bush said this was a battle between good and evil - period.

But it's hard to discuss good and evil, and terrorists and heroes, in an age that says truth is a matter of opinion. Welcome back to America's culture wars.

"We're not fighting to eradicate 'terrorism,' " argued Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times. "Terrorism is just a tool. World War III is a battle against religious totalitarianism, a view of the world that my faith must reign supreme and can be affirmed and held passionately only if others are negated."

In this column and others, the New York Times defined "religious totalitarianism" as any claim that a faith teaches absolute, exclusive truth.

"The future of the world may well be decided by how we fight this war," wrote Friedman. "Can Islam, Christianity and Judaism know that God speaks Arabic on Fridays, Hebrew on Saturdays and Latin on Sundays? Many Jews and Christians have already argued that the answer to that question is yes, and some have gone back to their sacred texts to reinterpret their traditions to embrace modernity and pluralism."

David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel of America fiercely disagreed, insisting that this "vision of America where religious belief is welcome only if it abandons claims to exclusive truth is truly chilling - and truly intolerant."

Here are the top 10 stories in the RNA poll:

1. Americans rush to prayer vigils after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Clergy describe waves of worshippers asking, "Where was God?'' Worship attendance surges, but quickly returns to seasonal levels.

2. Fearing a backlash of hate, most American Muslims experience just the opposite. Many non-Muslims organize visits to mosques and clergy condemn negative stereotypes.

3. Bush repeatedly proclaims that America's war is not with Islam, but with those who blaspheme its teachings. But many Middle Eastern and Asian Muslims agree with bin Laden's proclamations that the U.S. is at war with their faith.

4. Months of debate over the morality of research on stem cells taken from human embryos lead to a presidential order limiting the use of federal research dollars to existing stem cell lines.

5. Assassinations and suicide bombings escalate in Israel, fueling animosity and mistrust in the Middle East and dimming the prospects of peace between Jews and Palestinians. Homes are bulldozed in Gaza and the West Bank.

6. The White House proceeds with its Faith-Based Initiative despite criticism from the religious left and many conservatives. A modified version wins passage in the U.S. House, but has yet to pass the Senate.

7. Books and courses on Islamic beliefs and culture surge in popularity as Americans seek to better understand Islamic fundamentalism and its place in the Muslim world.

8. Pope John Paul II visits to Greece, Syria and Malta, becoming the first pope to visit a mosque, the Great Mosque in Damascus. A papal visit to the Ukraine increases old tensions, as Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox leaders claim that he is stealing their sheep.

9. Books on prayer soar on bookstore charts, illustrated by sales of the ``Prayer of Jabez.'' The apocalyptic "Left Behind" series sets publishing records, even though only 24 percent of Americans and 42 percent of ``born again'' Christians say they have heard of the books.

10. Christian relief workers – accused by the Taliban of trying to convert Muslims – are freed after three months of captivity in Afghanistan.

O Christmas Palm, O Christmas Palm

The tree filled up so much of the station wagon that driving home was an adventure.

But it was worth the extra effort. Things are more complex if you want a living tree, the kind you can transfer – roots and all – to the yard or a pot on the patio when its ritual duties are done. We are seriously considering moving this tree back indoors to decorate next Christmas.

This is Palm Beach County, after all. People do all kinds of strange things with palm trees.

"The Christmas Palm is a nice tree and it's really pretty," said the helpful Home Depot salesman. "And about this time of year, it will get red berries on it. Maybe that's why people called it the Christmas Palm. But I don't think I've heard of anyone trying to use one of these as a Christmas tree."

Why not? This is the tropics, I noted. Why not decorate a Christmas Palm here?

"I don't know how it used to be," he said. "But most people these days just want a normal Christmas tree. You know?"

We both looked at the parking lot, with its familiar holiday tent packed with dying evergreens trucked down from somewhere up north.

When I moved to South Florida, friends warned that the first Christmas would be surreal.

This is true. It feels strange the first time you hear "White Christmas" or "Jingle Bells" blasting out of the radio of a nearby convertible – with the top down, since it's 80 degrees – idling at a traffic light.

The shopping malls, with the help of acres of various forms of white plastic, look like icy chunks of Denver or Minneapolis that have broken free and floated south. Entire neighborhoods are wrapped in icicle twinkle lights. And if you glance into the giant front window of the archetypal South Florida home you will see the familiar glowing shape of a "normal" Christmas tree.

My theory is that what is surreal about Christmas here is that most people are trying to act like they aren't in South Florida. South Floridians are trying to celebrate somebody else's Christmas and it feels bizarre, with good reason. The "normal" Christmas just doesn't feel right.

So I have been trying to find out what Christmas was like in the tropics before the arrival of air conditioning, national television networks, roads jammed with slow-driving northerners and rows of superstores that look the same in every zip code on the planet.

I have found hints of older traditions in the parades of sailboats, shining with strings of lights. A few people still know how to make stunning wreaths out of palm fronds and seashells. There are Cuban Christmas dishes – some topped with red and green peppers and multi-colored tortillas – that don't look like they would play in Peoria.

Millions of people do celebrate Christmas in the tropics and, below the equator, in the middle of what is their summer. Christmas rites can be celebrated with a wide variety of traditions. Wouldn't it be depressing if the whole world tried to import our "normal" Christmas, complete with cartoon angels, sanitized mall-music carols, dumb advertisements, office-party rituals, non-sectarian symbols and the soothing sounds of car horns and cell telephones?

I wonder. Would we know a traditional Christmas if we saw one? What was Christmas like before the advent of this "normal" Christmas?

Meanwhile, my family has discovered that the fronds on a Christmas Palm are shaped just right for hanging ornaments and a few strings of lights. This tree will look just fine, matched with a Nativity scene.

In fact, listen to these words and flash back 2000 years: "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them. ..."

Stop for a minute and visualize the scene in your mind. Remember that this is Bethlehem, not far from the sea, on a sandy camel path out into the desert.

Yes, it's Christmas. See the palm trees in the background?

Happy Hanukkah, no matter what

When Sabina Dener was a child in the Bronx, she knew it was Hanukkah when everyone started singing Christmas carols.

"When I was in school, we had to learn Christmas carols and we had to stand up and sing them, too," she said, describing the World War II era. "That's just the way things were. Hanukkah was a minor holiday we celebrated at home. It was about treats and games and that was that.

"Now everything has changed. Just look at this."

It was a glorious evening to light the first candle of the eight-day "festival of lights," as about 3,000 Jews gathered under the palm trees at CityPlace, a $550-million development in the heart of West Palm Beach, Fla. If celebrants stood in the right place on the balcony last Sunday night, they could see the whole panorama of Macy's, the New York Pretzel stand, a nonsectarian holiday tree and the eight-foot-tall menorah.

On the map, this is a long way from the boroughs of New York City. But the two regions are connected by tradition, statistics and what can only be called the Seinfeldian ties that bind. Research in 2000 found that 230,000 people live in Jewish households in Palm Beach County – America's sixth-largest Jewish community.

The mood at this celebration seemed to be, "Happy Hanukkah, no matter what." Rabbis offered meditations about sacrifice and justice. The local congressman loudly praised the military and attacked the enemy.

Hanukkah traditions include a note of defiance. The holiday centers on events in 165 B.C., when Jewish rebels, led by the Maccabees, defeated their Greek oppressors. The rite of lighting candles – one on the first night, increasing to eight – began with a miracle linked to this victory. When it came time to purify the recaptured temple, only one container of ritually pure oil could be found for its eternal flame. Tradition says this one-day supply burned for eight days.

For centuries, Hanukkah has symbolized the need for Jews to defend the purity of their faith, when asked to assimilate. Today, many insist that the holiday is a celebration of religious liberty and pluralism – period.

"In every generation, there are Maccabees," shouted Rabbi Isaac Jarett of Temple Emanu-El, one of nine participating rabbis from the various branches of Judaism. "In every generation, there are people who seek to destroy us – as unbelievable as that seems.

"Right now, we have Maccabees in Afghanistan fighting to preserve Western Civilization. ... So why did you come here? You came here tonight, not because you wanted to be here. You came because you needed to be here."

It was hard to find anyone present who was not from the New York City area or somehow connected – through family ties – with the events of Sept. 11. It was impossible to find anyone who didn't connect recent events in Israel and in the United States. When the music played, even the most frail and elderly people in the courtyard rose to their feet to sing "The Hope," the national anthem of Israel, and then "The Star Spangled Banner."

When the anthems were over, Baby Boomer Gregg Lerman kept bouncing 9-month-old Hope in his arms. Her sparkling ear studs matched her father's and her tiny t-shirt proclaimed: "My First Chanukah."

"What's this all about? It's about rebirth and freedom," said Lerman, who grew up in Long Island, N.Y. "That's what Hanukkah is supposed to be about and that is certainly what it means to me right now. It's about survival in the face of adversity, both here in America and, as always, in Israel."

After an hour or so, the sermons ended and the partying began. People shopped, danced, sang traditional songs and made pilgrimages to Starbucks and The Cheesecake Factory. Children lobbied for more presents and parents headed to the parking deck with their heavy shopping bags.

But this was one year when everyone knew Hanukkah was about something else.

"It's about the triumph of good over evil," said Dener. "After Sept. 11, this holiday is suddenly very relevant. The concept of a life and death struggle between good and evil is not theoretical right now. It's real."

United we kneel?

God only knows how many clergy have been asked to write prayers for the spiritually fragile days since Sept. 11.

Offering a prayer for Ground Zero, the Rev. Charles T.A. Flood of Philadelphia began by praising the saints "who have made us holy from times past. ... God has sent them to us in times of loss and confusion."

It helps to name names and the Episcopal priest did that. "The Saints were not those who were perfect," said the prayer, as posted on Episcopal and Anglican Web sites. "They were parts of God's creation who struggled and often failed and yet managed to raise up our faith in God and in one another.

"Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Sarah, Hannah, Joshua, David, Moses, Mary the Mother of Jesus. Buddha and Mohammad. ... They led God's people to God's Light."

This was not exactly a traditional litany. Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said the inclusion of Buddha and Mohammed was "very unfortunate. ... It's not Church of England practice to refer to Buddha or Mohammed in prayers."

The Rev. George Curry of the evangelical Church Union told the Daily Telegraph: "It is blasphemous. It is appalling. Any self-respecting Christian will be horrified."

The bottom line is that it's easier to stand together than to kneel together. Statements of faith that have brought comfort to many have caused distress for others. The question is whether believers must blur the doctrinal lines that divide them, while striving to find any ties that bind.

Evangelist Franklin Graham, for example, set off a media firestorm when he said: "The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."

Later, Billy Graham's heir noted that his Samaritan's Purse relief agency has poured millions of dollars into Muslim communities in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan. Christians are called to love their neighbors, regardless of creed. But there is no way, he argued, to avoid the words of Jesus: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me."

It is also unlikely that Muslim clerics will edit the inscription on the face of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, which stresses that Allah is, "One, God, the Everlasting, who has not begotten and has not been begotten. ... Praise to God who has not taken a son." In other words, a cornerstone of Islam is the rejection of the Trinitarian God of Christianity.

True Christianity is a missionary faith. So is Islam.

The Archbishop of Canterbury confronted that reality in an address – entitled "How Far Can We Travel Together?" at the Beit Al-Quran, an Islamic cultural center in Bahrain. He spoke only days after 18 Anglicans in the Church of Pakistan were killed during Sunday worship. Carey called for tolerance that did not require believers to hide or shred their core beliefs.

Muslims are thriving in the West, building waves of new mosques and winning converts, he said. The question is whether believers in other faiths will have the same freedom to build, to preach and to convert others – in Islamic lands.

"All minority religions, which expect the freedom to express themselves in worship and in the nurture of their young, and to be able to make converts must, as a matter of human justice, encourage the same freedoms to be exercised in those parts of the world where they are in a majority," said Carey. "I must express the deep worries of many Christians in our country who see their Christian brothers and sisters in many parts of the world unable to practice their faith with the same freedom that peoples of other faiths enjoy in the West."

"Clearly this will always be a tension between two missionary faiths such as our own, both of which see their beliefs more in absolute rather than relativistic terms."

The archbishop ended with a poignant detail from the massacre in Pakistan. A Muslim man was guarding the church door that Sunday and he died, struggling to "protect people whose faith he did not share."