Spirituality and the rest of us.

As Pennsylvanians went to the polls in April,perhaps the most recent of the big topics in this never-ending democratic nomination battle would play heaviest in voters' consciousness.
Senator Barrack Obama's "bitter" comment on guns and faith amongst small town/rural americans hangs over his candidacy like the sword of Damocles.
Many have opined that the senator from Illinois' greatest strength may also be his weakness:the pledge to move away from how politics is done in washington...the tendency to say not what the people want to hear,but what they need to hear.
An absolute avalanche of angst and reactions have trailed this political earthquake.I doubt if even the senator ever bargained for the scale of reaction to his off-the-sleeve comment.

Now let's move away from presidential politics for a moment and focus on the raging legal/custody battle emanating from Texas where several hundreds of underage children are POW's in the complicated Polygamist sect case.
Some of us recent immigrants were quite unimpressed by the whole Warren Jeff case about a year ago(the sect prophet now serving federal jail term) partly because bigamy/polygamy at least in the larger African society is hardly a civil offence.In fact,most 'big men' in the African context have several wives.The trend has only started to shift with the newer generation,not because of any legal responsibilities,but more to do with economic reasons in an increasingly westernized society.

This next point may be more controversial,but I will make it nonetheless.In several parts of Africa,an old tradition that has refused to go away is the bethrothing of young girls to be married to older men.The belief is they are better taken care of and become less promiscuous since they are less vulnerable to the turpsy turvies of hormonal changes at puberty.Needless to say that a predictable drawback to this practice is the high incidence of vesico-vaginal fistulae(VVF) and other obstetric complications in these juvenile mums.

Having said that,the first thing I learnt upon first arriving in the UK several years ago was that many acceptable practices where I was coming from were actually punishable offences in the west,bigamy not the least of them.I have had no problems resetting my psyche since then and have managed to stay out of trouble subsequently.

This is why the aggreived mothers of these sect children will have a tough case under the law.The leaders and prophet of this sect were well aware of the laws of the land together with the prescribed punishments for flouting them...yet,they continued to perpetrate their practices.
We must leave the determination of guilt to the courts.

We may also have to leave the determination of rights and wrongs to individuals and whatever supreme being their faiths prescribe...especially in a pluralistic society like the USA where the separation of church and state had long been entrenched in the constitution.

The recent papal visit to the US was such a draw for mainstream media not least because they were eager to see how his holiness Benedict XVI would approach the scandal of priest child sex abuse.He did not disappoint them.He spoke about this at every turn and confronted the issue head-on.
There are those that have suggested renouncing celibacy as a way out of future scandals,but many catholics believe the vatican would not compromise on this age-l0ng virtue.

In the end,individual spirituality had always been and will remain a touchy but very important issue.What I hope is that we as a people will demonstrate enough tolerance and open mindedness towards one another's spiritual beliefs-or lack of one-so that each might concentrate on how to make himself a better being and offer service to mankind in his/her own little way.

We will achieve nothing by running away from talking about this issue,and I strongly believe that opening lines of communication would protect the likes of those sect children who might slip under the radar otherwise.On the other hand,we may continue to worship political correctness and block off all discussions.
I am about to submit this article for my departmental journal.If this gets published,we have opted for the former.If it doesn't make it to press,then the latter sadly would have been the case.