The marriage of the Western church with European culture was one of the defining characteristics of the 20th Century. The emancipation of Christianity from Western culture could define the future. Only modern secularism-also identified with Western culture-claims to live without religion. But as France has found this year-by forbidding Muslim women to wear scarves in public places-banning religious symbols invites less predictable semiotics* to invade the vacuum.

The gleanings of winter in this edition of Common Theology hint at some disturbing symptoms of Western society's schizoid relationship with religion. Terry Waite compares the fate of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay with his own experience as a hostage in Beirut. Julian Burnside asks why Australians permit child abuse in refugee detention centres. Could it be that our attempt to separate religion and politics has rendered us blind to our moral obligations towards human beings of different cultures?

Russell Daye's study of political forgiveness gives us a clue by pointing out that important Christian thinkers-from Augustine to Luther to Neibuhr-have been complicit in the exclusion of forgiveness from politics, by identifying separate sets of ethics for the "city of God" and the "earthly city".

Fe'iloakitau Kaho, Executive Secretary of the Pacific region for the World Council of Churches, gives a timely warning that Australia's new interest in the Pacific region bears marks of 19th and 20th Century cultural and economic imperialism. Pos Konea, studying to be a Uniting Church minister, describes the holiness codes which were formative in his youth in Papua New Guinea.

Where is Jesus in all this? In Vol1no8 Winter2004 Contents Truths, Peter Sellick makes some incisive observations on this question. Whatever one's churchmanship, there is an awful probability that Jesus is with a stateless Palestinian in Baxter Detention Centre. There is nowhere on earth he is allowed to be, and there is no country on earth willing to take him.

Non-violence was the way of Jesus-a way followed by Mahatma Gandhi and Vaclav Havel in the 20th Century, as reviewed by Harry Throssell in these pages. A way that proves non-violent change is in the power of the general public-the 'ordinary' citizen.

Maggie Helass

* The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially those with social relevance.