The richest person on earth cannot get a better Coca-Cola than the poorest. Unlike wine, whiskey, beer and even water, there is only one Coke for all. Coke is a purely democratic beverage, finding no barrier of access or taste. And there is no variance in the taste – the Coke I bought in Egypt tastes exactly like the ones I had in Belgium and in Pakistan.

I don't like the Christmas season. December is the most stressful month of the year, the good cheer is forced down our throats, suicide rates are at their highest, the music is tiresome and the money-bleed is shocking. The bathetic romance of family and friendship is in high gear, as if we must love and show our love more this month. It's a cheap collection of cheap emotions; and invariably some pompous columnist or sincere preacher or self-important relative will make the point that Christmas has become too materialistic.

I received letters in response to my July/August column. Some were offended I would suggest Sunday morning service is often a waste of time. Others agreed. I present one of these letters in place of my column this month. It is by Rev. Laurence DeWolfe, of Saint David's, Halifax. He also teaches preaching at the Atlantic School of Theology.

The Da Vinci Code juggernaut continues unabated. It has been on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years, is about to be a movie and has spawned several new sub-genres in publishing. Where to begin talking about this phenomenon?

Music makes the people come together

I have probably witnessed in excess of 1,500 sermons over the past 35 years. Of those, I remember about a dozen vividly. There's another two dozen, maybe, of which I have some residual memory. The older I get, the more sermons I hear, the more I want to be challenged. I grow weary of safe, predictable interpretations; I am tired of brow-beating mean-spiritedness; bored with clichéd punch lines; I yawn at sickly sincere limousine lefties. Are we too polite as Christians, or specifically as Presbyterians, or perhaps as Canadians, to question the value of Sunday service? Perhaps we have a life long training in genuflecting to the clergy — regardless of what they say must be so?

My father died horribly just before his 70th birthday. By then he had been ill with a form of Parkinson's disease for the better part of a decade. It's an insidious illness that slowly eats away the victim's motor ability. In the last year of his life, my dad was trapped in his own body. Everything that was him — his voice, his smile, his touch, his wit, his love, his knowledge —was locked in his flesh. It was his body, but it was not my father.

The editorial staff of this magazine, of which I'm a member, occasionally tries to package several stories with a similar theme. But it was only after the April issue had gone to the printers that I realized we had run three stories and the editorial all variously discussing the issue of church and church buildings. There was a news story about Ontario's proposed heritage building law, an interview with Alison Elliot, the Scottish moderator, who argued that old buildings ought to be razed in order to raise spiritual consciousness and an article about a new-wave church that meets in a movie theatre. The editorial admonished the Ontario government's cavalier attitude towards churches that own heritage buildings.

The Bible can be stuffy — at least in the way it has traditionally been taught. Church can be stuffy; at least in the way it is presented. I understand this. Many possible congregants are lost, usually in the teen years, because of the tone and style of the traditional service. Others are lost, often within the teen years, because of the way the Bible is presented. When I was a teenager, too many years and follicles ago, a group of bright folks devised the Good News Bible. The language was modernized and it had funky little graphics. It was an attempt to get me to the Bible.

In 1999, Jerry Falwell issued a warning, through a magazine he oversaw, that Tinky Winky might be a gay role model. According to his National Liberty Journal, "[Tinky Winky] is purple — the gay pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle — the gay pride symbol…. These subtle depictions are no doubt intentional and parents are warned to be alert to these elements of the series."

Each week, the Record receives review copies of faith books from publishers. Each book is a theological argument, aimed at a particular market of comfortable North American Christians. I have chosen a few books from this overflowing inbox that seem to me to express a similar brand of middle-class suburban big box theology. They are not well written or compellingly intelligent, but they do provide a curious sociological insight. This is the face, largely, of Christianity today on our continent.

There was a lot of chatter after the American election in November about faith and Christianity. One news report, used in part by the Record in the December issue, said, "concern about moral values propelled President George W. Bush" to the White House. The report went on: "Rev. Rob Schenck, a board member of the Evangelical Church Alliance, said: 'This election demonstrates that Democratic Party leaders have moved far away from the moral consensus in America. If they are to reclaim political relevancy, they will need to re-examine their positions on all the major moral issues including the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of marriage and the public acknowledgement of God.'"