Claire Harvey: Don't mention the G word when faith meets secular

Did you eat too many mince pies? Did the flaming pud set the curtains on fire? Think about Jesus much during the day? And what time do the shops open again?

Christmas is the intersection of secular community and traditional religion, where God and society pull up, blinkers flashing, honking at one another, both confused about who's got right of way.

So who does? And why can't they share the road? It seems to be the question of the season.

Now that the feasting is over, creationist Christians in America will resume the battle to force high-school science teachers to tell ninth-graders that evolution is not fact, just a theory that can be disproved by the evidence of divine forces.

Despite a thundering rebuke from the District Court last week, the "intelligent design" lobby are going to the Supreme Court to hammer their argument that teenage minds may be turned against religion if they are taught science as a pure discipline.

In France, Muslim girls will return to school for the post-Christmas term with bare heads, in reluctant obedience to a law forbidding religious symbology in the classroom.

The legislators of Paris decided this year that headscarves, Jewish skullcaps, Sikh turbans and crucifix jewellery were all threats to the doctrine of separating church and state in public schools.

The common theme is a failure - by both the fundamentalist believers and the passionless rationalists - to accept that faith and secularity can co-exist, that humans are capable of processing two sets of information at once.

The creationists cannot abide the poison of secularity.

The bureaucrats won't tolerate the infection of religion.

The result is mutual dislike and animosity, and the victims are the quietly faithful believers, the ordinary Christians and Muslims and Jews who have to put up with society's suspicion and cynicism about any expression of religious belief.

In New Zealand, the most unfortunate victims must be David and Cathy Tribble, of rural Northland.

The Tribbles are Christians. They don't go to church regularly, but they believe in God.

In December 2003, their 4-month-old baby Caleb died after a fortnight in which he seemed to be suffering the same tummy bug which had sent sniffles and headaches through the household.

Cathy and David Tribble did not shun medical attention for Caleb, nor for any of their other children, two of whom were born by caesarean in hospital.

Several had been to hospitals and doctors and had antibiotics, and all were regularly checked up, weighed and measured on home visits by the region's public health nurse - including Caleb.

When Caleb got sick, the nurse suggested taking him to the doctor for a check, but later agreed with the Tribbles that he was showing signs of improvement; smiling, giggling and feeding well.

After his sudden death, Caleb's post-mortem revealed he was killed by a rare and undiagnosed kidney complaint, vesico-ureteric reflux, which was masked by the tummy bug.

The police arrived, spoke gently to the sobbing parents, and drove them into Whangarei for the standard interviews conducted after a sudden infant death. David Tribble told the interviewing officer, quite frankly, that he had been worried about the baby and had prayed to God to save him. That was enough to spark the legal system into action; the Tribbles were charged with manslaughter.

Simply because David Tribble spoke about God, the police and prosecutors decided that instead of good parents who made a mistake, they must be religious fanatics.

During the trial, crown prosecutor Kim Thomas quizzed both parents for hours in the witness box about the detail of their belief in God. "Do you pray?" he asked witnesses for the defence, including the Correspondence School teacher and the local midwife. "Did the Tribbles talk to you about God?" Not surprisingly, the witnesses answered with defensive monosyllables. No, they all said, the Tribbles never tried to preach or to proselytize.

The jury acquitted the Tribbles of manslaughter but convicted them on a lesser charge of failing to provide the necessaries of life (that is, failing to take Caleb to the doctor).

In discharging the Tribbles with no sentence, Justice Geoffrey Venning said he felt the Crown had "overstated" the religious aspect of the trial. "I accept if you were told [Caleb's] life was in danger, you would have taken him immediately to a doctor. Despite the impression some may have, you are not religious fanatics or members of some extreme sect or cult. You are simple people who try to live your lives by Christian values, you seek guidance from the Bible in doing that. There is nothing wrong with that," the judge said.

The sad truth is that if David Tribble had not talked about God in his police interview, he would not have been charged.

He and his wife were victims of the twin dogmas which split our society - the religious fundamentalism which gives quiet Christianity a bad name, and the secular fundamentalism which views all religion with suspicion.

So if you overindulge this festive season and find yourself in the cells, it might be wise to avoid talking about God.