Tapu Misa: A prayer before demanding that Taito fall on his sword

I'm not sure why, but the Lord is refusing to answer my prayers. I prayed for wisdom and inspiration, all before deadline if that was okay, but for some reason, He is not answering. I'm on my own.

Maybe it's because I'd contemplated an unforgiving column about the man whose tarnished reputation is so closely aligned to the collective mana of this country's Pacific Island communities.

But God, as we know, is a lot more forgiving than most of us.

I'm talking, of course, about beleaguered Mangere MP Taito Phillip Field, around whose neck the noose of public opinion continues to tighten, as more and more information comes to light about his dealings with grateful Thai immigrants and Samoan constituents.

People like Mike Moore, the former Labour Prime Minister, think Pacific Islanders have been too inclined to sanction Field's questionable conduct.

Apparently, our failure to condemn Field reflects badly on all of us.

And I suppose that would be fair enough if it could be said that we Pacific Islanders all thought with one mind on this, which we don't. On Taito, as with any other issue - except perhaps the prospect of National winning in Mangere - we're as inclined to disagree among ourselves as any other group of people.

It's true that on a recent Tuesday night on Auckland's Radio 531pi, Taito had more than his fair share of loyal supporters. This was understandable, given that the MP had helped many of them with immigration and housing problems. That kind of help tends to secure lasting loyalty, as a few Thai immigrants might attest if they weren't so busy being grateful.

But this doesn't mean that the PI community is guilty of moral laxity on Taito. Given the uncertainty over Ingram's carefully framed findings, and the failure of many of those who disseminate news to the Pacific Island communities to subject the report and Taito's claims of "exoneration" to the rigorous scrutiny it deserved, it would be fair to say that there's confusion in the wider community.

But those of us who aren't confused - more than the critics have given us credit for - would like Taito to bow out while there's still a chance of his doing so with some dignity. We haven't liked the way he has hidden behind so-called cultural norms.

If, as a highly placed Pacific Island representative in the Labour Party claims, Taito has been treated with kid gloves out of respect for the Pacific Island community, and the place he occupies as the first Pacific Island MP, then it's time to change tack. He is damaged goods. Mangere voters like Taito, but they dislike National more.

And if he refuses to fall on his sword, there'll be little redemption on offer. Those unanswered questions left by the Ingram report will continue to fester, eating away at what little credibility remains. You can bet there's more, and that it will only get worse. I hope for his sake that he doesn't draw it out.

But back to that other subject dear to many Pacific Island hearts: religion, or more specifically, prayer in schools.

It's a complex and emotional issue, as ex-US President Bill Clinton once said, and one not confined to this part of the world. In the US, for example, the battlelines have been drawn over the display of the Ten Commandments in government buildings, a portrait of Christ which has hung outside a high-school principal's office for 37 years, the pledge of allegiance, and student-led prayers at graduation and football games.

It has led to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has championed the cause in the name of separation of church and state, and religious liberty, being accused of wanting to ban even Christmas.

In Europe, it has been about Muslim headscarves - illegal now in France, where the ban of "overt" religious symbols includes crucifixes and Jewish skull caps.

Here, we have the confused Ministry of Education guidelines, which even the Principals Federation says are unworkable. Apparently prayer in assemblies is out, but karakia in kura kaupapa isn't, if it's deemed more "spiritual" than "religious". This is a nonsensical distinction. Try divorcing religious meaning and spirituality from Maori culture. You can't. Nor can you from this society, which has its basis in Christianity. Think Christmas, Easter, our national anthem.

The separation of church and state was an idea formulated and nurtured by Christians, to protect the church from state persecution. As Baptist pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon said in 1868: "To prevent forever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever."

You only have to look at Iran to be reminded of why this separation is desirable. But we're in danger of going too far. In the US, many schools are now nervous of teaching about religion, which the Supreme Court has held to be not only legal but also desirable: "It might well be said," it said in a 1963 finding, "that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion and its relationship to the advance of civilisation."

As author and lecturer Stephen Prothero argued in the New York Times last year, an ignorance of religion "imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads.

"When Americans debated slavery, almost exclusively on the basis of the Bible, people of all races and classes could follow the debate. They could make sense of its references to the runaway slave in the New Testament book of Philemon and to the year of jubilee, when slaves could be freed, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Today it is a rare American who can engage with any sophistication in biblically inflected arguments about gay marriage, abortion or stem cell research."

There is room for a sensible, nuanced approach. We don't need to excise God from public life. We just need to make room for alternative versions of him.