Did you ever notice that sometimes the most interesting things are things you find when looking for something else entirely? I discovered that Countries which begin with the letter “I” have a startling correlation to the list of countries where religion is a news-worthy topic. Consider this list:

India (home of Hindu)
Indonesia (active Muslim unrest)
Iran (Muslim theocracy and nascent nuclear power)
Iraq (do I really need to explain this one?)
Ireland (intra-Christian squabbles with occasional explosions
Israel (home of 3 major religions, with feuding between two of them)
Italy (have you heard there’s a new Pope in town?)
Iceland (home of many blondes, guys tend to worship them)

Okay, I’ll admit to Iceland being a stretch, but the rest are dead on. Conversely, what other countries can you think of where religion is a major media topic? The only one I can come up with that’s not on the list is us. Which leads me to conclude that maybe we should negotiate with Iceland to swap names. Alternatively, we could just get ourselves off the list and keep our name. Yeah, I like that idea better. Let’s go with that one.