38 Sermon Illustrations on Intolerance

The politically correct ideal of "tolerance" seems all the rage these days, but to millions of Americans its meaning and implications are applied unequally. The ideal of tolerance, especially in this, the most Christian season of all, was originally embodied in the message of expressive freedom contained in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," is what the entire First Amendment says. Unfortunately, however, litigious American society these days parses the amendment for specific rights and provisions, rather than applying it as a whole and, more importantly, universally among the incredibly diverse population of this country.

For people who see "intolerance" under every rock, school, and public religious display during this, the most holy season recognizing and honoring the birth of our (Christian) Lord Jesus Christ, you would do well to study this amendment. It will teach you what tolerance really is, and why your pleas to remove all vestiges of Christianity from the American scene is not in your best interests, either.

First, some history. The Christmas season was -- and still should be to those who believe in it -- about observing the birth of Jesus. That is why office workers and school kids are off this time of year. That is why some businesses are closed and it is even why Congress is off this time of year.

It's also why presents are adorning "Christmas" trees -- to honor the tradition of bringing gifts to the baby Jesus.

Even if you are of another faith, you cannot dispute these facts.

Enter the "tolerance" issue.

Properly defined, intolerance implies bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and jingoism. But for every attempt by anti-Christian activists to portray anything of God and Jesus Christ as "intolerant" of them, there is never much supporting evidence given by these factions to demonstrate how Christians freely expressing themselves automatically constitutes Christian narrow-mindedness or "harm" to them and, in essence, to the First Amendment.

The Amendment was written specifically for this purpose -- to allow all people of all faiths to express them freely in every corner of this country.

And yet, anti-Christian factions have repeatedly convinced federal judges that any public display of religion in this country violates the First Amendment under the specious argument of a so-called "Establishment Clause." They need to buy a clue.

As former U.S. District Judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork recently pointed out, the term "separation of church and state" is not even in the Constitution, let alone the First Amendment. Thomas Jefferson coined that phrase in a letter that he sent to a religious convention in Danbury, Conn.

But it is upon this mistaken premise that courts rule against both the spirit and intent of free religious expression. Brothers and sisters, that ain't tolerance.

To tolerate is not necessarily to accept another's ideals or beliefs. It is simply an acknowledgement of their right to believe in what they want -- even if it differs from your own beliefs -- and it is a recognition of the fact that no man, woman, child or government has any right to prohibit a demonstration of those beliefs in any venue, area or public forum.

That is what the First Amendment says regarding religious expression, and that is the culmination of tolerance in this country.

Millions of Christians and non-Christians will spend tomorrow morning with their kids, friends and other relatives ripping open "Christmas" presents, perhaps unknowingly in the Christian traditional observation of the birth of Jesus Christ. The key thing to remember this season -- and all days -- is that in order to achieve true tolerance, each group must realize that the other has a right to their opinion, beliefs, and values system -- even if it seems foreign or hypocritical to you. They have a right to publicly acknowledge, display, and characterize those beliefs.

Beginning next millennium, all Americans should make a concerted effort to revisit the "tolerance clause" of the First Amendment. It's there if you look for it.

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Jon E. Dougherty is a staff writer for WorldNetDaily.

Relativists believe they've discovered the ultimate weapon against the sense of right and wrong -- a hydrogen bomb for the culture war and a doomsday machine against conscience. What is it? The accusation of "intolerance."

If you think public officials ought to tell the truth, then you're "intolerant and judgmental." If you say man cannot live without God, you're "intolerant and arrogant." If you support the idea that marriage means one man and one woman, you're "intolerant and prejudiced."

Like a powerful acid, the accusation of intolerance eats away at traditional morality, leaving nothing behind but threads. It seems that in today's culture the only way to be tolerant is to be morally "neutral" - to avoid moral judgments altogether and let everything slide.

Well, don't give up hope. University of Texas Professor Jay Budziszewski sets forth the ultimate defense against the relativist's ultimate weapon: the power of logic. You see, those who shout "intolerance" are abusing the word in three ways, and all three are logical fallacies.

The first of these, what Budziszewski calls the "Let-it-Be" Fallacy, is that tolerance just means tolerating, and the more you tolerate, the more tolerant you are. But logically that can't be true, because if it were, you would have to tolerate even intolerance.

According to the "Skeptical" Fallacy, having convictions about right and wrong is intolerant, so the more you doubt, the more tolerant you are. But that can't be true either, because if it were, it would be wrong to hold the conviction that tolerance is good.

According to the "Apologetic" Fallacy, speaking out about your convictions is the most intolerant you can be, so the more timid you are, the more tolerant you are. But this mistake is as silly as the other two because, if it were true, you would be too timid to speak out even about the importance of being tolerant.

We see, then, that the relativist's idea of "moral neutrality" simply contradicts itself at every point. So why do we constantly hear the accusation of intolerance?

Well, in the first place, the accusation is never applied consistently. It's applied selectively as a way to demoralize Christians and other defenders of traditional morality. For the accuser, too, makes judgments about right and wrong; it's just that his moral judgments are the only ones he wants people to be able to make. He judges that public officials don't have to be honest, that man can live without God, and that marriage doesn't mean a relationship limited to a man and a woman.

The second reason is that the accusation makes the accuser feel virtuous, because he gets to call the other person intolerant. Not only that, he feels free because he's under the illusion that he has no responsibility for his own moral judgments -- after all, it's always the other person who is "judgmental."

We need to know that it isn't intolerant to make moral judgments, because we have to make judgments just to know what to tolerate. Jay Budziszewski's new book, The Revenge of Conscience, is an excellent resource for improving your understanding of these issues and defeating the arguments of relativism.

True tolerance is not a total lack of judgment. It's knowing what should be tolerated -- and refusing to tolerate that which shouldn't.

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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

We hear a lot about acceptance and diversity these days. But what happens when acceptance is inconvenient?

As you may know, Chuck Colson’s grandson, Max, is autistic, a diagnosis he shares with the son of a friend and colleague of mine. Max got Chuck to thinking a lot about what Christians mean when they talk about human dignity.

I can’t help but wonder what Chuck would have made of a recent story from Sunnyvale, California. There, the family of an autistic child has been sued by two of their now-former neighbors for creating a public nuisance. Actually, it was their son, who is now eleven, who was regarded as the nuisance.

To be fair, the child’s autism, as the Washington Post put it, poses “social and behavioral challenges.” This conduct, in its most extreme manifestation, included “hitting, kicking and other aggression against adults or their children.”

The boy’s parents insist that they take the concerns “seriously and that either they or a caregiver provide one-on-one supervision at all times.” They also insist that portrait of their son in the complaint is “wildly exaggerated” and that their neighbors’ reactions amount to a “modern day witch hunt against a disabled child.”

Maybe the parents have a point, given that the lawsuit has continued even after both the family of the autistic child and one of the plaintiffs moved away from the neighborhood! What’s more, the complaint claims that issues with the child have had a “chilling effect on an otherwise hot real estate market.”

Jill Escher of the San Francisco Autism Society called the lawsuit “preposterous and an affront to public policy.” She called the proposal to declare a disabled child a public nuisance “extraordinary” and “unprecedented.” Well, I call it sad, and tragic.

The judge is urging both sides to settle, although having left the neighborhood, I wonder what else he thinks the autistic child’s family can do.

As you can imagine, this story hit close to home with my colleague. It’s an exaggerated version of the countless times people, often strangers, reminded him that his son didn’t fit the norm; that he, and people like him, were incorrigibly “other.”

In this case, a person is being treated as the equivalent of a barking dog, improperly-disposed of trash, and an overly sensitive car alarm.

Think about Emily Colson’s experience with Max at the movies [see below]. As in Sunnyvale, the message was that these kids shouldn’t inflict their “otherness” on the rest of us.

In other words, they don’t possess inherent dignity and worth. They are tolerated, not accepted, much less welcomed.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the Greek word sunago, which is translated “welcomed” in Matthew 25. It means more than hospitality; it means to gather in and make part of your own.

We honor a person’s God-given dignity when we look beyond their “otherness” and we treat them as one of our own. Our culture consistently fails this test. It’s a huge part of the reason why 90-plus percent of all Down syndrome cases diagnosed in utero end in abortion. For all of our culture’s babbling about “diversity” and “authenticity,” there are limits to how “diverse” and “authentic” many people are prepared to tolerate.

Chuck understood that being pro-life, not only anti-abortion, required welcoming people like Max even when it made us uncomfortable. It required walking alongside their families in the hard task God has seen fit to assign them, instead of treating them like a neighbor with a noisome pet.

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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"Distraught mother reveals how theater audience turned on her autistic son," by Daily Mail Reporter, March 21, 2014,

A Massachusetts mother has been jeered out of a movie theater because her autistic son was annoying patrons, one of whom called the young man ‘retarded.’

Colson said in the blog that their problems started when Max, who often gets frightened at the beginning of movies, shrieked ‘I want to go home,’ during the first preview and said it again once the film started.

‘We hadn’t even gotten past the previews. I know most of us, as families of children with disabilities, have all these plans in mind, but we couldn’t even get there,’ she later told the Patriot Ledger.

That’s when the crowd turned on them.

‘Are you going to make him be quiet?’ one woman said, according to Colson’s blog.

When she was informed that Max had autism, the woman hit back, ‘I know he is, but why should the rest of us have to suffer?’

Her husband then allegedly chimed in with, ‘If you don’t make him be quiet I’m calling the manager.’

And things got worse from there, with ‘ugly’ remarks coming from all directions.

When the mother finally decided enough was enough and got up to leave, she claims the theater erupted into applause and patrons shouted ‘don’t come back’ and ‘he’s retarded’ as the family made their way to the door.

But before she left, she felt compelled to speak to the jeering group, she said in her blog.

‘There is a lesson here. A lesson that is so much more important than anything you will learn from this movie,’ she said she told them.

Now a woman Colson goes to church with, Renee Watson, is hiring out an entire movie theater for children with special needs after being so moved by the mother’s painful experience. Watson, a mother-of-three, was so touched by the story that she organized ‘Movie With Max’ on March 27 at a local Regal Cinema and nearly 300 special needs kids will watch ‘Muppets Most Wanted’ together without fearing they’ll be bullied to leave.

The popular event was expanded from a 94-seat cinema to one three times the size and has now sold out.

‘I just thought that if it were my child, I would have to find a way to make this right for him,’ Watson said.

And this time Colson knows she can enjoy the movie with her son. ‘There are so many families (with special needs) that are very isolated,’ Colson said to the Ledger.

‘(This) has generated a huge amount of conversation about our families in the community, and I’m so thankful for that.’

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas recently was exposed to the duplicitous nature of political correctness. Speaking before a large audience, DeLay remarked, "Christianity offers the only viable, reasonable, definitive answer to the questions of 'Where did I come from?' 'Why am I here?' 'Where am I going?' 'Does life have any meaningful purpose?' Only Christianity offers a way to understand that physical and moral border. Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation." These are themes directly from my book HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?, which DeLay has studied and teaches from in his own church, among other places.

Where did Tom DeLay speak these words? In Congress? At a public school? No, he spoke them to three hundred evangelical Christians at the First Baptist Church of Pearland, Texas.

Nevertheless, Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, assailed Congressman DeLay for daring to proclaim his personal beliefs, in a church setting no less. Quoted in the WASHINGTON POST, Lynn claimed that DeLay's remarks show that the congressman "lacks appreciation for the religious pluralism" of the United States, and that "this is particularly disturbing because he, as a top-ranking member of Congress, represents people from the whole spectrum of religious faiths and nonbelievers, not just Christianity."

No, it's Barry Lynn's position that is "disturbing" -- outrageous, in fact. If tolerance of all religions is the standard, where is Barry Lynn's tolerance for Tom DeLay's beliefs? Evidently, not all religions are entitled to the same tolerance.

Why was Tom DeLay's speech a problem for Lynn and others? In his just released book, EARTH RESTORED: CALLING THE CHURCH TO A NEW CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM, author and evangelist John Barber addresses the need for living a biblical worldview at a time when people are promoting the privatization of religion. Barber writes, "A biblical worldview is seeing the world as God sees it. It is thinking God's thoughts after Him in all areas of life. While many people think that God's Word applies only to areas like prayer, personal evangelism, and inward holiness, a biblical worldview assumes that the Bible also speaks to education, art, business, politics, technology, and more."

Tom DeLay's speech may have been a problem for some because he not only speaks about the benefits of a biblical worldview, he lives it. Here is a man who refuses to separate his Christian faith from his role as a congressman. He speaks his mind and his honest convictions, and he also lives his faith. He and his wife Christine take foster kids into their own home.

If the debate over DeLay's speech tells us anything, it's that private religion isn't what frightens some people. It's the public face of Christianity that scares them. The message is: "Stay in your churches, fast and pray, and you'll be tolerated. But dare to express your faith in the public square, and you will pay."

In an age in which private life is increasingly separated from public life, Christians all the more need to model a biblical worldview -- as Barber says in EARTH RESTORED, "think[ing] God's thoughts after Him in all areas of life." Tom DeLay serves as an excellent example.

For further reading:

John Barber, EARTH RESTORED: CALLING THE CHURCH TO A NEW CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM (Christian Focus Publications, 2002).

Alan Cooperman, "DeLay Criticized for 'Only Christianity' Remarks," WASHINGTON POST, 20 April 2002.

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE? (Tyndale, 1999).

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In his classic 1946 book, "Animal Farm," George Orwell coined the phrase: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." That statement, which is now more than 50 years old, sums up the legal objectives of the homosexual activist movement regarding the religious civil liberties of all Americans.

Their prevailing attitude toward religious freedom is succinctly summed up in the following statement by radical homosexual activists Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen in their manifesto for the "gay" rights movement, "After the Ball": "[In regards to those] who feel compelled to adhere rigidly to an authoritarian belief structure that condemns homosexuality ... our primary objective regarding die-hard homo-haters of this sort is to cow and silence them."

The homosexual activist movement is driving an agenda that will severely limit the ability to live and preach the uncensored gospel, whether it is in the boardroom, classroom, halls of government, private organizations and even in places of worship. In their relentless attempts to obtain special rights -- rights that no other special interest group has -- they are in the process of redefining the family, demanding not only "tolerance" (which really means the intolerance of any viewpoint that does not accept or promote homosexual behavior) but "acceptance," and ultimately seeking to marginalize, censor and punish those individuals who stand in the way of their multiple goals.

To achieve this goal, radical homosexual activists have targeted the church, the family, the schools and corporate America.

OUR SCHOOLS AND HOMES

One of the essential elements of religious liberty is the freedom to pass along one's faith and values to one's children. Unfortunately, millions of Christians are totally unaware of the indoctrination their children are receiving from radical homosexual activists, urging them to reject their parents' beliefs regarding homosexual behavior.

At a 1999 conference held by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educational Network (GLSEN), their director of communications said: "If we do our jobs right, we will raise a whole generation of children who will reject the claims of the religious right." A representative from the National Education Association added: "The fear of the religious right is that the schools of today will be the governments of tomorrow. And you know, they're right."

GLSEN, working with lesbian activists and filmmakers Helen Cohen and Diana Chasnoff, has created a video titled "It's Elementary" for schoolteachers and administrators. The video openly promotes homosexual behavior and not only ridicules Christianity, but also accuses Christians of persecuting homosexuals. Featured in the video are many real scenes from elementary school classrooms. In one such scene, a fifth-grader who has been thoroughly indoctrinated states: "Some Christians believe that if you're gay you go to hell, so they want to torture them and stuff."

In another scene, a fourth-grade girl is asked to read to her classmates an essay about her lesbian parents. When she gets to the section about people who have biblical objections to homosexual behavior, she says: "Some people believe in a version of the Bible that says what my mommies do is wrong. I think that is just stupid." The teacher goes on to explain that the essay won an award. Could you imagine calling an individual or a group of people "stupid" when you were in school and what the consequences would have been? Yet, day after day, radical homosexual activists are instilling this religious bigotry into impressionable children.

At a "hate crimes" conference at George Washington University in 1997, former President Bill Clinton told the audience that basically parents were at fault for their children's "bigotry" and that children had to be re-educated. He stated: "Children have to be taught hate" -- the buzzword used by radical homosexual activists and the media for anyone with legitimate opposition to the promotion of homosexual behavior. "We want to teach them a different way. Don't you think you almost have to have an organized effort to do it? There would almost have to be some kind of club or organization at school ... because if you think about it, your parents are pretty well separated."

Their strategy is working. A recent Zogby poll of U.S. high school seniors found that nearly two-thirds surveyed said homosexual marriages should be legal and 68 percent said homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children.

On university campuses, ministries such as Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship are having to fight for their very right to exist. In early 2000, the InterVarsity chapter at Tufts University in Massachusetts was banished from campus for refusing to allow a practicing lesbian to hold a leadership position with the group. To do so would have violated the group's biblically held beliefs on homosexual behavior. They were finally allowed to include adherence to biblical teachings as a qualification for leadership and allowed back on campus, but only after a public backlash.

Nevertheless, the leaders of the chapters were subjected to campus "tolerance" education, leading to this observation by Gregory Fung, the president of the InterVarsity chapter: "We did what they asked us to do. We went to their tolerance classes. You would think the institutions that teach tolerance won't turn around and bite you. But they do. We thought the people who taught all the classes would be tolerant. No way. They were determined to cure us of our intolerance."

InterVarsity's former president, Steven Hayner, noted the increasing hostility to religious freedom on university campuses when he said: "We have had more challenges to our basic right to exist on campus settings during the past two years than in the previous 55 combined. It's not just us -- this is hitting Catholics and Muslims and others. What we are seeing is a growing challenge to religious freedom, period."

OUR LAWS

In addition to the constant attacks on religious freedom, radical homosexual activists are relentless in their drive to redefine the family. This past January, activists in California attempted to launch their most aggressive effort yet when they introduced AB1338, which would have created "civil unions" that were the legal equivalent of marriage. The bill specifically stated that "a spouse in a civil union will have all the same rights, protections, benefits, and responsibilities under law, whether they derive from statutes, administrative, or court rule, policy, common law, or any other provision or source of law, that are granted a spouse in a civil marriage."

There was no religious exemption in the bill. Therefore, a Christian employer or ministry could find themselves sued for "discrimination" if they did not recognize an employee's civil union in the same manner they would recognize a traditional marriage.

This bill proved that the pretense of tolerance was over. Radical homosexual activists were now seeking total acceptance, with Christians expected to bow at their feet.

AB1338 died in the State Assembly but only after a public outcry from pro-family citizens. California Gov. Gray Davis has created a task force to "study" the issue of civil unions, despite the fact that California voters passed a constitutional amendment affirming traditional marriage by a 62-38 percent margin in 2000.

OUR BUSINESSES

Homosexual activists have also targeted corporate America as a key player in implementing their agenda. Companies such as Xerox, Proctor and Gamble, Ford Motor Company, Kodak and IBM, among others, were identified as sponsors of the 2001 "Out and Equal Conference," which is a springboard for homosexual corporate activism. At one workshop at the conference, "religious values" were identified as an obstacle to overcome by barring religion from the workplace, erecting another substantial barrier to evangelism.

Xerox and Lucent Technologies, for example, have instituted the "Safe Spaces"TM program. Employees are encouraged to place pink triangles, the sign for homosexual activism, on their cubicles to show their support for the homosexual agenda and to identify those who don't agree by their failure to post the triangle.

Another way that radical homosexual activists have used corporate America is to create domestic partner policies. They readily admit that by convincing corporations to provide benefits for the sex "partners" of homosexual employees, it will increase the pressure on federal, state and local governments to do so as well.

In some cases, the reverse is happening. In San Francisco, the County Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance, currently being challenged in federal court, that required all corporations doing business with the city to provide domestic partner benefits. The result? According to the homosexual advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, of the 4,000-plus employers who presently allow such benefits, only about 1,200 did so voluntarily. The remainder did so because they wanted to continue doing business with the city.

OUR CHURCHES?

So how far can this go? Let us finish with a few examples of what is happening elsewhere and is rapidly being imported into the United States:

-- In Canada, serious limits have been placed on Christian broadcasters who take a biblical stand against homosexual behavior.

-- In Great Britain, radical homosexual activists tried to challenge the charitable status of a Christian organization that spoke out against lowering of the age of consent from 18 to 16 (which the homosexual activists won). While the charitable status of the Christian organization was upheld, the ministry agreed to no longer "influence public policy."

-- In Holland, Dutch authorities pondered whether to prosecute Pope John Paul II on discrimination charges after he said that a homosexual advocacy march in Rome was "an offense to Christian values." They eventually stated that the pope had "global immunity" because of his position as the head of the Vatican state, but the very thought of possible prosecution of a worldwide religious leader for his stance on homosexual behavior by another country demonstrates how far homosexual activists are willing to go to suppress religious speech and freedom.

Christians are called, above all else, to "love God and love their neighbor." For the Christian, loving thy neighbor includes introducing them to the life-giving, saving grace of Jesus Christ. The radical homosexual agenda threatens the freedom to carry out evangelistic, charitable and social activities in order to fulfill the biblical mandate to love your neighbor and share the Good News with all.

For years, activists said all they wanted was "tolerance" but now the pretense of tolerance is over. Radical homosexual activists will use their financial and political clout to silence people of faith and the gospel. If God's people and God's church do not take a clear, uncompromised stand, the result will be that with each passing generation the freedom to live and practice Christian faith and the traditional family will become more restricted and become a remnant of history.

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Alan Sears is president of the Alliance Defense Fund; Craig Osten is national director of Team Communications. They are presently writing a book on the homosexual agenda and religious freedom which should be available early next year. Reprinted from SBC Life, monthly journal of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.

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In the first column in this series I said that we can come to terms with Jesus’ claims to being the only way by answering three rudimentary questions. In yesterday’s column we looked at the first question, “what is truth?” Today we will take a look at the second question: What is ethical?

Any Western Christian who has shared his/her faith with others understands that claiming Jesus is the only way can be perceived as being intolerant of and offensive to others. A few years ago I had a public discussion with a Muslim professor on a university campus. The morning of the event, the moderator informed me that the Muslim professor had just called and said he would not participate unless I agreed not to offer any criticism of Islam. I was shocked but agreed.

During my speech that evening I shared that I was a Christian today because I had investigated Christianity historically and discovered that Jesus’ claims to deity, His death by crucifixion and His resurrection could all be confirmed by historical research. During the Q&A period one of the audience members asked me why the Muslim professor and I hated one another. Now, we had been very collegial to each other during the evening’s event. So, I responded that I did not hate him and did not sense that he hated me. I added that if I were to claim that his views were equally valid or true as my own, he would not respect me and I would not respect him if he were to say the same to me. I added that such a comment would be rather insulting, since both of us are strongly persuaded that our own religious tradition is true to the exclusion of the other. Accordingly, if I were to assert that the Muslim view is as valid as the Christian view, he would understand my comment as a demotion of Islam. I ended by stating that it is certainly possible for us to disagree in the strongest sense with the other’s cherished views while acknowledging and even defending the other’s right to have them.

The point I want to make is this: When someone claims that my belief that Jesus is the only way is intolerant and offensive, they ignore the fact that their pluralist approach is likewise intolerant and offensive. They are being intolerant of exclusivist views and offensive to those who hold them.

Amy-Jill Levine is a professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt University and is Jewish. Professor Levine opines that the Christian claim that Jesus is the only way is not morally dubious. She writes, “What I would find more ‘morally dubious’ is my insisting to another that his or her reading or presuppositions, because they are not pluralistic, are somehow wrong.... The evangelical Christian should be free to try to seek to convert me to Christianity: such an attempt is biblically warranted and consistent with evangelical (exclusivist) theology. I remain free to say ‘thank you, but no thanks.’ I would not want someone telling me that my ‘cherished confessional traditions’ have only limited value. I would not presume to do the same to another.”

Moreover, there are times when truth should not be sacrificed for the sake of avoiding offense. While the Titanic was sinking, since lifeboats were available, it would have been unethical for the crew of the Titanic, in the interest of reducing panic for the moment, to have told all of the passengers to go back to their cabins and sleep through the night because everything would be fine in the morning. Truth is important. Decisions of greater importance should drive us to discover the truth, rather than dilute or deny it in our efforts not to offend, which as we have seen is a no-win situation.

However, when sharing our faith with others, Christians should remember to do it “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). We should love others and be graceful in our efforts to share the greatest news ever told.

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Mike Licona is coordinator of interfaith and apologetics at the North American Mission Board.

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[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

Sherzod Odilov, an exchange student from Uzbekistan, did not anticipate the high price he would pay for his decision to follow Christ, but knowing the price Christ paid for him, he stands firm.

When Sherzod, who recently graduated from Jacksonville (Ark.) High School, telephoned his Muslim parents in Uzbekistan to tell them of his newfound faith, his father disowned him, making it clear he was no longer welcome in his home and was never again to speak to his mother or his siblings. He withdrew all funds from Sherzod’s U.S. bank account, arranged to cancel his son’s U.S. sponsorship and college scholarship and even drew up legal papers declaring Sherzod is no longer his son.

As devastating as that must be for an 18-year-old, Sherzod remains strong in his commitment to Christ.

“I am not sorry I accepted Christ,” he said. “I am not sorry for getting baptized. Even though my parents did that, I am not sorry for anything that happened.”

He faces his uncertain future with confidence that God will lead him.

Sherzod was led to faith in Christ by Kari Hand, 16, who befriended him and introduced him to the Savior.

“I was strictly Muslim. I prayed five times a day and read the Koran and learned it by heart. I kept it with me all the time,” Sherzod said. “All I knew was Islam, and I believed in Islam. I really prayed. I thought all religions except Islam were wrong.”

Then he met Kari at a basketball game.

“After that, whenever I talked to her, she always talked about Christianity and her faith and about Grace Baptist Church [in Scott, Ark.],” Sherzon recounted. “When she talked about Christianity, I used to get mad. But I didn’t tell her that because I didn’t want her to feel bad. All the time, she spoke about Christianity and about the Bible. She gave me some books about Christianity, too. I really felt strange because I had never heard Christian things before. I didn’t believe in Christianity. So I used to get mad all the time when she spoke about that.”

As time passed, Kari’s testimony and witness began to reach him.

“I got used to that and started to feel something whenever she talked about that,” Sherzod continued. “I asked a lot of questions of her, everything about Christianity. I asked them on purpose to see if she could answer or not. She did. She could answer those questions, and that really surprised me.”

Then he began to read the Bible and explore the difference between Islam and Christianity. He began to rethink Islam and open his mind to Christianity.

“In Islam we have to pray five times in a day, and it is not guaranteed that you go to heaven. It is not guaranteed that all your sins are going to be forgiven,” he said. “But when I read the Bible, I began to realize I had been following something that was wrong all my life.”

Sherzod began attending Grace Baptist, where Kari is a member. He liked the church, the people, pastor Jerry Terrell and the youth group.

“The preaching of Brother Jerry really touched my heart,” Sherzod said.

Then one day while Kari was on the phone with him, she asked if he was ready to accept Christ.

“That really touched my heart, too, because I had been wanting to do that for a long time, but I didn’t know how to start. I didn’t really know how to do that. So, I said, ‘OK, what am I supposed to do?’”

Kari, who had been trained in Evangelism Explosion, guided him through what it means to confess sin, repent and place his trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and Sherzod responded by praying to receive Christ.

In conversations with Terrell about seeking baptism, they decided he should share his decision to his parents.

Sherzod said his parents had always shown their love for him, met his needs and supported him in every way. He thought they would support his decision.

He phoned his parents on his dad’s birthday.

“I said, ‘Dad, I have to tell you something very important. It’s very important to me and it’s a big change, and I hope you are not going to get mad or upset with me,’” Sherzod told him.

His father told him he could never be angry at anything Sherzod did.

“I told him I accepted Christ and that I’m getting ready to get baptized,” Sherzod said. “He kept silent for a couple of minutes. I said, ‘Dad, are you OK?’ and he said, ‘Sherzod, I don’t think the thing you are doing is right, and I didn’t really expect that from you. If you are sure the thing you are doing is right, and if you are not going to follow Islam, there is no hope for you to come to Uzbekistan. If you ever come to Uzbekistan, don’t ever come to my house. I don’t want you to talk to your brother or sister or to Mom or to any other relatives.’

“He hung up the phone,” Sherzod said. “After a couple of minutes, I tried to call him again, but he wouldn’t pick up the phone. I tried to call him every day for a couple of weeks, but no one picked up the phone.”

Terrell speculated that the father’s decision may have been motivated by love and fear. Uzbekistan is 88 percent Muslim. Sherzod’s father may have feared for Sherzod’s life and for the lives of his family.

“I don’t blame his parents or anyone else, and I don’t want him to hold anything against his parents,” Terrell said. “They are loving parents. They have done what they believe is the best thing to do. We just need to gather around this young man and help him.”

Terrell asked Sherzod what he would do if he returned to Uzbekistan and there was a call to pray to Allah. Sherzod said he would refuse.

Sherzod was scheduled to return to Uzbekistan June 27. They contacted Homeland Security, explaining the situation. Their contact said, “Do not put him on that plane!” Terrell noted if Sherzod returned, he would have no place to go, he might not be able to get out again and as a former Muslim converted to Christianity, he could be in danger.

“Putting all those things together, we felt it was best to try to do something to keep him here.”

Terrell baptized Sherzod June 24, and Grace Baptist has made a commitment to assist the young man with financial and legal responsibilities as he seeks religious asylum in the United States.

Linda Hand, Kari’s mother, is helping with all the paperwork challenges.

They have filed for an F-1 visa, which will allow him to stay as a student. He had already been accepted at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway, where he will major in international relations and political science. But without his Uzbekistan scholarship, the university needed a guarantee regarding his financial support, because an F-1 visa does not allow him to work. Doing so would mean deportation.

Terrell presented the need to the church and they voted to sponsor Sherzod for tuition, room and board, books and spending money. Yet, such a small church (about 150 resident members) knows they will need help.

“I told them if we could get 100 churches or individuals to put up $200 each, we could collect $20,000,” Terrell said. “We felt that would be enough to take care of him for a whole year.”

At that service, members gave almost $2,000.

“Religious asylum is the ultimate goal,” Terrell said, but many people are filing for those and they are difficult to obtain. Also, the cost is about $4,000.

“But we believe with God’s help, anything is possible,” Terrell said. “So far the Lord has really inspired everything that has taken place. I believe God is in this.

“I’ve been really proud of Sherzod,” Terrell said. “Even after these things have all taken place, he continues to say, ‘I believe I’ve done the right thing. I stand by my decision. This is what I believe.’ He’s been strong in that. It has really been an inspiration to our teenagers, and our adults also, to meet someone who stands strong, realizing the price he has had to pay. God has really blessed us by bringing him to us. He’ll be a real blessing to the Lord.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #3270]

The indefatigable gay-hating Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas, announced in October that he would take advantage of the Casper, Wyoming, City Council’s earlier decision to allow a religious monument (the Ten Commandments) in a city park by erecting his own religious monument: a statue celebrating the 1998 fatal gay bashing (and descent into hell) of Casper’s Matthew Shepard. (A U.S. Court of Appeals had ruled that a city cannot discriminate among religious messages.) The City Council subsequently decided that its Ten Commandments monument was a bad idea and voted to remove it and ban all religious messages from the park.

A New York Times column comparing the theme of the “Left Behind” book series to ethnic cleansing has sparked a reaction by two Southern Baptist professors.

In a July 17, 2004, column, The Times' Nicholas Kristof criticized the belief that Christ someday would judge non-believers and cast them into hell. Kristof said his column was triggered by the popularity of the latest book in the “Left Behind” series -- “Glorious Appearing” -- released earlier this year.

“It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety,” Kristof wrote. “If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of 'Glorious Appearing' and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit.

“We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.”

Americans, Kristof argued, “should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels.”

Two Southern Baptist professors wrote Kristof, saying that the theme behind the Left Behind series -- the final judgment -- is part of traditional Christian beliefs.

“The idea that Jesus Christ will one day return to earth to separate the sheep from the goats may be objectionable in many ears, but this tenet is certainly not the invention of American Evangelicals,” wrote Denny Burk, professor of biblical studies at Criswell College in Dallas. “This expectation is nothing less than historic Christian faith. When you deride this aspect of our faith, you are not just criticizing American Evangelicals, but all Christians who cherish the teachings of Jesus.”

James M. Hamilton Jr., assistant professor of biblical studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, agreed. Hamilton said the “Left Behind” authors, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, draw the major theme of their books directly from the Bible.

“Note well that the authors are not urging Christians to seek to bring about the final judgment by their own strength in the present,” Hamilton wrote. “No, the authors are merely giving their interpretation of what the Bible says about that final judgment. The Bible commands Christians to leave justice in the hands of God, who says, 'it is mine to avenge, I will repay' (Rom. 12:19).

“... Christians who hold this view believe that what Jesus will do at the end will be just and right. To object to this is to object either to the fact that Jesus has such authority, or to the standards by which he judges, or to the principle of justice.”

Burk, who also quoted Romans 12:19, took exception to Kristof's parallel between the Left Behind series and Islamic “fundamentalist religious tracts.” Christians, Burk noted, believe it is their duty not to judge, but rather to call people to repentance.

“The Islamic Jihadists believe that God will carry out his retribution on his enemies through faithful Muslims,” Burk wrote. “This of course is the theological ground for Islamic extremist violence against 'infidels.’ Evangelicals do not believe that their mission is to carry out God's retribution upon His enemies. On the contrary, we believe that vengeance is His, not ours. God will deal out His judgments when and where He sees fit.”

Evangelicals, Burk said, “might die for our faith, but we don't kill for it if we are to be faithful to our creed.”

In his column Kristof defended his criticism of religion, arguing that in the 1800s some Christians used the Bible to defend slavery. Like those Christians of the 19th century, Kristof said, the beliefs of today's evangelicals also deserve to be critiqued.

Hamilton, though, countered by noting that Christianity was at the heart of the anti-slavery movement.

“[H]istory ... shows that the abolitionist and civil rights movements were led by sincere, Bible believing Christians,” Hamilton wrote. “It is my impression that the hermeneutic adopted by the abolitionists and the civil rights activists is the interpretation of the Bible that has won the day.

“I don't know any leader or group in modern evangelicalism (i.e., conservative Christianity) who would advocate racism, slavery, or bigotry based on an interpretation of the Bible. No, Christians repudiate racism, slavery, and bigotry. Further, history shows that religious liberty and genuine tolerance have flourished where Christianity has gone.”

Kristof's assertion that the final judgment is a form of “ethnic cleansing” is erroneous, Burk argued.

“Evangelical Christian faith, of course, does not anticipate an ethnic cleansing at the end of time,” Burk wrote. “The basis by which the Lord makes distinctions in the final judgment is not racial but moral. Evangelicals believe that all those who are joined to Christ by faith will be spared, and all those who are not joined to him will not be spared, irrespective of one's race.

“It is not fair for you to portray Evangelical piety as tantamount to bigotry and genocide. You may think that is what our faith leads to, but that is simply not what we believe. As a matter of fact, we believe that God has determined to gather to Himself worshippers from every race on the earth: 'with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth' (Revelation 5:9-10). We believe that God is glorified in the racial diversity of His people.”

*

Over the weekend, I heard about what might be called “A Tale of Two Churches.” Each involved an attempt to discipline church members. Looking at the two together gives us a very instructive lesson.

The first case was in Waynesville, North Carolina. In the past week, the East Waynesville Baptist Church split down the middle. The facts are not in dispute. During the last political campaign, the Reverend Chan Chandler told his congregation, “The question then comes to the Baptist church, how do I vote? Let me just say this right now, if you vote for John Kerry this year, you need to repent or resign. You have been holding back God's Church way too long.”

Subsequently, some of the members, who apparently took offense at the pastor's statement, were voted out. Now in the midst of the turmoil, the young pastor who made those remarks has been forced to resign. Many have left, and the church is in shambles.

The second example was this past weekend in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where a Roman Catholic priest refused Communion to more than one hundred parishioners. They could not receive the sacrament, he said, because they wore rainbow-colored sashes to church in support of homosexuality as a gift from God. This was an organized protest by a group called the Rainbow Sash Alliance. When the protest was announced, Archbishop Harry Flynn declared these people would not receive Communion because they were defying Church teachings.

Both of these attempts at church discipline are related to cultural questions. But there the similarity ends. What happened in Saint Paul is a very good example of what the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, needs to do. When the teaching of the Church is flouted, the Church has a right, indeed a duty, to discipline its members. In this regard, we evangelicals can learn something from Roman Catholics, who under Pope Benedict XVI show every sign of making Church membership mean something by holding the line on orthodox Church teachings. This is part of a pattern: Over recent months a number of priests and bishops have indicated they would not give Communion to Catholic politicians who vote on legislation in ways contrary to the moral and biblical teaching of the Church. This is an entirely appropriate way for a church to exercise discipline.

But what about the church in Waynesville? In 1986, Chuck Colson wrote a book called Kingdoms in Conflict, arguing that it is the duty of the Church to speak out on moral issues and culture. But at the same time, he argued, a pastor must never make partisan endorsements. Reverend Chandler lost sight of this distinction and went over the line. It is one thing to call members to account for beliefs or behavior that defy the clear teaching of Scripture; it's another thing to force them out of the congregation because of the way they vote at an election. The lesson from Waynesville is, don't step across that line.

We are servants of the Kingdom of God before we are servants of the kingdom of man. The Gospel belongs to no political party. The Church stands in judgment of and in service to culture and society, but it must do so without embracing an agenda for purely partisan reasons.

________

Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Last January, a fifth grader named Stephanie Versher celebrated her birthday by bringing brownies and gifts to her classmates. Among the gifts were pencils printed with the words “Jesus loves me this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”

But just as she was handing them out, the school principal showed up. She grabbed the pencils and scolded Stephanie for violating school policy. And she told Stephanie’s mother that if Stephanie was caught giving away religious items again, she would be expelled.

This was not the first time the Plano, Texas, Independent School District had violated the constitutional rights of kids. As John Gibson writes in his book, The War on Christmas, when children attended school Winter Break Parties — formerly known as Christmas Parties — they were warned not to put anything of a religious nature in goody bags to be shared with friends. Teachers didn’t hesitate to confiscate items like candy canes attached to cards explaining the Christian “Legend of the Candy Cane.”

Parents who helped out at Christmas — excuse me, Winter parties — were told not to bring red or green napkins, paper plates, or cupcakes. After all, these were the colors of Christmas! Nor could students pass out tickets to a popular Christmas pageant held every year at a local church. They were even forbidden to say “Merry Christmas” to their classmates.

Parents met several times with school authorities and finally decided they had no choice but to file a federal lawsuit: Their children’s constitutional rights were being systematically violated.

Sometimes going to court can be the only alternative we have against those determined to defy the law. But Christians must be mindful of how they go about this. And the Apostle Paul offers an example of how to behave when our rights as citizens are violated.

Paul took a backseat to no one when it came to his legal rights. We read in the book of Acts that when Paul was falsely accused by Jewish leaders, and was about to be scourged, he boldly asked a centurion, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman citizen, and uncondemned?” No, it wasn’t — and the scourging was cancelled.

Later, Paul told Festus, the procurator of Judea, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried; to the Jews I have done no wrong, as you know very well.” And then Paul exploited the nuclear option of that day: “I appeal to Caesar!” he said.

But Paul never forgot his Christian witness — even when his listeners were hostile. While behind bars, he witnessed to Felix, his wife, Drusilla, and to Herod Agrippa II. When he was taken as a prisoner on a ship bound for Italy, he comforted sailors during a shipwreck. During his two years under house arrest in Rome, we are told he “welcomed all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God.”

It’s hard to keep cool when our children’s rights are attacked and when we witness such insane efforts to erase Christian symbols from public life. But even when we are dealing with hostile school authorities — or even when we go to court in extreme cases — remember always that our ultimate goal is not winning earthly battles, important though they are, but souls for eternity. So, protest, but do it always in love.

________

Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Artur Boruc, 26, a goalkeeper for the Celtics Football Club, was playing in a soccer match against the Rangers in Glasgow, Scotland. At the start of the second half Boruc, who is Polish and signed with the Celtics a year ago, crossed himself as he took his position. The Strathclyde Police was called in, and their report was passed to prosecutors. The Crown Office ruled that in the “charged atmosphere” of a football match, the act of crossing himself “provoked alarm and crowd trouble and as such constituted a breach of the peace.” Boruc received a formal caution, leaving him with a criminal record. “It is worrying some spectators saw fit to complain,” said a spokesman for Scotland’s Catholic Church, “but even more so that police felt it merited investigation. This decision could lead us down a very intolerant road.”

________

Glasgow Daily Record, PA

[Later reports say Boruc was cited for deliberately provoking the crowd, not for blessing himself.]

Perhaps you’ve noticed a chill in the air this autumn. No, I’m not talking about the weather. Maybe you shared with a colleague your religious convictions, and in return, you received a look that would blow the leaves off a tree.

It doesn’t take a meteorologist to read the forecast. A quick glance at the NEW YORK TIMES’s bestseller list will do. High on the list is LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION by Sam Harris. One reader describes the book as “a wonderful source of ammunition for those who, like me, hold to no religious doctrine.” Another reader jubilantly gushes, reading the book “was like sitting ring side, cheering the champion, yelling ‘Yes!’ at every jab.” The barrel of the gun and the sting of the fist, however, are aimed directly at Christians.

Further down the list of pugilistic bestsellers is Richard Dawkins’s THE GOD DELUSION, weighing in at 416 pages of hot air. Even PUBLISHERS WEEKLY rightly cautions readers, “For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe.” PUBLISHERS WEEKLY continues: “While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: [According to Dawkins] the biblical Yahweh is ‘psychotic,’ Aquinas’s proofs of God’s existence are ‘fatuous’ and religion generally is ‘nonsense.’”

In a recent interview with WIRED NEWS, Dawkins said, “At some point there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too EMBARRASSING to believe in God.” Certainly if books like The God Delusion succeed in heaping “fatuous,” “delusional,” and “nonsensical” epithets on believers, some Christians will choose to remain silent rather than face derision.

But it’s not simply the streams of the book market that are swollen with icy scorn for Christians. Recently the NEW YORK TIMES ran a week-long series on church and state. With titles like, “Where Faith Abides Employees Have Few Rights,” and “As Exemptions Grow Religion Outweighs Regulation,” there’s little doubt that Christians are in for a season of harsh criticism, if not outright scorn. So how ought we to prepare ourselves for what may be a long winter of cultural disdain?

First of all, the situation isn’t new, and neither is the answer. The Apostle Paul, a former Christ-scoffer, responded to pressures of his day by reaffirming: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God for all those who believe: first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). In 1 Peter 2:15, a favorite verse of mine, Peter instructed us to silence the ignorant talk of foolish men by doing good.

The truth of the matter is that the ones heaping derision on Christians are probably the ones who most need our prayers. So, in the end, maybe the best way to prepare for this cold front is by fanning the coal of our own devotion to Christ through good works. If our lives are aflame with care for the least, the last, and the lost, the kind of thing we do here at Prison Fellowship, perhaps even the coldest hearts will thaw.

And don’t let this anti-Christian barrage intimidate you. Just keep making the case for a biblical worldview ever more winsomely. And if you need worldview materials, visit us here at our website.

________

Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The New York Review of Books is one of the nation’s most important intellectual journals. Its essays and reviews tend to be long, thoughtful, and influential. Unlike many other book review journals, it attracts big-name writers and authors as reviewers. Many of these lean left -- some far left -- and the journal can be infuriating. Still, it is essential reading for understanding literary and intellectual culture in America.

The January 11, 2007 issue of NYRB features, among other lead reviews, an extended essay on Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. Much has already been written about the book, about Richard Dawkins, and about his call for the end of all belief in God. Nevertheless, the appearance of this review in NYRB, which covers Dawkins’ book along with two others, demands attention.

H. Allen Orr, the reviewer, is Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester. A defender of evolutionary theory, Orr admires Dawkins, calling his earlier book, The Selfish Gene, “in my view, the best work of popular science ever written.”

Professor Orr understands what Dawkins is up to in this latest book. The Oxford professor is “on a mission to convert.” That is not often said of research scientists. As Orr explains, “He is an enemy of religion, wants to explain why, and hopes thereby to drive the beast to extinction.”

Why should we take notice of yet another attack upon belief in God? Orr answers that question convincingly:

Dawkins has succeeded in grabbing the public’s attention in a way that other writers can only dream of. His book is on the New York Times best-seller list and he’s just been featured on the cover of Time magazine.

More:

Dawkins clearly believes his background in science allows him to draw strong conclusions about religion and, in The God Delusion, he presents those conclusions in language that’s stronger still. Dawkins not only thinks religion is unalloyed nonsense but that it is an overwhelmingly pernicious, even “very evil,” force in the world. His target is not so much organized religion as all religion. And within organized religion, he attacks not only extremist sects but moderate ones. Indeed, he argues that rearing children in a religious tradition amounts to child abuse.

That last point is especially important. In numerous venues, Dawkins has raised the argument that children should not be subjected to the religious beliefs, traditions, and prejudices of their parents. To do so is to subject children to a form of abuse, he argues. Watch this argument carefully -- it is likely to become a focus of activists who take up Dawkins’ charge.

Professor Orr finds this latest book by Dawkins to be “a blunt instrument” that goes far beyond where the science can take him. In Orr’s words:

As you may have noticed, Dawkins when discussing religion is, in effect, a blunt instrument, one that has a hard time distinguishing Unitarians from abortion clinic bombers. What may be less obvious is that, on questions of God, Dawkins cannot abide much dissent, especially from fellow scientists (and especially from fellow evolutionary biologists). Indeed Dawkins is fond of imputing ulterior motives to those “Neville Chamberlain School” scientists not willing to go as far as he in his war on religion: he suggests that they’re guilty of disingenuousness, playing politics, and lusting after the large prizes awarded by the Templeton Foundation to scientists sympathetic to religion. The only motive Dawkins doesn’t seem to take seriously is that some scientists genuinely disagree with him.

Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’s work, I’m afraid that I’m among those scientists who must part company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he’s actually more an amateur. I don’t pretend to know whether there’s more to the world than meets the eye and, for all I know, Dawkins’s general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case.

Orr writes with insight and caution. Here is more:

The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. This is, obviously, an odd thing to say about a book-length investigation into God. But the problem reflects Dawkins’s cavalier attitude about the quality of religious thinking. Dawkins tends to dismiss simple expressions of belief as base superstition. Having no patience with the faith of fundamentalists, he also tends to dismiss more sophisticated expressions of belief as sophistry (he cannot, for instance, tolerate the meticulous reasoning of theologians). But if simple religion is barbaric (and thus unworthy of serious thought) and sophisticated religion is logic-chopping (and thus equally unworthy of serious thought), the ineluctable conclusion is that all religion is unworthy of serious thought.

The result is The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins’s book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they’re terminally ill?).

In the end, Orr scorches Richard Dawkins with what must be the worst Dismissal The New York Review of Books is capable of publishing. The God Delusion, Orr argues, is “a book that’s distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow.” Middlebrow? Now, that hurts. Professor Orr argues that the people who will take this book seriously are people who read Douglas Adams and Carl Sagan. That means it will not be taken seriously by people who read Ludwig Wittgenstein, William James, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion.

Orr chides Dawkins for his failure to take theology seriously. He never really takes on a serious theological argument, Orr rightly observes. This is not really a book of intellectual seriousness, but a tract against belief in God written by an evangelist for atheism.

Give the cultural elites and The New York Review of Books credit for this one -- they know a bad argument when they see one.

“Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” (Luke 15:6)

We turn now to look at another aspect of Christianity’s uniqueness – the issue of personal salvation. The vocabulary of salvation is distasteful to those of other religions and many insist we should give it up. They say, “It smacks of spiritual smugness and arrogance.” But before we answer this criticism we must realize what Christianity is all about. Christianity is essentially a rescue religion; it is the announcement of the good news that God has come in the Person of His Son to save us from the power of sin, the penalty of sin, and one day in the future the presence of sin. In the passage before us today we see that God likens Himself to a shepherd who leaves the rest of the sheep in order to go after one sheep that is lost. The Divine Shepherd, far from abandoning the sheep in the hope that, bleating and stumbling, it may find its own way home, puts His own life on the line to search it out.

Judaism denies that Jesus is the Messiah and that His sin-bearing death is the only ground on which divine forgiveness can be offered. One Jewish scholar, C. G. Montefiore, goes so far as to generously refer to the “greatness and originality” of Jesus in His attitude to sinners that “instead of avoiding them He actively sought them out.” However, though Orthodox Jewish teaching recognizes that God receives sinners who return to Him, it fails to see that He also seeks them out. How utterly amazing. The One who seeks and saves is God.

PRAYER: O Father, what a thought: You did not send an angel to seek us out and save us. You came Yourself in the Person of Your Son. I can never put my gratitude into mere words. Help me show it by my life. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

FURTHER STUDY:

Luke 19:1-10; Matthew 18:10-14; John 1:43; 5:14; 9:35

1. What was Jesus’ message to Zacchaeus?

2. How did Jesus illustrate the heart of the shepherd?

At the end of the Bob Harrington/Madalyn O'Hair debates, the Wittenburg Door interviewed them both. After summing up what she had to say about Harrington, O'Hair summed up what she believed about Christianity: "Christianity is intolerant, anti-democratic, anti-sexual, and anti-life. It is anti-woman, and I cannot stand

that. It is anti-everything that is good and human and decent and kind and love-filled and understanding. I used to have an intellectual hatred for Christianity. I think that is broadening now. I am 'enjoying' hating the whole thing."

Southern Baptist efforts to evangelize Jews are not based on anti-Semitism or intolerance but on a mandate from Jesus Christ, R. Albert Mohler Jr. told a national audience Jan. 12, 2000.

Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was one of four guests on CNN's "Larry King Live" talk show who lively debated the issue of recent Baptist evangelism efforts, especially to Jews.

"In this endeavor, Southern Baptists are about what we've always been about from the beginning, and that is sharing the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ to all persons, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, young and old," Mohler said. "Our prayer is that all persons would hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and respond in faith. We believe that the gospel is for all persons, regardless of any kind of ethnic identity."

Joining Mohler on the program were two Jewish rabbis -- Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Schmuley Boteach, executive director of the Oxford L'Chaim Society -- and David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus.

Hier's main problem with the Southern Baptists was not their efforts to proselytize, but their methodology. He claimed Baptists were being deceptive, pointing to the use of Jewish symbols in the "Days of Awe" prayer guide published by the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board.

"If you have something to sell, be straight about it," Hier said.

Mohler denied the charge of deception.

"We're very up-front about what we're doing," Mohler said. "And the prayer book you held up was intended for Baptist Christians to use in praying for their Jewish friends. It wasn't even intended to present to the Jewish people directly at all."

Brickner, an ethnic Jew who believes in Jesus as the Messiah, expressed support for Baptists. "I'm proud of them," Brickner told King. "I applaud their efforts, because they care enough to love my Jewish people. And the most loving thing that you can do is share the love of God in the Messiah, Jesus."

Boteach based most of his arguments against Southern Baptists on the classic liberal charge of "intolerance," and went so far as to brand Baptist actions as anti-Semitic.

"Who would have thought that in the new millennium we would once again see the prevalence of spiritual dictatorship and totalitarianism?" Boteach asked. "I am absolutely against any religion that says that one faith is superior to another. I don't see how that is anything different than spiritual racism. ... I thought I was living in an enlightened world where people respected each other and had tolerance."

An irritated Boteach interrupted Mohler, Brickner and even King on several occasions, drawing reprimands from King: "Don't interrupt!" and "You're interrupting again."

Mohler called Boteach's anti-Semitism charge "especially disappointing, since American evangelicals are the best friends in many ways that the Jewish people can have. We defend their right of religious liberty," Mohler said. Boteach and Hier each made several references to the Holocaust throughout the program.

King, however, confronted Boteach with that strategy.

"If someone has a sincere belief that Christ is the answer and wants to share that with you, why are you hanging the Holocaust around his neck?" King asked. "He wants to share a belief with you."

As far as sharing beliefs, Mohler and Brickner each had several opportunities to do exactly that.

"All I know is that the only way to heaven is through personal faith and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ the Savior," Mohler said. "No matter how good or bad by human estimation, the fact is before God we are all sinners in need of a Savior. There is not one who is good, no, not one, says the Scriptures."

The Jewish rabbis essentially said that being a good person is enough to get into heaven, regardless of religion or belief. But Mohler countered that viewpoint.

"It seems that the Jewish leadership in America will make great allowances for the fact that perhaps a majority of American Jews, according to polls, no longer believe in a personal God, but one can be an atheist and still be, supposedly, a good Jew," Mohler said. "But the moment a Jew believes that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, he is told he is no longer a Jew. I don't think that makes sense to very many people, and it certainly makes no sense regarding the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."

King asked Mohler how the "campaign" to convert Jews was going. Mohler questioned the use of the word "campaign" because he said Southern Baptists aren't focusing on Jews any more than any other group.

Mohler said he has known several Jews who have come to faith in Christ.

"They still have a Jewish mother and a Jewish father. They still consider themselves ethnically Jewish," Mohler said. "But they know the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. They know that he is the answer to their need. They know that he is the Lord of all and he is the Messiah the prophets of the Old Testament promised."

The New York Review of Books is one of the nation’s most important intellectual journals. Its essays and reviews tend to be long, thoughtful, and influential. Unlike many other book review journals, it attracts big-name writers and authors as reviewers. Many of these lean left -- some far left -- and the journal can be infuriating. Still, it is essential reading for understanding literary and intellectual culture in America.

The January 11, 2007 issue of NYRB features, among other lead reviews, an extended essay on Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion. Much has already been written about the book, about Richard Dawkins, and about his call for the end of all belief in God. Nevertheless, the appearance of this review in NYRB, which covers Dawkins’ book along with two others, demands attention.

H. Allen Orr, the reviewer, is Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester. A defender of evolutionary theory, Orr admires Dawkins, calling his earlier book, The Selfish Gene, “in my view, the best work of popular science ever written.”

Professor Orr understands what Dawkins is up to in this latest book. The Oxford professor is “on a mission to convert.” That is not often said of research scientists. As Orr explains, “He is an enemy of religion, wants to explain why, and hopes thereby to drive the beast to extinction.”

Why should we take notice of yet another attack upon belief in God? Orr answers that question convincingly:

Dawkins has succeeded in grabbing the public’s attention in a way that other writers can only dream of. His book is on the New York Times best-seller list and he’s just been featured on the cover of Time magazine.

More:

Dawkins clearly believes his background in science allows him to draw strong conclusions about religion and, in The God Delusion, he presents those conclusions in language that’s stronger still. Dawkins not only thinks religion is unalloyed nonsense but that it is an overwhelmingly pernicious, even “very evil,” force in the world. His target is not so much organized religion as all religion. And within organized religion, he attacks not only extremist sects but moderate ones. Indeed, he argues that rearing children in a religious tradition amounts to child abuse.

That last point is especially important. In numerous venues, Dawkins has raised the argument that children should not be subjected to the religious beliefs, traditions, and prejudices of their parents. To do so is to subject children to a form of abuse, he argues. Watch this argument carefully -- it is likely to become a focus of activists who take up Dawkins’ charge.

Professor Orr finds this latest book by Dawkins to be “a blunt instrument” that goes far beyond where the science can take him. In Orr’s words:

As you may have noticed, Dawkins when discussing religion is, in effect, a blunt instrument, one that has a hard time distinguishing Unitarians from abortion clinic bombers. What may be less obvious is that, on questions of God, Dawkins cannot abide much dissent, especially from fellow scientists (and especially from fellow evolutionary biologists). Indeed Dawkins is fond of imputing ulterior motives to those “Neville Chamberlain School” scientists not willing to go as far as he in his war on religion: he suggests that they’re guilty of disingenuousness, playing politics, and lusting after the large prizes awarded by the Templeton Foundation to scientists sympathetic to religion. The only motive Dawkins doesn’t seem to take seriously is that some scientists genuinely disagree with him.

Despite my admiration for much of Dawkins’s work, I’m afraid that I’m among those scientists who must part company with him here. Indeed, The God Delusion seems to me badly flawed. Though I once labeled Dawkins a professional atheist, I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude he’s actually more an amateur. I don’t pretend to know whether there’s more to the world than meets the eye and, for all I know, Dawkins’s general conclusion is right. But his book makes a far from convincing case.

Orr writes with insight and caution. Here is more:

The most disappointing feature of The God Delusion is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. This is, obviously, an odd thing to say about a book-length investigation into God. But the problem reflects Dawkins’s cavalier attitude about the quality of religious thinking. Dawkins tends to dismiss simple expressions of belief as base superstition. Having no patience with the faith of fundamentalists, he also tends to dismiss more sophisticated expressions of belief as sophistry (he cannot, for instance, tolerate the meticulous reasoning of theologians). But if simple religion is barbaric (and thus unworthy of serious thought) and sophisticated religion is logic-chopping (and thus equally unworthy of serious thought), the ineluctable conclusion is that all religion is unworthy of serious thought.

The result is The God Delusion, a book that never squarely faces its opponents. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology in Dawkins’s book (does he know Augustine rejected biblical literalism in the early fifth century?), no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions (are they like ordinary claims about everyday matters?), no effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science (does he know the Church had an important part in the rise of non-Aristotelian science?), and no attempt to understand even the simplest of religious attitudes (does Dawkins really believe, as he says, that Christians should be thrilled to learn they’re terminally ill?).

In the end, Orr scorches Richard Dawkins with what must be the worst Dismissal The New York Review of Books is capable of publishing. The God Delusion, Orr argues, is “a book that’s distinctly, even defiantly, middlebrow.” Middlebrow? Now, that hurts. Professor Orr argues that the people who will take this book seriously are people who read Douglas Adams and Carl Sagan. That means it will not be taken seriously by people who read Ludwig Wittgenstein, William James, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion.

Orr chides Dawkins for his failure to take theology seriously. He never really takes on a serious theological argument, Orr rightly observes. This is not really a book of intellectual seriousness, but a tract against belief in God written by an evangelist for atheism.

Give the cultural elites and The New York Review of Books credit for this one -- they know a bad argument when they see one.

That Islam is “peace and tolerance” is the most popular lie in the world today. Intellectuals in the West who defame Christ parrot the most fatuous praise of Muham -- mad, in spite of his legacy of murder, pillage and rape. A Sesame Street-type Arabic TV program features children training to be suicide bombers and chanting “Death to Israel” -- for peace, of course. Reporter Ann Coulter suggests, “Inasmuch as liberals are demanding that Americans ritualistically proclaim, Islam is a religion of peace, Muslims might do their part by not killing people all the time.” [1]

That our leaders promote this lie, and that so many believe it without ONE FACT to support it, bodes ill for America and the world. We only ask Muslims for ONE EXAMPLE of where and when Islam EVER brought peace and tolerance -- and please don’t threaten us with death (the standard Islamic persuasion) for asking!

Never forget that Muslims slaughtered and conquered “for Allah” from Spain to China. These Arab conquests (DEFENSIVE battles, they claim) were “more rapid than the Roman, more lasting than the Mongol...the most amazing feat in military history.”[2]

Islam’s founder, Muhammad, began his career attacking rich caravans passing near his base in Medina. The first three assaults failed. The fourth succeeded because the victims were surprised by an ambush during Ramadan. Arab tribes had long refrained from aggression in that “holy month.” Muhammad, however, had received a “revelation” authorizing plunder and murder in Allahs name during this special time of peace (Surah 2:217). Another absolved the Muslims of killing: “Ye slew them not, but Allah slew them” (Surah 8:17).

Most Muslims don’t realize that in observing Ramadan and the annual pilgrimage (HAJJ) to Mecca, they follow what pagan Arabs practiced for centuries BEFORE Muhammad was born (see TBC Feb 00). Had President Bush known the truth instead of the misinformation fed to him by Cleveland State University law professor David F. Forte,[3] he might not have hosted a White House dinner honoring “the holy month Ramadan,” nor flattered Muslims saying “all the world continues to benefit from this faith and its achievements.” BENEFIT?

Challenged to do miracles like Christ, Muhammad could do none. On March 16, 624, near Badr, he led 300 warriors in a vicious attack against a large Meccan caravan protected by a force of 800. Some 40 Meccans were killed and 60 taken prisoner to a loss of only 14 Muslims. This amazing victory was seen as the attesting miracle Muhammad needed. As a result, the ranks of Muslims swelled with those eager to share in future plunder.

Having proved himself the prophet of Allah with the sword, Muhammad sealed his apostleship with more than twenty murders, beginning with al-Nadr, an old enemy from Mecca. Taken captive in the battle at Badr, he pleaded that the Meccan Quraish tribe would never kill captives. Muhammad had him beheaded anyway, justifying the deed with another “revelation”: “It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he hath made slaughter in the land” (Surah 8:67).

Much of the growing Muslim wealth came from robbing and killing Jews, causing “the disappearance of these Jewish communities from Arabia proper”[4] -- justified by a further “revelation” (Surah 33:26,27). To this day, by law no Jew may set foot in Saudi Arabia.

A number of poets were murdered at Muhammad’s behest for having mocked him in verse. The first was the poetess Asma bint Marwan, stabbed to death by Umayr while she was nursing her youngest child. The poet Abu Afak (reportedly more than 100 years old) was murdered next. Then came the Jewish poet Kab bin al-Ashraf. A timely “revelation” said all poets were inspired of Satan (Surah 26:221-227).

Does it bother todays Muslims that murder, rape, plunder and slavery of innocent people were the accepted way of life upon which Islam was founded and still operates? Apparently not. Kabs murder (the account slanted with fictitious details) is justified on a popular Muslim website, revealing Islam’s peculiar meaning of “peace” and “justice”:

Kab had become a real danger to the state of peace and mutual

trust which the Prophet was struggling to achieve in Madinah....

The Prophet was quite exasperated with him....This was all part

of the great process...which helped to make Islam spread and

establish it on foundations of justice and piety. [5]

Christ left Christians “an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not...[but] bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness...” (1 Pt 2:21-24). But the Muslim must follow the example of Muhammad who killed all who dared to disagree with him!

A Christian must “know” God (Jer 9:24; Jn 17:3), “love” God with all his heart (Dt 6:5; Mt 22:37, etc.) and “believe” in Christ in his heart (Acts 8:37; Rom 10:9). The God of the Bible wants mans trust and affection without coercion.

In contrast, Allah can be neither known nor loved. Nor does one even have to believe to become a Muslim. Under threat of death, one merely recites aloud, “There is no ILA (god) but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” This “conversion without faith” was established when Abu Sufyan, a Quraish leader, upon surrendering Mecca in 630 to Muhammad and his superior army, admitted that he doubted the latter’s prophethood. He was warned, “Accept Islam and testify that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before your neck is cut off by the sword. Thus [without believing] he professed the faith of Islam and became a Muslim.”[6] This pattern is followed today: confess or die!

Upon Muhammad’s death in A.D. 632, many Arabs attempted to abandon Islam. Abu Bakr (the first caliph to succeed Muhammad) and his warriors in the infamous Wars of Apostasy killed tens of thousands of ex-Muslims, forcing Arabia back into Islam. Muhammad had commanded, “Whoever relinquishes his faith, kill him.” Islam is still enforced this way under SHARIA (Islamic law) in Saudi Arabia and wherever Muslims are able to do so. This is PEACE AND TOLERANCE?!

The Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights was announced at the International Conference on the Prophet Muhammad and his Message held in London in April 1980. It declares, “Islam gave to mankind an ideal code of human rights fourteen centuries ago...based on the Quran and the Sunnah [teachings and practice of Muhammad]....” HUMAN RIGHTS? What deceit!

Abu Bakr was succeeded as caliph by Umar Abu Hafsa. His armies took Damascus in 635, Antioch in 636, Jerusalem in 638, Syria in 640, Egypt and Persia in 641. Entire cities were massacred, such as Behnesa, Fayum, Nikiu and Aboit in Egypt, Tripoli in North Africa and Euchaita in Armenia. Carthage was razed to the ground. In 644, Umar was murdered.

Uthman ibn Affan, the third caliph, consolidated and expanded the growing Islamic empire. A son-in-law of Muhammad, he standardized the Quran, burning all rival copies over protests of those still alive who remembered different readings and missing verses. Among these was Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha who, by the way, never veiled her face. Uthman, too, was murdered by a rival Muslim faction. Prevented from being buried in a Muslim cemetery, he was buried at night by friends, ironically, in a JEWISH cemetery.

Islam divides the world into DAR AL-ISLAM (the house of peace) and DAR AL-HARB (the house of war). To bring “peace,” Allah commands, “I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads! (8:13); Slay the idolaters wherever you find them...(9:5); O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites and be thou harsh with them...(9:73); Believers, make war on the infidels that dwell around you...” (9:123). Perpetual JIHAD is commanded until all the world is under SHARIA. Nor would that bring peace, because Muslims fight among themselves, as history testifies.

The fourth and last of the “rightly guided” caliphs was Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. Accused of complicity in Uthmans murder, he never fully established his rule. Aisha supported a rebellion against him, resulting in the Battle of the Camel in which 10,000 were killed. Ali won, but was murdered in 661.

Wars of succession pitted Quraish against Bedouins, Umayyads against the Hashimite followers of Ali, etc. Most of Alis family were killed by rival Muslims in 680. Mecca was besieged by troops of Yezid, an Umayyad; the Kaaba (later restored) was burned to the ground, its Black Stone split into three pieces. Mecca was taken in 692 by Abd-al-Malik (who in 691 had built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem to replace the Kaaba). He united Muslims once again by force and Islam continued its conquests.

In 712, Muslim raiders under Muhammad Qasun began the invasion of India, demolishing temples and palaces and massacring, as in Constantinople, where the streets ran with blood. “The massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger in sheer numbers than the Holocaust....”[7] But Islam is “peace!”

The Umayyad caliphate ruled the Muslim world until 749 when all of the Umayyads were murdered by the rival Abbasids, except one survivor, abd-al-Rahman, who fled to Spain where he established an independent caliphate. Thus began the Abbasid caliphate, which lasted until 1258 in spite of intrigue, assassinations and uprisings -- all peaceful, of course.

The double-cross and murder of Muslims at the hands of Muslims continues to this day. Scarcely a Muslim regime is NOT ruled by a dictator who seized power from other Muslims, as in Syria and Iraq. The ten-year revolution in Algeria has cost 100,000 lives. In Afghanistan, rival Muslim warlords fight one another. “Infidels” have to intervene there as in the Gulf, to enforce peace among “peaceful” Muslims.

Muslims loyal to the murdered Ali and his sons are called Shiites (the majority in Iran). The others are called Sunnis and comprise the majority elsewhere. These two factions have long demonstrated that “Islam is peace” by fighting one another, as in the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq when more people were killed than in World War I.

Muslim conquests involving multiple massacres of literally millions continued for more than 1,300 years. Under the Abbasids the Islamic empire reached its zenith of power, prosperity and learning.

In Spain (to which Muslims point as an example of their tolerance) the garrison of Muez was slaughtered in 920; Pamplona was put to the sword in 923; then Cordova, Zaragoza and Mereda, with all adult males killed and women and children enslaved. The Jews of Granada were butchered in 1066, 34 years after 6,000 Jews had been slaughtered in Fez, Morocco. In 1146, Islamic Fez was put to the sword by rival Muslims, the Almohads, who conquered much of North Africa after annihilating the Almoravides (another Muslim faction) with about 100,000 massacred, another 120,000 killed in Marrakesh, and similar slaughters elsewhere -- all gestures of “peace.”

The 400-year rule of the Ottoman Turks saw forced kidnappings of young boys into Islam and slavery, causing parents to mutilate children to make them undesirable. Under the Ottomans, being Greek, Armenian, Serb or any other non-Muslim was to live in daily fear of murder, rape, torture, genocide. To this day, Serbs and Bulgarians loathe Turks and Bosnians.

When Sultan Murad III died, his son Muhammad had all nineteen of his brothers murdered and the seven of his fathers concubines who were pregnant sewn into sacks and thrown into the sea. The successor of Murad IV had all 300 women in HIS harem sewn into sacks and thrown into the Bosphorus. Like so many other Muslim leaders, he was murdered -- peacefully.

The persecution of Jews in Roman Catholic Europe was mild compared to what Ottoman Christians endured for four centuries. More than a million Armenians were slaughtered in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth centuries, as well as many thousands of Jews, Greeks, Assyrians, Lebanese, et al. Tragically, the oppression and bloodshed were often condoned by Western powers, particularly England and at times America. In the great 1915 genocide, “women came with butcher knives [to] gain that merit in Allahs eyes that comes from killing a Christian.”[8] The destruction of Smyrna in September 1922 with the deliberate massacre of nearly 300,000 inhabitants is another example of Islamic “peace.” English, American, Italian and French battleships anchored in the harbor repelled fleeing victims who swam out to them for help.[9]

The popular “explanation” that Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are not Muslims, but fanatics, is a rebuke to the Quran, to Muhammad, and to Islam itself. As Trifkovic writes (p. 127), “Thirteen centuries of...suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic tolerance....” The West winks at the blatant denial of basic human rights and support of terrorism by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries -- even favors Islamic terrorists in Chechnya, Cyprus, Bosnia, Kashmir, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sudan and East Timor.

Our politically correct delusion is leading to disaster. Tragically, the gospel is kept from Islamic countries by the failure of Western governments to admit and confront the truth about Islam. Please continue to inform yourselves, to protest to our leaders, to pray for Gods intervention, and to be witnesses for Christ to Muslims in our country.

________

1. www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/coulter.html

2. Will Durant, THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION (Simon and Schuster, 1950), IV:188.

3. IMPRIMIS (Oct 2002), 2-6; Serge Trifkovic, THE SWORD OF THE PROPHET: THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO ISLAM (Regina Orthodox Press, 2002), 83-84.

4. W.N. Arafat, JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, 1976, 100-107.

5. www.islam101.com/people/companions/maslamah.html

6. Cf. Ibn Hisham, part 4 of his BIOGRAPHY OF THE PROPHET, cited in Trifkovic, SWORD, 48.

7. Trifkovic, SWORD, 112.

8. Michael J. Arlen, PASSAGE TO ARARAT (Ruminator Books, 2002), 224.

9. Nicholas Gage, GREEK FIRE (Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), cited in Trifkovic, 125.