They'll Know We Are Muslims By Our .......

These are the people who can't understand why everyone wouldn't want to embrace their religion and who wish therefore to impose it upon the whole world:

Two women suicide bombers who have killed nearly 80 people in Baghdad were Down's Syndrome victims exploited by al Qaida.

The explosives were detonated by remote control in a co-ordinated attack after the women walked into separate crowded markets, said the chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad General Qassim al-Moussawi.

Other officials said the women were apparently unaware of what they were doing in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert toughened security measures.

More than 70 people died and scores were wounded in the deadliest day since the US "surge" of 30,000 extra troops were sent to the capital this spring.

Imagine for a moment that some fanatical sect of Christians did something as depraved as this and no mainstream Christians were heard raising their voices in condemnation. Would it be fair to assume that the mainstreamers really weren't too put out by the atrocity perpetrated in the name of Christ? We cup our ears and listen for the American Muslim community's expressions of outrage and anger over the use of mentally retarded women to murder dozens of innocents in the name of Allah. We listen for them to do more than issue a perfunctory "This is not Islam" press release. We listen for signs that they are announcing an all-out public jihad against any and all who besmirch the name of their prophet with such bestial behavior. But, alas, all we hear is the sound of silence.

I wonder what is the Muslim equivalent of the song that goes: "They'll know we are Christians by our love."

RLC

Religious Heritage Resolution

Atheists have themselves in a fidget over a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives that recognizes America's "rich spiritual and religious history":

The resolution, H.R. 888, resolves to "affirm" the religious traditions that most historians say played a crucial role in America's founding. It calls religious principles and foundations "critical underpinnings" of America's institutions, condemns attempts to remove religion from U.S. history, and designates the first week in May as "American Religious History Week."

The atheists, always with a sharp eye out for signs of the return of the Inquisition, see this as an attack upon them:

"They're throwing 25 million Americans under the bus who don't believe in the Christian faith," Rick Wingrove, the Capitol Hill representative for American Atheists, told Cybercast News Service. "If you have a piece of legislation that favors Christians, what does that say to non-Christians?"

Well, in what sense is recognizing a fact about our heritage a piece of legislation that "favors" Christians? If Congress passed a resolution that affirmed the contribution of women and minorities in American history in what sense would that be "favoring" minorities or throwing white men under the bus? Perhaps we shouldn't expect the arguments of our atheist friends to make too much sense, but still.

There's more on the atheists' objections to the resolution at the link.

Margaret Downey, president of Atheist Alliance International, suggested that her fellow non-believers counter the proposed "American Religious History Week" with "Free Thought Week," which could be legislated in an opposing "Secular History in America" resolution.

Now there's an interesting idea. Let's have a resolution that affirms the contributions made to this country by atheistic ideas and practices. We could start by noting the deaths of the millions who had to fight against atheistic governments of Japan and Germany in WWII and the millions of other Americans who have suffered in one way or another because of atheistic communism. In our own culture we could point in the resolution to the social putridity wrought by the abandonment of traditional Christian morality - the crime, wrecked marriages, wasted lives, toxic entertainment culture, corruption of government at all levels, corporate greed, all of which are consequences of the belief that in the modern world traditional moral sanctions based upon a Christian worldview are no longer viable.

This is a wonderful idea Ms Downey has. I hope she follows through with it so that it can be brought before the public what a glorious heritage atheism has bequeathed us.

RLC

John McCain and Super Tuesday

John McCain is emotionally volatile, sometimes even ugly. He opposed the Bush tax cuts, he opposes increased oil production in the United States, he opposes free political speech, and he favors amnesty for illegal aliens and opening our borders to anyone who wants to come into the country. If he scores big in Tuesday's primary it will be a dark day for the Republican party and an even darker day for conservatives.

McCain would probably be an underdog in the race were Mike Huckabee not attacking Mitt Romney and siphoning votes away from him. Huckabee, by his tactic of running interference for McCain, has lost a lot of respect from people who formerly admired him. Readers who are undecided about McCain ought to read this piece by former Senator Rick Santorum.

I am not prepared to join with those who have said they will not vote for McCain in the general election. Despite his shortcomings, he's still preferable to either Clinton or Obama, but he's not the best option on offer in the Republican primary. Mitt Romney has a much more stable temperament and is more consistently conservative than is McCain. It reflects poorly on the American electorate that so many who call themselves conservative seem to be unaware of this.

RLC

The Ribosome

Casey Luskin finds a bunch of Darwinians, oddly enough, marveling over the irreducible complexity of the ribosome. The ribosome is the structure in the cell which superintends protein synthesis along strands of messenger RNA, and it requires 53 proteins in order to function.

The clip below shows a computer animation of the ribosome mediating the construction of a protein by holding the mRNA in place while the transfer RNA brings amino acids to the assembly point where they are joined into a polypeptide chain.

It really is astonishing, especially to think that this machinery just came about by random chance, but for Darwinians to give even a hint that they think it is irreducibly complex and therefore, by implication, intelligently designed is almost equally astonishing:

RLC

Blue Eyes

Science Daily reports that new research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

This is an odd report inasmuch as on any view of human origins, whether you prefer Darwin or Genesis, we're all descended from a common ancestor at some point in our lineage. It's still an interesting article, though.

RLC

Sub-Prime Greed

What's fueling the sub-prime mortgage crisis? Apparently, it isn't just that home owners' interest rates were adjusted up, but it's also the fact that some people who took out very low interest mortgages to buy their house then proceeded to take out home equity loans on the house in order to buy things that they wanted. Their cumulative debt is now far more than the house is worth, and they're apparently hoping that the rest of us bail them out.

Instapundit has this note from a mortgage broker:

Speaking as a mortgage broker, I can assure you this is the case in the vast majority of instances. I spoke with a woman today who has a credit report that looks like a train wreck, including a bankruptcy fours years ago and numerous chargeoffs and collections since. Her gross income is less than $850 a week -- but she drives a car with a $700 payment.

She called me up because her adjustable rate mortgage payment is going up. When I told her that the only way she could qualify for a loan is to pay off the car with her mortgage, she threw a fit. Apparently me saving her $500 a month isn't good enough, she wanted to tap her home equity one last time for $30,000 to spend on "home improvements" rather than paying off the car. She then asked if anyone would really check to see if the money went into home upgrades.

This is the behavior that some in our government and media want the rest of us to subsidize. Geez.

RLC

Where's the Line?

My Philosophy of Religion class has been reading an excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and we had a lively discussion the other day about Kierkegaard's claim that what a person believes about God is not as important as how one believes. In other words, the content of our belief is less significant to God than is the passion with which we embrace Him. God cares much more about having a love relationship with us, Kierkegaard asserts, than He cares about whether we are right about every theological proposition to which we cling.

Many students agreed with this to a point, but they raised the very critical question as to where the line should be drawn. At what point does the importance of what we believe begin to outweigh the fervor of our belief? Surely Kierkegaard does not wish to say that it doesn't matter at all what we believe as long as we believe it passionately. He cannot be suggesting that the intensity of one's devotion to God compensates in His mind for a belief that He is, for instance, pure evil.

It must be borne in mind that Kierkegaard used hyperbole in order to rouse his readers. He was not concerned with writing a theological treatise in which every detail of an argument is followed to its conclusion. He was concerned, though, with the spiritual health of the Danish church which, despite being theologically sophisticated and accomplished, seemed to regard religion with the same sort of emotional detachment as an engineer might have when beholding a bridge. To get a good idea of the sort of cold, clammy Christianity of which Kierkegaard was so disdainful rent and watch Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light. It's a powerful portrayal of exactly the sort of church and clergy which attracted Kierkegaard's scorn.

But my students' question remains. If we agree that within certain bounds the what of belief is less important than the how then where are those limits? At what point does the what become more important than the how? This is not a trivial matter. In a recent article in First Things Avery Cardinal Dulles explores the evolution of the Catholic doctrine of salvation. For centuries Catholic theologians have wrestled with questions regarding eternal life that have puzzled laymen and theologians alike: What is the fate of those who never heard the Gospel? Are all who fail to respond to the Gospel lost? What about those who die without being baptized? Etc.

Many of the solutions advanced by Catholic thinkers seem to me to be tortured in their logic and implausible in their conclusions, but they reflect the profound reluctance among Christians to believe that people who have never heard the Gospel, or who heard but for whatever reason never accepted, are lost forever. Christians have always struggled with the implications of the traditional interpretation of Scripture which is that man is born lost and must accept Christ in order to receive God's gift of salvation. This interpretation, if rigorously followed, seems to foreclose salvation to those who die young, the mentally retarded, those who've never heard the Gospel, and those who may have heard but for psychological, religious or cultural reasons found it too difficult to accept. In other words the traditional interpretation is that eternal life is pretty much God's exclusive gift to explicit Christians.

I thought of this article while my class was debating Kierkegaard. Is salvation just a matter of what we believe? Could it be a matter of how one believes even if one believes wrongly? How wrong can one be before the passionate how no longer matters? Or is salvation a matter of both the what and the how?

Dulles closes his historical excursis with a paragraph bound to displease many who hold to the exclusivist view that only Christians can be saved:

Who, then, can be saved? Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments. Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think he wills to be found. Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God's promise has been fulfilled. Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will. Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice. God's saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted. But that same grace brings obligations to all who receive it. They must not receive the grace of God in vain. Much will be demanded of those to whom much is given.

I don't know how orthodox is the view in the Catholic Church that even atheists will be saved, but it's an idea that would have very little purchase in most precincts of evangelical protestantism. So the question recurs: Where do we draw the line? If we say that only those who consciously accept Christ and who commit their lives to Him with Kierkegaardian submission and passion are saved then we not only exclude some of those who sit next to us in the pews, but we have a problem with the fact that most people lie along a spectrum of commitment. How much commitment is enough?

We also have another problem in that this criterion would exclude those who die young as well as the mentally disabled and those who lived either prior to the Christian era or beyond it's evangelistic reach. Some might be comfortable with this entailment, but I doubt that most would. C.S. Lewis wasn't comfortable with it which is why, I suspect, he wrote The Great Divorce. He wanted readers to think about salvation more as a yearning of the heart that determines the will rather than simply an intellectual assent to certain theological propositions.

It might be a worthwhile exercise to read Lewis with a group of friends interested in this matter and then return to the question raised by a reading of Kierkegaard: Where do we, if we are faithful to Scripture, draw the line?

One final thought: Surely we should hope that the line encircles more than just those who have explicitly accepted Christ, even if we don't think that it does. Most Christians have friends, family and others whom we care deeply about and who have passed on without, so far as we know, having come to the place where they gave their lives to Christ. It seems to me that if we loved these people we should profoundly hope and pray that despite their failure to embrace the truth God has nevertheless embraced them.

RLC

Hillary's More Conservative Than McCain?

She's excited and upset and she's not particularly "nice," but Ann does make some sense. She just needs to switch to decaf:

I disagree with her when she says that Hillary and McCain would have the same policies as president or that Hillary is slightly more conservative than McCain. Unlike McCain, Hillary would probably emasculate our military, appoint pro-choice jurists, and, I fear, return corruption and venality to the White House. She would also run her administration like Cruella DeVille, but then so might McCain. On the other hand, Coulter is right in exclaiming that it's astonishing that Republicans are voting for McCain over Romney. That is, to me, a mystery.

RLC

Rope

My students hear me tell them, some would perhaps say ad nauseum, that ideas have consequences. My friend Byron forwarded me a brief piece by Greg Veltman which makes this point very well by referring to an old Alfred Hitchcock film titled Rope. Here's what Veltman says:

In 1948, Alfred Hitchcock made a film called Rope. Based on a stage play the entire film is set in a small apartment, and the whole film is one continuous shot. But holding the well done technical aspects of the film together is an amazing story of an outrageous idea.

In this story, two recent Ivy League graduates, Brandon and Phillip, decide to kill an acquaintance of theirs, David, who they see as an inferior person. They are attempting to test out the theories of their education. Believing that they are superior men, they have advanced "beyond good and evil," and so they can kill and cannot be held responsible for the consequences, in fact they are doing society a favor.

Brandon and Phillip then invite over a few friends, the victim's family, and their esteemed philosophy professor, Rupert Cadell for a dinner party. All the while David's dead body is in a chest in the living room. The climax of the film comes when the professor returns because of the suspicion that something is wrong. He has noticed one of the killers acting strangely throughout the party. On his return he confronts his students. They defend themselves by repeating back the professor's own Nietzschean philosophy. They say that they killed because they learned that if they really were superior to the victim than it is not morally wrong to kill him. The professor then has a critical moment of clarity and realizes that his theory has consequences- that his classroom extends beyond its four walls into real lives.

In the end, Professor Cadell tells his students that they have taught him a great lesson, that his ideas must be in line with his ethics, that ideas inform our everyday actions and decisions. He abandons his belief in superior and inferior people; he concludes that all human beings must be treated with dignity and equality and that everyone has worth.

We are not all that different from Professor Cadell. It is simpler to just separate out the ideas and theories that we discuss and argue about in the classroom, from our everyday routines of eating, sleeping, and hanging out with friends. And as Brandon and Phillip illustrate connecting ideas and actions can be dangerous - even criminal. The trouble is: How do we navigate the bridges and intersections of the ideas that we learn about and the way we live our lives?

After reading this I watched Rope and the cinematography is indeed interesting. Hitchcock used only one camera for the entire piece and there are no breaks in the narrative. It's shot in real time while the artificial city skyline seen through the apartment window constantly proceeds toward dusk.

But more important than the technical aspects of the film are its philosophical implications. It's interesting to me that Prof. Cadell's students, especially Brandon (played brilliantly, by the way, by John Dall)are more consistent in living out his ideas than he is. When Cadell (Jimmy Stewart) sees that his Darwinian view that the inferior have no right to survive actually leads to murder he's outraged, but why should he be? Why should he blame his students for being more logical than he himself is?

Anyway, Dostoyevsky also explores this same Nietzschean theme in his novel Crime and Punishment, and more recently Woody Allen's movie Match Point, which is a take off on Crime and Punishment (If you watch carefully you can even catch the main character reading it in one quick scene) does the same thing in chilling fashion. Match Point actually conflates Dostoyevsky's story with the theme of Allen's earlier film Crimes and Misdemeanors. Everyone should read Crime and Punishment, but if you don't have time for the novel watch either Match Point or Rope. They both highlight the moral confusion and nihilism which are the logical consequence of the abandonment of belief in the moral authority of God.

RLC

No Child Left Behind

My eldest daughter, who is a public school teacher, sent me this parody of the thinking behind No Child Left Behind. It compares the concept of NCLB with scholastic football and points out that if high school football were run like education then the following would ensue:

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away until they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. All kids will play football at a proficient level!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a new age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

Pretty ridiculous, no? NCLB is an example of good intentions enacted into law by people who simply don't understand the dynamics of either a school or a classroom.

I once knew an administrator who constantly reminded his teachers that every child can learn. This, of course, was true enough, but what it glossed over was the additional truths that not every child wants to learn and, among those who do, not every child can learn the same content or at the same rate. When it comes to aptitude in education, as in football, we simply are not all born equal.

RLC

Big Brother Will Soon Be Watching

This story raises some alarms about an emerging technology that most people probably know nothing about, but people who have access to it will know pretty much everything about you there is to know:

Here's a vision of the not-so-distant future: Microchips with antennas will be embedded in virtually everything you buy, wear, drive and read, allowing retailers and law enforcement to track consumer items - and, by extension, consumers - wherever they go, from a distance.

A seamless, global network of electronic "sniffers" will scan radio tags in myriad public settings, identifying people and their tastes instantly so that customized ads, "live spam," may be beamed at them.

In "Smart Homes," sensors built into walls, floors and appliances will inventory possessions, record eating habits, monitor medicine cabinets - all the while, silently reporting data to marketers eager for a peek into the occupants' private lives.

Science fiction?

In truth, much of the radio frequency identification technology that enables objects and people to be tagged and tracked wirelessly already exists - and new and potentially intrusive uses of it are being patented, perfected and deployed.

Read the rest of the story at the link. Thanks to Justin for passing it along.

RLC

Giving Away Your Money

This will toast your muffins: Under the current structure of the stimulus package many illegal immigrants will receive a tax rebate. What a country.

RLC

Reagan Nostalgia

William Kristol at The Weekly Standard urges conservatives to get a grip:

Conservative editorialists, radio hosts, and bloggers are unhappy. They don't like the Republican presidential field, and many of them have been heaping opprobrium on the various GOP candidates with astonishing vigor.

For example: John McCain--with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 82.3--is allegedly in no way a conservative. And, though the most favorably viewed of all the candidates right now, both among Republicans and the electorate as a whole, he would allegedly destroy the Republican party if nominated.

Or take Mike Huckabee. He was a well-regarded and successful governor of Arkansas, reelected twice, the second time with 40 percent of the black vote. He's come from an asterisk to second in the national GOP polls with no money and no establishment support. Yet he is supposedly a buffoon and political na�f. He's been staunchly pro-life and pro-gun and is consistently supported by the most conservative primary voters--but he is, we're told, no conservative either.

Or Mitt Romney. He's a man of considerable accomplishments, respected by many who have worked with and for him in various endeavors. He took conservative positions on social issues as governor of Massachusetts, and parlayed a one-term governorship of a blue state into a first-tier position in the Republican race. But he, too, we're told, is deserving of no respect. And though he's embraced conservative policies and seems likely to be steadfast in pursuing them--he's no conservative either.

One could go on. And it's true the Republican candidates are not unproblematic. But they are so far performing more credibly than much of the conservative commentariat. Beyond the normal human frailties that affect all of us, including undoubtedly the commentators at this journal, there is one error that is distorting much conservative discussion of the presidential race. It's Reagan nostalgia.

Read the rest at the link to see what Kristol is talking about. I don't know how many of our readers listen to Sean Hannity, but if there's anyone who suffers from the syndrome Kristol writes about it's Hannity. Hannity worships Reagan and seems to have forgotten that the Gipper's tenure was not as glorious and unblemished as he imagines. Indeed, two hundred of our Marines were murdered in Lebanon and Reagan responded by having us slink ignominiously out of the country. He also put Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, a move that set the pro-life movement back by a generation.

Make no mistake. I think Reagan was a historic president, but conservatives like Hannity do make a mistake, in my opinion, when they idealize his presidency and make that ideal the standard by which any candidate is to be measured.

Thanks to Jason for the link.

RLC

Edwards Withdraws

Democrat John Edwards announces his withdrawal from the presidential race in the Hurricane Katrina stricken Ninth Ward of New Orleans, La., Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008. Edwards' wife Elizabeth and son Jack applaud. So do we.

Maybe Democratic voters who voted for Hillary or Obama better start looking for a lawyer.

RLC

Brave New World

Denyse O'Leary ruined my evening the other night with three predictions she offers at Uncommon Descent. O'Leary looks for the following to happen sometime in the not-to-distant future:

1. Academic institutions will force students to sign statements saying that they renounce the idea that the universe could be intelligently designed. So students from most normal human traditions will be forced to sign a statement saying that their tradition is actually lies, garbage, and drivel. Even though the evidence of the fine tuning of the universe actually supports their traditions' most basic elements. And if they appeal to the judiciary, the judgebots will demand that they sign, if they want an education.

2. Many religion profs, divinity profs, chaplains, alleged Christians in science, etc., will urge the students to sign the statement, because - whether they know it or not - they are totally in the materialist camp. They hope that they can get a salary while they sell out their tradition. It is unclear why these profbots and revbots should not be booted, given that the evidence from science actually supports, rather than undermines, traditional beliefs about the basic nature of the universe. But lots of people get a salary to pretend otherwise, and they will go on doing so.

3. Social workers will come out from under the floorboards from every direction to urge the young people to be "nice" and sign.

I don't know what she bases these depressing prognostications upon other than the historically demonstrable tendency of left-wing materialists to impose a tyrannical and mindless conformity on as many people as possible whenever it is within their power to do so. I hope she's wrong, yet her predictions have about them a certain troubling plausibility. God help us.

RLC

The Evolution of the Surge

Fred Barnes has written a fine piece in The Weekly Standard that takes us behind the scenes of the decision to implement the surge in Iraq. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the war and the history behind the major change in strategy responsible for the current status of that conflict.

President Bush comes out of this narrative looking for all the world like one of the most wise and courageous men ever to hold the office of the Presidency. Almost everyone in the military, the state department, the media and the congress opposed him yet he and a few of his advisors believed we had to win and that the surge was the best, maybe the only, way to accomplish that.

We haven't won yet. There still remain serious systemic problems in Iraq, but Bush's resolute implementation of the strategy called "The Surge" has convinced all but the most dour doubters that a historic victory is at least within our grasp.

Read Barnes' account. It's worth the time.

RLC

Kicking the Addiction

C. MacLeod Fuller comes to the rescue of those ensnared by the lotus eaters (See The Odyssey) on the Isle of Liberalism and offers those mired in the Slough of liberal Despond (See Pilgrim's Progress) a 13 step program of escape.

If you feel helpless to break your own self-destructive addiction to liberal ideas then Fuller's essay is just what you need. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

RLC

State of the Union

For those who missed it, Ben Johnson at Front Page Mag offers an overview of last night's State of the Union Address. As I listened on radio it seemed that it wasn't the most soaring speech the President ever gave, but it was very substantive and politically adroit. Johnson agrees.

RLC

Guide for the Perplexed

Are you puzzled by some gnawing philosophical conundrum? If so, you may wish to seek relief for your curiosity at Ask A Philosopher. Asking a philosopher a question about a difficult issue may, of course, be a frustrating exercise for the inquirer since philosophers frequently don't give you the answer to your question but prefer instead to help you sort through the various options. Even so, give it a try.

HT: Evangelical Outpost.

RLC

A Time For Grace

Madison Trammel at Christianity Today wonders what should be done about ESPN's Dana Jacobson. If you aren't familiar with Jacobson's recent transgressions go here for the full story. The short of it is that in a drunken rant in which she was vulgarly denigrating the University of Notre Dame, the "Touchdown Jesus," and Jesus Himself she delivered herself of the unladylike sentiment, "F---k Jesus."

This has caused predictable outrage among Christians everywhere, though certainly not of the sort that would have ensued had she substituted Mohammed for Jesus. Many are calling for ESPN to fire her and indeed they fired Rush Limbaugh for much less, and other sports journalists have been given their pink slips by other networks for much more innocuous statements. But I agree with Trammel. The potty-tongued Ms Jacobson obviously needs to have her mouth washed out with soap, but I don't think demanding that she be fired is the best way for Christians to handle this. Trammel says:

Personally, I can't see that firing Jacobson accomplishes much, besides showing that Christians can flex their muscles and get people fired just as well as any other group. "Bless those who persecute you," Paul writes in Romans 12:14, "bless and do not curse." As followers of Christ, we'd be better served by an ESPN-arranged meeting between Jacobson and a group of local pastors. She could apologize in person-something she's already done in a prepared statement-and they could explain, with grace and understanding, why they accept her apology in the name of the one she denigrated.

I think that the circumstances do indeed call for a display of grace, should she ask for it, which would show the world that Christians are compassionate and forgiving people. Let's leave the fatwas to the Muslims. Who knows but that such an act of love and reconciliation would touch Ms Jacobson and perhaps nudge her into the Kingdom. It'd sure illustrate better than any argument ever could the stark difference between Christianity and Islam.

Dana Jacobson

RLC