111 Sermon Illustrations on Violence

Evangelist Franklin Graham is not backing away from his statements aired on a national news program that Islam is "wicked, violent and not of the same god."

Graham initially made the remarks in an interview at the October dedication of a chapel in Wilkesboro, N.C.; the remarks were broadcast by NBC News Nov. 16.

"I don't believe this is a wonderful, peaceful religion," Graham said. "When you read the Koran and you read the verses from the Koran, it instructs the killing of the infidel, for those that are non-Muslim."

Asked by NBC News to clarify his statement, Graham stood his ground.

"It wasn't Methodists flying into those buildings, it wasn't Lutherans," Graham told NBC. "It was an attack on this country by people of the Islamic faith."

NBC News released the Graham interview on the first day of Ramadan, the holiest season of the Muslim year and it has drawn fire from Muslims as well as the White House.

A spokesperson for the White House noted that President Bush "views Islam as a religion that preaches peace," and that the terrorists do not represent what Islam teaches.

Regardless, in a Nov. 18 statement, Graham said he stood by his earlier comments.

"As a Christian minister, my calling and focus is to proclaim the God of the Christian faith to all who will listen and hear, and to love all people regardless of their faith," Graham said. "It is not my calling to analyze Islam or any other religions though I recognize that all religions have differences. In the past, I have expressed my concerns about the teachings of Islam regarding the treatment of women and the killing of non-Muslims or infidels. I do not intend to comment further."

Graham's response came one day after his ministry's Operation Christmas Child began processing 1 million shoeboxes of toys, school supplies and personal hygiene items for needy children overseas, including thousands destined for many Muslim nations.

"As the leader of an international Christian relief organization, my calling is to provide food, clothing, housing, supplies and medical care to hurting people everywhere regardless of faith," Graham said. "Samaritan's Purse has provided more relief and aid to Muslim people than to any other people in the world -- support amounting to tens of millions of dollars in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Sudan and Afghanistan. As America continues its healing process, I am encouraged by a national surge of faith. I pray that out of tragedy and pain, millions of people will find a renewal of faith."

--30-

A cartoon in the latest issue of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY shows a couple watching news reports about sectarian violence in places like Northern Ireland and the Middle East. These are followed by a report about ministers visiting the White House and the president saying that religion holds the key to world peace. The cartoon ends with the couple, frustrated by the perceived inconsistency, desperately pouring themselves drinks.

The belief that religion is the source of strife is not limited to editorial cartoons. It figures prominently in discussions about the events of September 11 -- discussions that often fail to make a vital distinction.

One such discussion took place on the PBS program "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero." As part of its effort to explore the spiritual lessons Americans took away from September 11, producers examined what they called "the potential for darkness within religion itself."

One rabbi recounted his reaction to the attacks. He said he turned to someone and said, "This is what religion is really about ... This is what religion really does."

He wasn't alone, even among clergy, in this assessment. A Catholic priest and professor of theology spoke of the passion generated by religious belief. He said that this passion, which "motivates religious people to do great things is the same one that that day brought all that destruction." As he put it, "there [is] no greater and more destructive force on the surface of this earth than the religious passion."

But it's unfair to talk about "religion" in general because nobody practices "religion." People practice Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, or another faith. Referring to "the darkness within religion itself" obscures the real differences between religions and obscures the facts of what actually happened on September 11, 2001.

Now, I'll agree that people have done terrible things in the name of Christianity. Yet nowadays about the darkest thing American Christians do out of religious zeal is to say hateful things about homosexuals and others whose actions we disapprove of.

While this is wrong, it cannot be compared to the terrorism of September 11. Even the most often cited example of "Christian" violence, Northern Ireland, has relatively little to do with Christianity. As Fintan O'Toole of the IRISH TIMES, among others, has written, the conflict in Ireland has much more to do with politics, power, and greed than with faith.

Moreover, Christianity continues to provide a vital, humanizing influence all over the world in hospitals, public health works, schools, economic development, and relief, as even Nicholas Kristof recently wrote in the NEW YORK TIMES. By contrast, radical Muslims started most of the wars being fought in the world today.

The effect of talking about generic "religion" is to absolve Islam of its peculiar responsibility in the events of September 11. Ironically, it was a Muslim scholar on the PBS show who pointed out that it wasn't just any "religion" behind the attacks, but "Islam in particular."

While it would be unfair to hold all Muslims responsible for the action of a small group, it's even more unfair to malign people of other faiths and treat their beliefs as equally dangerous. But that is what is happening, which makes the lessons that people are learning this week wrong, not only about Christianity, but about the real source of the threat to peace.

FURTHER READING & INFORMATION

BreakPoint's "9/11 Worldview Resource Kit" answers questions many Americans are asking. It includes Timothy George's book IS THE FATHER OF JESUS THE GOD OF MUHAMMAD?, Chuck Colson's WHEN NIGHT FELL ON A DIFFERENT WORLD: HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?, and a "BreakPoint Weekend Special" CD including two interviews with Chuck Colson recorded after September 11 and a year later.

Read more about the PBS program "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith

Jim Tonkowich, "Speaking Out: Ten Things We Should Have Learned Since September 11, 2001," CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 10 September 2002. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/135/21.0.html

Peggy Noonan, "Time to Put the Emotions Aside," WALL STREET JOURNAL, 11 September 2002. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110002249

Patti Davis, "Renewal: Sept. 11 and how it left us," NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE, 11 September 2002. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-davis091102.asp

Vincent Carroll and David Shiflett, CHRISTIANITY ON TRIAL: ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANTI-RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY (Encounter Books, 2001).

Daniel Pipes, "More Americans have been killed by militant Islamics than any other enemy since the Vietnam War," JEWISH WORLD REVIEW, 9 September 2002. http://jewishworldreview.com/0902/pipes.html

Nicholas Kristof, "Following God Abroad," NEW YORK TIMES, 21 May 2002. (Registration required.) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/opinion/21KRIS.html

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

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Tolerance has been given a bad name, according to a panel of scholars urging Christians to recover the word's original meaning, which they argue was distorted in 18th century philosophy.

"Christianity and Toleration" was the topic of an April 9 symposium at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The event, sponsored by Baylor's Center for Christian Ethics, focused on the recent publication of "The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit," written by Chip Conyers, a professor at Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

Conyers says that toleration took on a different meaning after the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement that emphasized rationalism over traditional social, political and religious ideas.

Under the influence of Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, religion was assigned to the domain of "private" affairs and as a result lost much of its moral authority, Conyers said. "Public life belonged to the state." Somewhere along the line, as a way of keeping peace among competing ideas, society developed the notion that all views should be regarded as having equal value in the name of toleration.

But Conyers and two other primary speakers said toleration has a place for people with a Christian worldview.

Conyers said his purpose is "not to discredit tolerance but to bring credit to it once again."

For the Christian, Conyers said, toleration should mean believing firmly in the eternal truth of God but still being willing to listen to other points of view. Christians can engage in conversations with those of other viewpoints, seeking to discover points of truth that can be agreed upon, he said.

In contrast, the type of toleration advocated today is "logically impossible," said J. Budziszewski, a professor of political philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

"The modern version of toleration operates like a Trojan horse," he said. "It shuts out every view but one -- while claiming to be neutral." Under the guise of toleration, one view gets smuggled in, Budziszewski said. "Which view is smuggled in? Well, it depends on who's doing the smuggling." In too many cases, modern appeals for toleration are merely disguised attempts to keep competing ideas off the playing field, he said.

Christians must find a way to challenge the assumption that the modern view of all-views-are-equal toleration is necessary to prevent violence, added William Cavanaugh, assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn.

"Modern toleration assumes we can't disagree without doing violence to each other," he said.

In any solution that is crafted, "non-violence will have to have a central place," Cavanaugh said. "We must demonstrate that we can in fact differ without killing one another."

*

Newspaper headlines continue to shout the terrible news of school shootings: "Student kills 2 classmates, wounds 13 near San Diego"; "Detroit high school shooting injures 3"; "Student dies after shooting outside Baltimore high school"; "Student killed in Michigan elementary school shooting"; "Suspect in custody after school shooting in Oklahoma".

The Columbine school shooting shocked the nation. And now we hear of yet another, at Santana High School, in Santee, California. Two more students dead. Thirteen students and adults wounded. A fifteen-year- old, high-school freshman arrested. Charges will include murder, assault, and assault with a deadly weapon -- a long-barreled handgun. "His dad had a bunch of guns at home," one student told reporters.

Why would a fifteen-year-old teenager turn his father's gun on his classmates? "We don't know the motive, so we don't know whether it was random or not," said San Diego County Sheriff William Kolender.

On hearing of the tragedy, a saddened President Bush called the shooting "a disgraceful act of cowardice." And he added, "When America teaches our children right from wrong, and teaches values that respect life in our country, we'll be better off." How right he is!

I've been addressing this topic for years. As I said in my book, Answers to Your Kids' Questions, in the wake of the Columbine massacre: Politicians call for gun control, commentators decry the decadent popular culture, scientists even suggest genetic disorders; but the real answer goes much deeper.

Today's kids desperately need moral guidance. They need to know right from wrong. And sadly, too many adults have abdicated their responsibility to teach kids values that respect life. In public schools, students are taught to "construct" their own truths. And teachers are trained not to offer direction, lest they hamper a child's autonomy. The results of such thinking have been explosive.

Perhaps the best assessment of this moral dilemma came in the eloquent words of the father of Rachel Scott, one of the girls killed at Columbine for professing her faith. [See Holwick ID #15960 for the full text of his remarks to the House Judiciary Committee]

On that day, Darrell Scott asked, "What has happened to us as a nation? We've refused to honor God, and in doing so we opened the doors to hatred and violence."

Scott continued, "No amount of laws can stop someone who spends months of planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts. Political posturing and restrictive legislation are not the answers."

And he added, "We do need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgement that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God."

Colorado, Michigan, Oklahoma, California: They are all wake-ups calls! Kids are in trouble, and they need help. How many more wake-up calls will it take? Darrell Scott and President Bush are right. "When America teaches our children right from wrong, and teaches values that respect life in our country, we'll all be better off."

All I can say is: "What are we waiting for?"

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Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent."

-- Mohandes Gandhi

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

-- Martin Luther King Jr.:

Though a last-minute stay is possible, Timothy McVeigh is presently scheduled to be executed Monday. [He was.] Even if there is a stay, it will be a short-lived one. So, America will soon witness the first federal execution in decades.

There's no more difficult issue for many Americans than capital punishment. For most of my life, I opposed it. I thought the death penalty was wrong because it was too easy to make a mistake and execute an innocent person. As a lawyer, I knew the system was fallible.

Furthermore, case studies showed that it's no deterrent to crime: you could accomplish the same thing with "life in prison." If the state exacts blood for a capital offense, I thought, how could we then discourage violence among others?

Well, several years ago I visited death row in Menard, Illinois, and met John Wayne Gacy, who was convicted in 1978 for the grisly murders of at least thirty people, whom he'd buried beneath the crawl space of his Chicago home.

The first thing that shocked me was how ordinary Gacy looked -- like a school teacher or a businessman. The second thing was his utter defiance: He was demanding his rights, still insisting on his innocence, even though the evidence that convicted him was overwhelming.

I came away wondering if there weren't some cases where the only remedy that could produce justice was execution, and this sent me back to C. S. Lewis's classic essay, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment."

For years, modern psychology has argued that the criminal is not guilty of crime; he's just sick, and in need of therapy. Lewis argued, however, that this view strips man of his dignity: It says we're not free moral agents, responsible for our actions, but rather patients to be manipulated for the good of society.

Lewis wrote, "To be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better,' is to be treated as a human person made in God's image." I realized that this went right to the heart of a central precept of Judeo-Christian belief.

The Scriptures teach that people are responsible for their own behavior. The object of justice is not to rehabilitate or create some new person, like scientists in a Viennese laboratory, but rather to balance the scales of justice. And sometimes the only way to do that is to give the offender his just desserts: capital punishment. I changed my views on the issue.

So, I have no difficulty whatsoever with the state carrying out its sentence in the McVeigh case. McVeigh committed a horrendous crime. He might have been misguided in his understanding of the social order, but there's absolutely no excuse for taking the lives of innocent people in such a senseless act of terrorism.

Just desserts, in some extreme cases, demand extreme punishment. And if there's ever a case where it was deserved, it's the Timothy McVeigh case.

Now, the state has no more serious obligation than to wield the sword to preserve order. It's a solemn occasion: 168 people died, and countless lives have been shattered. We ought not to be celebrating, or viewing political posturing or commercialism as we have seen in Terre Haute. We ought to be saddened that sin has led us to this point.

So as this sentence is carried out, remember that the execution of Timothy McVeigh isn't about therapy, or retribution, or getting even.

It's about justice and preserving the dignity of man.

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Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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I remember years ago stumbling across a passage in G. K. Chesterton that disturbed me. The irrepressible optimist was making a case that the very failures of the church prove its truth. Yes, Christians have fought bloody wars-because they of all people have something worth fighting over. Yes, Christians have failed grievously (the Inquisition, slavery), but doesn't that establish their underlying doctrine of original sin? Chesterton's argument seemed too clever by half, too dismissive of great wrongs that have surely pained God and should shame God's followers.

A recent book, however, has me reconsidering Chesterton's line of thought. VIOLENCE UNVEILED, by Gil Bailie, builds on the work of René Girard to argue that the Cross stands as the central event of history. The intended scapegoat became the sacrificial Lamb, thus introducing "the most sweeping historical revolution in the world, namely, the emergence of an empathy for victims."

Girard, a French scholar long resident in the United States, had already established himself as a prominent literary critic when his work increasingly began to focus on the role of violence in human culture - a theme that forced him to cross jealously guarded disciplinary boundaries. The result, expounded in VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED and the other books, was an unconventional theory of culture in which Christ's death on the cross is the single pivotal event.

According to Girard, societies have traditionally reinforced their power through "sacred violence." The larger group (say, German Nazis or Serbian nationalists) picks a scapegoat minority - or, in the case of the many societies that have practiced human sacrifice, a single individual - to direct its self-righteous violence against, which in turn bonds and emboldens the majority. The Cross, however, upset the longstanding categories of weak victims and strong heroes, for the victim emerged as the hero.

Paul wrote, "And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (Col. 2:15). A public spectacle it was indeed when Christ exposed as false gods the very powers and authorities that men and women take such pride in. The most refined religion of the day accused an innocent man, and the most renowned justice system carried out the sentence.

Bailie notes that the gospel centered on that Cross introduced a moral ambiguity in the world. The gospel may not make societies less violent, but it makes them less sure about their violence. Before Jesus, nations didn't worry about the distinction between "just" or "unjust" wars.

Moreover, the gospel set loose something new in history: "the most astonishing reversal of values in human history. Today the victim occupies the moral high ground everywhere in the Western world."

Women, minorities, the disabled, environmental and human rights activists - all these draw their moral force from the power of the gospel unleashed at the Cross, when God took the side of the victim. In a great irony, the "politically correct" movement defending these rights often positions itself as an enemy of Christianity, when in fact the gospel has contributed the very underpinnings that make possible such a movement.

To take just one contemporary example, early environmental activists painted Christians as the villains who too zealously followed God's commands to subdue and populate the earth. Recently, however, environmentalists have begun to recognize the need to draw Christians into the consensus. Our teleology as creatures responsible to a Creator, given stewardship over God's earth, provides a strong moral platform, one sadly missing from philosophical naturalism.

Bailie's book helps me appreciate the all-important distinction between the gospel's inherent power and the church's spotty record as a channel of that power. Those who condemn the church for its history of violence, slavery, sexism, and racism do so by gospel principles. The gospel continues to leaven a culture even if the church gets distracted by other issues, or takes the wrong side.

G. K. Chesterton is right, then, that the church's many failures prove its central beliefs. God has entrusted flawed human beings with a gospel so powerful that it sometimes does its work in spite of us.

When the rest of the world criticizes us for our failings, we should respond with humility and repentance, qualities that lobby groups and other activists don't normally display. But Christians recognize that the church in 2099 will look back on the church of 1999 and shake its head in sadness and incomprehension. How could we have missed the moral issues that will seem so obvious a century from now?

Our challenge as a church, today and always, is to align ourselves with the true gospel and to reclaim the force it has set loose in a world in desperate need of moral clarity. George Orwell had it right when he declared, "The problem of our time is to restore the sense of absolute right and wrong when the faith that it used to rest on ... has been destroyed."

*

JUST WAR PRINCIPLES AND COUNTERTERRORISM

The atrocities of September 11 and the subsequent public response should force Christians of all denominations and theological persuasions to return once again to the fundamentals of moral reflection on the use of military force. The first fundamental that they ought to consider is this: There are two, and only two, responsible ways for Christians to think about the use of military force. For shorthand, I’ll call this classic pacifism and classic just war.

The classic just war position needs no extended exposition for this gathering. It was clearly summarized and articulated by Thomas Aquinas, and for all intents and purposes was adopted by the Reformers as well as the early modern Protestant and Catholic natural law theorists. Thomas held that three requirements are necessary to morally justify the resort to force: legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention. By legitimate authority he insisted, in line with the Biblical witness (citing Romans 13:1-6) and medieval thought, that force was to be employed as a public act by a sovereign political authority. Sovereign political authority means that there is no superior political authority to which aggrieved citizens can appeal. This means that the resort to war is normatively part and parcel of the coercive power of the law itself in its capacity to act on behalf of a political community that has been seriously wronged. In short, the political decisions on whether to resort to war (jus ad bellum) and the art of war itself (jus in bello) were a part of the art of statecraft. This, as we shall see, is most relevant to the current situation.

The criterion of just cause classically and explicitly included one or more of three possibilities: defense against wrongful attack, retaking something wrongly taken, or punishment of evil. (Following the Westphalian settlement the classic possibilities were reduced almost entirely in international law to defense against wrongful attack. But that is a long story that need not detain us here.) Right intention negatively meant that war should not be undertaken with a lust for battle, personal glory, bloodlust etc. Positively, right intention insists that the aim is to bring about peace, not a utopian peace but a tranquility of order.

As the tradition developed, other "criteria" (if that is the right word) were added to the jus ad bellum as prudential considerations to guide statesmen when they considered the use of force: Is there a reasonable chance for success? Will the overall good exceed the harm done (proportionality)? Have other means to redress a harm been attempted or are they possible (last resort)?

The classic pacifist position is, I think, best expressed in the Schleitheim Articles of 1527, widely regarded as the theological consolidation of Anabaptism. The sixth article articulates and summarizes this pacifism:

...It is asked about the sword, whether a Christian may hold a

position of governmental authority if he is chosen for it.

This is our reply: Christ should have been made a king, but he

rejected this (John 6:15) and did not view it as ordained by

his father. We should do likewise and follow him. In this

way we will not walk into the snares of darkness.... Also,

Christ himself forbids the violence of the sword and says,

‘Worldly princes rule,’ etc, ‘but not you.' (Matt. 20:25)

Nor, they continued, is it

"fitting for a Christian to be a magistrate" because the

authorities’ governance is according to the flesh, but the

Christian’s is according to the spirit. Their houses and

dwellings remain in this world, but the Christian’s is in

heaven. Their weapons of conflict and war are carnal and only

directed against the fortifications of the devil. Worldly

people are armed with spikes and iron, but Christians are

armed with the armor of God."

It is worth noting, first, that the prohibition against Christians wielding the sword was part and parcel of the prohibition against holding political office. However, secondly, this prohibition was accompanied, indeed it was preceded by, a recognition that public authorities had a mandate from God to do what they as Christians were prohibited from doing:

Concerning the sword we have reached the following agreement: The sword is ordained by God outside the perfection of Christ. It punishes and kills people and protects and defends the good. In the law the sword is established to punish and to kill the wicked, and secular authorities are established to use it.

When is the last time you heard a modern pacifist, say, from the Mennonite Central Committee, talk like that? (They don’t make pacifists like they used to.)

Now, this position was a distinctly minority view among the reformers, for very good and compelling theological reasons, I might add. (I don’t have the time to bore you with the details.) The point I want to make is that the fundamental distinction between classic pacifism and classic just war thought was not over whether or not public authorities were authorized to punish evildoers by death and waging war if necessary. The Biblical witness was simply too perspicuous for them to doubt this. The issue between them and both the magisterial Reformers and Roman Catholicism was more precisely over whether Christians may legitimately hold a political office. That political authority could legitimately employ lethal force and coercion was simply acknowledged and accepted.

The second fundamental point to be considered concerns the assertions made by contemporary academic guild "ethicists" and some ecclesiastical authorities. They assert that the just war tradition is really a form of "crypto-pacifism" (Philip Wogaman), or that it shares with pacifism a "prima-facie" opposition to the use of force (James Childress), or that it shares with pacifism a common presumption against force or violence (The Challenge of Peace). These assertions should be rejected root and branch, along with academic fads such as "just peacemaking." Such attempts at synthesis must of logical necessity fundamentally distort both traditions and render them logically, morally, and theologically incoherent.

Practically speaking, these hybrids cannot do the work that the just war tradition is precisely designed to do: to provide moral guidance to political leaders as they consider the resort to force, and provide guidance to military planners as they plan the conduct of the war and prosecute it. Nor can it provide guidance for responsible Christian citizenship. As a result, church leaders and theologians, those whose very office is to provide moral clarity in times such as these, do more to contribute to the moral obtuseness among Christian citizens than to relieve it.

Here, let me relate to you the following sent to a colleague by a senior justice department lawyer.

I was listening to Don Kroah on [radio station] WAVA yesterday

and heard his interview with Keith Pavlischek about just war

principles. I appreciated the discussion because I have been

participating in a lot of meetings and religious services

recently where some have asserted that the command to turn the

other cheek precludes Christians from supporting a war against

those who attacked us. At a family retreat last weekend one

woman almost walked out when I said I didn't think Jesus had a

terrorist attack in mind when he preached the Sermon on the

Mount. That's why I especially appreciated Keith's succinct

application of just war principles to the evil of terrorism.

This woman’s reaction is increasingly common. Why is this so common? Contemporary moral reflection by "ethicists" and church leaders has failed to clarify and outline the normative duty and responsibility of public officials who are, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "God’s servant[s], agent[s] of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer." (Rom.13:4b NIV)

Again, recall that the classic pacifists did not deny this was the duty of political authorities. It is precisely on this point, that one finds the "point of contact" between the two classic traditions, and it is most relevant to the war against terrorism. The point of contact cannot be located in a purported common agreement about a "presumption against war" or the claim that the just war tradition is really "crypto-pacifist," or that they share a "prima facie" opposition to force (as if Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Suarez need to be tutored by the moral philosophy of W.D. Ross.) Rather, the similarity lies in the fact that for both the classic pacifist and classic just warrior, political authorities are not only permitted by God to wield the sword for the sake of justice, order and peace, but are required to do so by God Himself, whether or not they personally acknowledge God as the ultimate source of their authority to do so.

It is, in fact, the near emasculation of the criteria of legitimate authority in contemporary ethical reflection on the use of force that renders so many Christian citizens incapable of serious and sustained moral reflection in response to a terrorist threat. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, the profound evil in terrorism is not to be located merely in the fact that so many innocent noncombatants were killed. In fact, to locate that as the sole evil is to make a fatal concession. After all, the notion of noncombatant immunity is a part of the jus in bello and the notion of guilt and innocence is a legal one that holds in a state of war between two political communities. To fully understand the evil of terrorism we must consider it in the context of the very point which classic pacifism and classic just warriors most profoundly agree -- only legitimate public authority has the right to wage war.

It is not insignificant that in addressing whether war could be waged justly, Aquinas began with the issue of legitimate authority, citing as Biblical support Romans 13:1-6. Thomas was articulating nothing new here. Beginning with Augustine, and throughout the Middle Ages, Christians sought to curb violence by emphasizing that only sovereign political authority could wage war. They thereby declared illegitimate any use of force by subordinate nobles, private soldiers, criminals and even the Church. Eventually, when confronted with a militaristic Germanic culture in which princes frequently engaged and glorified in combat for private ends, Christian thinkers repeatedly insisted that warfare was a public issue. War could not merely be an extreme tool of private parties but had to be a legal instrument, a part of the coercive power of law itself. Historically and theoretically, securing the public monopoly on the use of force was a necessary (albeit not sufficient) precondition for a peaceful and civilized society. Even the pacifists of the radical Reformation recognized this.

The freelance terrorism of the late twentieth and now the twenty-first century is nothing less than a direct assault on this Christian achievement. Left unchallenged, the rise of terrorism may foreshadow a return to the barbarism of private war. But a return to private warfare in the twenty-first century is even more ominous since vengeance is no longer fueled by distorted notions of private glory and honor. Now the motive is ideological, ethnic and religious fanaticism, which knows no bounds. In fact as James Turner Johnson has observed in a remarkably prescient article in First Things (1999), terrorism by its nature aims to undermine and erode the political goods of justice, order and peace, which is secured by political authority, and thus attacks all people who benefit from them.

While the tradition has allowed for the possibility of a war between two states both seeming, because of the complexity of the issues involved, to be just, the kind of violence we today call terrorism is evil in its very nature, because it attacks the foundations of political community itself. The authority to use force to curb and punish terrorism is thus the same authority that seeks to protect the goods of the political order as such. There is no justice in terrorism, only injustice.

Classical pacifists and classical just warriors recognized this. It remains to be seen whether contemporary pacifists and "modern" just war advocates will come to recognize it as well. I have my doubts. And it will be most instructive to see how far the Vatican and the U.S. Bishops have traveled down the path away from the classic just war tradition.

-- Keith Pavlischek

Paper delivered 24 September 2001, at a panel discussion in Washington, DC, at the Faith and Reason Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture

*

A few years ago there was a news story about a young boy in Chicago who went up to a street Santa, yanked his beard and then let it go. The beard smacked Santa in the face. In retaliation, Santa hurled the bell he was ringing at the boy. The boy ducked - the bell missed him but hit another youngster in the head.

The father of the second boy was furious. He hit Santa, knocking him to the ground where he continued to beat him. Finally a policeman turned the corner, saw what was happening and hit the father with his nightstick.

Santa finished up the night in jail, and the two others went to the hospital! So much for peace on earth!

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Pastor's Story File. Volume 13, Number 2, page 1

Violence kills more than 1.6 million people each year, and suicide claims almost as many lives as war and homicide combined, according to a new report by the World Health Organization that experts say is the first comprehensive documentation of the problem of global violence.

The 346-page report, released by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the director general of the health organization, reviews thousands of studies to catalog homicide, suicide and armed conflict, as well as violence against women, the elderly and children. It found that violence accounts for 14 percent of all deaths among men, and 7 percent among women.

"Violence leaves no continent, no country and few communities untouched," the report says. "Although it appears everywhere, violence is not an inevitable part of the human condition, nor is it an intractable problem of modern life that cannot be overcome by human determination and ingenuity."

Violence, the study found, is tied to income; the vast majority of violence-related deaths occurred in low-income countries. Like other health problems, violence is not distributed evenly; men accounted for more than three-quarters of all homicides, with the highest rates among men ages 15 to 29.

Police statistics are a poor way of estimating violence in other nations, the study found, because in many countries victims are afraid to report violence. In South Africa, for example, a survey showed that 50 to 80 percent of victims of violence received medical treatment for an injury without going to the police.

The study found that violence against women by their male partners occurs in all countries, regardless of economic class and religion. Data from Australia, the United States, Canada, Israel and South Africa show that 40 to 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

But the situation is not the same for male murder victims. In the United States, for instance, only 4 percent of men murdered from 1976 to 1996 were killed by their wives, ex-wives or girlfriends.

Violence, particularly war, seems to beget more violence, the study found. "It's a cycle," said Dr. Étienne Krug, the lead author of the report. "We have evidence that after wars, the levels of assault and violence remain higher than before," in part because there are more guns available, and young men have been trained to fight.

The report's main premise - that violence can be studied as a health problem and prevented in much the same way as disease - is not new. It originated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, which in 1983 opened a violence epidemiology branch to track patterns of violence - a move that was regarded as strange at the time.

"We were viewed as weirdos on the very fringes of public health," said Dr. Mark L. Rosenberg, a former C.D.C. official who helped lead that effort. But in the two decades since, he said, programs to prevent suicide, youth violence and child sexual abuse are now commonplace.

Though there is no definitive proof that such programs contribute to an overall decline in violence, he said, "public health measures are being applied, and a number of them have been found to be effective."

Dr. Krug said: "Violence is predictable, and therefore preventable. We can study it, just like disease, understand the causes, and act on these causes."

*

"Blood alone moves the wheels of history."

-- Benito Mussolini

"The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito."

-- Austin O'Malley

"No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody."

-- Martin Luther

"The future can be anything we want it to be, providing we have the faith and that we realize that peace, no less than war, required 'blood and sweat and tears.'"

--Charles F. Kettering

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

-- Tertullian

"Blood is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood ... there are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them!

--Padraic Pearse

"Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms."

-- Andrew Jackson

"Blood will tell, but often it tells too much."

-- Don Marquis

"Young blood must have its course, lad, and every dog its day."

-- Charles Kingsley

Officials are crediting religious studies with cutting inmate violence at a prison routinely torn by race-based gang attacks.

To date, 440 medium-security inmates at Sierra Conservation Center have participated in the program based on the best-selling book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” by the Rev. Rick Warren.

The participants represent about a third of the unit's 1,200 inmates, about 125 of them serving life sentences.

The book has 40 chapters; participants read one each day, reflecting on and discussing the relevance to their lives. Warren's church in Orange County has donated the books, Bibles, study materials and videos.

“We couldn't go more than two weeks without a lockdown or without one gang attacking another,” said Hector Lozano, who coordinates the prison's substance abuse treatment programs. “This got people talking together, as opposed to having one group charge another group.”

The first 200 inmates completed the program in April 2003.

During the previous year, there were five riots, 103 violent incidents, four staff assaults, 1,226 inmate disciplinary reports and five lockdowns.

In the year since, there was one riot, 67 violent incidents, four staff assaults, 1,067 inmate disciplinary reports and one lockdown.

The religious program “has definitely played a role,” said prison spokesman Lt. Kenny Calhoun. He also credited the prison's staff.

The inmates formed a non-denominational church, Sierra Christian Center, and give sermons in English and Spanish. They set up a table in the exercise yard on what they've designated “holy ground,” where Christians and non-Christians gather to worship.

“It took off like wildfire,” Calhoun said.

Four months ago, the prison spun off a Bible-based 12-step program, also sponsored by Warren's church, to help inmates deal with alcohol and substance abuse; emotional, physical and sexual abuse; and other problems. One hundred inmates are participating. Prison officials are proposing to expand the program.

Sierra Conservation Center's main role is preparing minimum-security inmates for 20 firefighting camps. But the prison, in Jamestown, also houses the medium-security unit, which had been plagued by race-based gang violence.

“The Bible tells us we're supposed to minister in prisons,” Lozano said. “From a strictly prison-management perspective, it's a win-win situation. The inmate feels better, we feel better, and nobody gets hurt.”

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate in KeruxID 25837-26027]

During a series of genocidal massacres in Rwanda and Burundi that at one point left 10,000 human bodies floating ashore on Lake Victoria, a Harvard anthropologist traveled to war-weary Central Africa to investigate the origins of human violence. But instead of studying the fighting Hutu and Tutsi tribes, professor of anthropology Richard Wrangham plunged into the “time machine” of the rainforests to examine Homo sapiens' closest genetic relatives.

Warfare is not uniquely human. Scholars had long thought that it was. As recently as 1987, an international group of 20 distinguished scientists signed what they called the Seville Statement on Violence, declaring that war “does not occur in other animals” and is almost entirely “a product of culture.”

But as early as 1974, researchers in Gombe National Park in Tanzania had been startled to observe chimpanzee males organizing gangs of a half-dozen or so members and launching lethal raids into the territory of neighboring chimps. These were clearly not food-gathering expeditions. The chimps did not stop to eat, and they did not make any of their normal calls and shouts. Instead, they crept silently into the territory of a neighboring group and hid until they saw a lone chimp. Screaming with excitement, they would ambush the victim, hold him immobile and beat him to death, sometimes twisting the victim's leg until the muscles ripped, or tearing off flaps of skin while he was still alive. In one well-documented case in Tanzania, a group of male chimpanzees used such ambushes to eliminate a whole band of neighbors. Chimpanzees live in patriarchal groups in which males regularly rape, beat, kill, and sometimes even drink the blood of their own kind.

Further research found that such violence was not limited to chimpanzees. Male gorillas, for example, were observed ripping infants out of their mothers' arms and smashing them to the ground in often-successful attempts to entice the mothers to mate with them. One theory is that the male gorillas do this to demonstrate their strength and to show how valuable they would be as protectors.

Violence is present in every human culture, from contemporary New York City to the primitive Waorani people of the Andean foothills, whose frequent raids on each other cause a startling violent-death rate of 60 percent, according to anthropologists Clayton and Carole Robarchek. Given these facts, it might appear that the primate family tree has blood in all its roots. But anthropologists were happy to discover more restrained behavior among the bonobos. Living principally in Zaire, bonobos are slightly smaller than chimpanzees and make calls like twittering birds. Genetically, these apes are more closely related to human beings than they are to orangutans. Although bonobo males are occasionally aggressive, they are usually discouraged from killing or raping by tight-knit bands of females that gang up on and attack aggressive males.

Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham avoids drawing close parallels between bonobos and human beings. He takes a broader look at the species' behavior patterns, seeing female bonding and alliance-building in general as a weapon against the dominance of violent males. “I believe that Fyodor Dostoevsky got it right in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, when he wrote that we all have a demon in us,” Wrangham says. “And I can only hope that by understanding this, we can reduce this demon a little bit.”

*

December, 1993

Jacqueline Clinton, 29, was found guilty of manslaughter in Toledo, Ohio, in January in the shooting of her boyfriend. According to her, the shooting occurred during an argument over differing interpretations of the Bible.

May 20, 1995

Nathan Frederick Klimosko, 21, was sentenced to two years' probation in Kelowna, British Columbia, for hitting and choking his girlfriend into unconsciousness. The fight started in a car when the two disagreed over his interpretation of a certain passage from the Bible, and he reached over and smacked her in the face, blackening her eye.

July 19, 1996

In Dadeville, Alabama, Mr. Gabel Taylor, 38, who had just prevailed in an informal Bible-quoting contest, was shot to death by the loser.

August 5, 1996

According to police in New Orleans, Melvin Hitchens, 66, who had been reading the Bible on his front porch, put it down, fetched his gun, and shot to death a neighbor woman with whom he had been feuding about the cleanliness of their yards.

October, 1997

An unidentified man stabbed David Fleigelman, 40, at the Sephardic Center synagogue in Brooklyn, New York. According to police, the men had been arguing about who knows more about the Torah.

May 18, 1996

Carlos Santiago was arrested in San Francisco, California, and charged with assault. Police said he stabbed his wife a dozen times because she refused his orders to read the Bible.

*

December 1984. Four black youths in a crowded New York subway surrounded a thin white man. They asked him for five dollars so they could play video games. Without saying a word, Bernhard Goetz pulled out a .38 revolver and shot each one in rapid succession. He then checked the first three to see that they were "taken care of," in his words. When he came to the fourth one, Goetz didn't see any blood. So he said, "You don't look too bad, here's another." The bullet struck nineteen year old Darrell Cabey in the spinal cord, which has paralyzed him and left him in a coma to this day.

What should you, as a Christian, do in such a situation?

Apparently many people can justify everything. Goetz did. Before he turned himself in, police put up wanted posters with a sketch of him on it. Subway passengers drew halos on the posters. More thoughtful people have said they can see his need to defend himself, but the last shot seems to have been nothing but brutal vengeance.

Still others would argue, on the basis of what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, that Goetz should not even have defended himself. He should have turned the other cheek and given them the five dollars. Then given them the shirt off his back, and anything else they wanted (Luke 6:29).

This passage from the Sermon on the Mount is very well known. We all know it's in the Bible, but we don't know what to do with it. If Jesus is saying what we think he is saying, it doesn't seem very practical. What does it really mean to turn the other cheek?

*

In the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's violent novel, FIGHT CLUB, character Tyler Durden points to his generation of young men as the “middle children of history.” Played by actor Brad Pitt, Durden represents the absolute collapse of masculinity into raw violence. This character joins his friends in seeking personal release and ecstasy through violent fights that send the participants regularly to the emergency room. In a haunting comment, Durden remarks: “We are a generation of men raised by women.” Is this our future?

Reporting in the December 11, 2005 edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES, Warren St. John describes the emergence of a new phenomenon -- “Neanderthal TV.” As St. John explains, this new approach to television venality and violence is being marketed to young males, mostly between the ages of eighteen and thirty. A male-oriented network, Spike TV, interviewed thousands of young men and determined that many of them wanted to see antisocial characters portrayed in television dramas. Beyond this, these young men are clearly identifying with these antisocial figures, along with their violence and amorality.

“Spike found that men responded not only to brave and extremely competent leads but to a menagerie of characters with strikingly antisocial tendencies,” St. John reports. These characters include Dr. Gregory House, “a Vicodin-popping physician” who is featured on Fox's “House,” Michael Scofield on “Prison Break,” and Vic Mackey, a major character on “The Shield.” Scofield is set on helping his brother break out of jail while Mackey is “a tough-guy cop who won't hesitate to beat a suspect senseless.” As St. John remarks, “Tony Soprano is their patron saint, and like Tony, within the confines of their shows, they are all 'good guys.'“

St. John's article points to a new and troubling phenomenon. Many of the most popular male characters featured in the entertainment industry represent extreme violence, sexual perversions, an absolute absence of morality, and the very “antisocial tendencies” Spike TV found to be so popular. At the same time, these characters are not merely featured, but they are now admired by millions of young men.

The reporter quotes Brent Hoff, age 36, who remarked that the message from these shows is: “Life is hard. Men gotta do what men gotta do, and if some people have to die in the process, so be it.” Hoff, a writer who lives in San Francisco, went on to explain that young men in his generation can easily relate to these characters. Speaking of Sawyer, a character on the ABC series “Lost,” who refused to help a fellow character find his lost child, Hoff commented: “If you watch Sawyer on 'Lost,' who is fundamentally good even if he does bad things, there's less to feel guilty about in yourself.” Of course, there is sufficient reason for concern when such a character is described as “fundamentally good even if he does bad things.” Nevertheless, Hoff went on to apply this observation as principle, noting that the observation and contemplation of these characters leaves less room for guilt in his own self analysis.

What kind of morality is at play here? As St. John explains, these shows reduce morality to a Darwinian principle that “in the social chaos of the modern world, the only sensible reflex is self-interest.”

Others have gone so far as to suggest that these characters and this kind of programming represent a new vision of masculinity. Gregory A. Randall, who is developing a new show for Spike TV called “Paradise Salvage,” said that the emergence and popularity of antisocial characters -- even leads -- can be traced to an intentional effort by the networks to attract young male viewers by mirroring their frustrations. “It's about comprehending from an entertainment point of view that men are living in a very complex conundrum today,” he told St. John. “We're supposed to be sensitive and evolved and yet still in touch with our neanderthal, animalistic, macho side.” Randall went on to argue that watching male characters who demonstrate such deeply flawed personalities but who nevertheless come out on top of the social hierarchy, makes young men feel better about their own character flaws and frustrations with male identity.

Randall made his point with rare candor: “You think, 'It's OK to go to a strip club and have a couple of beers with your buddies and still go home to your wife and baby and live with yourself.'“

In his article, St. John compares characters of older television classics as “men who have the occasional affair or who tip the bottle a little too much.” But these new characters are very different. “Instead they are unapologetic about killing, stealing, hoarding and beating their way to achieve personal goals that often conflict with the greed, apathy and of course the bureaucracies of the modern world.”

Others have attempted to explain this phenomenon in terms of social commentary. According to this line of argument, the popularity of these antisocial male characters can be traced to male frustration and being forced to work within a bland and bureaucratic corporate environment. Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, put it this way: “These kinds of characters are so satisfying to male viewers because culture has told them to be powerful and effective and to get things done, and at the same time they're living, operating and working in places that are constantly defying that.”

Of course, that line of argument has been around for a very long time. It was the theme of the 1956 movie “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,” and it has reappeared in new dress in virtually every generation. Professor Thompson goes so far as to suggest that the real “enemy” as understood by contemporary males is “the legal, cultural and social infrastructure of the nation itself.” Frankly, Dr. Thompson is overreaching, to say the least. It's hard to dignify this kind of media taste as social commentary. After all, these young male viewers are sought by the networks and cable channels precisely because they are the demographic that drives the sale of so many consumer products. It's hard to dignify and respect cultural angst in a generation that demands the latest technological gadgets and consumer goods.

Attracting the young male demographic is clearly the main ambition of those producing and marketing this new and savage form of television entertainment. As St. John observes, competition from the Internet, video games, and a vast array of cable channels has caught the attention of television producers who “are obsessed with developing shows that can capture the attention of young male viewers.”

Spike TV, owned by Viacom, “has ordered up a slate of new dramas based on characters whose minds are cauldrons of moral ambiguity,” he explains.

Paul Scheer, a 29-year-old actor and viewer of “Lost,” told St. John that a character can now even commit murder without alienating an audience. “You don't have to be defined by one act,” he commented. On “Lost,” three characters have killed others in cold blood, “and they're quote-unquote good people who you're rooting for every week,” Scheer observed. The moral he takes from these shows? “You can say 'I'm messed up and I left my wife, but I'm still a good guy.'“

Peter Liguori, creator of the FX shows “The Shield” and “Over There,” who now serves as president of Fox Entertainment, defended his programming: “I think that moral ambiguity is highly involving for an audience. Audiences I believe relate to characters they share the same flaws with.”

That is a truly frightening statement. Are we to believe that he is intentionally directing the programming of his network towards an audience of young males who share “the same flaws” as the violent, perverse, and antisocial characters he so willingly presents?

We are now witnessing the corruption of the masculine ideal into absolute violence and amorality. This phenomenon has developed over time, as manhood and the role of men in the home and in the society have been undermined by social, legal, economic, and ideological forces.

We now know that boys are doing more poorly in school than girls and that young women now outnumber young men on college campuses. The vast majority of violent crimes are committed by young men, and young males drive the statistics in virtually every form of antisocial behavior. The absence of strong male role models for boys and young men to respect and emulate -- especially fathers -- is surely the largest contributing factor to the rise in the social pathologies and antisocial behaviors.

The last thing we need is a tidal wave of entertainment that presents these very behaviors and warped visions of masculinity as ideals to be admired. As the comments from the young men cited in this article indicate, many of those young males who would not join the rampage nonetheless find in this programming a comforting message of moral relativism. These young men may not -- we should be glad to note -- engage in these behaviors themselves. Nevertheless, watching admired characters engage in these very same behaviors allows young male viewers room to justify and rationalize their own character flaws, irresponsibility, and worse.

Hollywood, we are often told, is a mirror of America. The rise of this amoral programming, revolving around themes ranging from rampage to relativism, should serve as a dire warning of where this culture is headed. A society whose young men celebrate violence and moral ambiguity is headed towards something even worse.

*

Is there an inverse relationship between prayer and crime rates? The Orlando Police Department apparently thinks so.

On October 10, 2007, just days after the seemingly gratuitous killing of Officer Alfred Gordon, the police department launched “Operation Armor All,” a 40-day city-wide effort — planned long before Gordon’s death — to combat Orlando’s crime problem with prayer. Volunteers from at least 20 churches showed up at Parramore Heritage Park — one of the city’s most troublesome areas — to kick off the 40 days. The police department hopes that 40 Orlando churches will “adopt” a day to pray for a specific part of the city. So far, 22 have signed up.

Will it work?

Many doubt it, like this Orlando blogger, who wrote: “Prayer is helpful, but it’s not magic, and it’s no substitute for action. Law enforcement still needs to patrol, investigate, and adjudicate. Crime can’t just be prayed away.”

Well, of course, it is true that prayer is no “cop out” for law enforcement doing their job. Still, past efforts seem to point in favor of the power of good old-fashioned prayer to fight crime.

Every month, English policeman John Sutherland sends out an e-mail to more than 150 church members asking them to pray for specific crime issues in their area. “There had been a killing, and there was a fear of reprisals,” Sutherland told the BBC. “So people were asked to pray simply that there would be no more violence. And,” says Sutherland, “there was no more violence.” Even street crimes dropped 4 percent in his borough after he began sending out the prayer letter.

Mr. Sutherland understands that prayer — as a vehicle to promote safe neighborhoods — works because it changes motives, not just actions. He says, “If you take an individual burglar, and pray for him, and he becomes a Christian, one of the net impacts of that is that he may stop burgling.”

Washington, D.C., has also tapped into prayer to protect its streets. Last summer, when murder rates skyrocketed, the Christian Defense Coalition launched an effort similar to Operation Armor All.

Beyond asking for prayer, police forces have often tapped into the faith community to help curtail crime. Last year police in High Point, North Carolina, brought high-profile drug dealers together with influential people in their lives, including members of the faith community. These “influencers” urged the drug dealers to abandon their lives of crime. Since then, 60 percent have stayed out of trouble.

Don’t get me wrong. As a former attorney general, I am not proposing prayer as the answer to crime — and certainly not the only answer. But what I am saying is this: Prayer is a starting point. St. Paul tells us to pray about everything. And remember, prayer for something like reducing crime is a long-term spiritual battle, not a short-term “solution.”

I urge you to think of creative ways you can encourage your church to battle crime with prayer in your area. You could talk to your local police department to organize a prayer walk through a crime-ridden neighborhood. You could distribute a prayer list of specific concerns. Or you could organize a gathering of several churches to pray for peace to return to your city.

In the battle against crime, let’s not wait for our local police department to ask us to do what we should have been doing all along: praying.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #24974]

The TV show 60 Minutes ran a segment that tells us something important about fatherlessness.

The park rangers at a South African wildlife preserve were concerned about the slaughter of 39 rare white rhinos in their park. It turned out that the rhinos were killed not by poachers but rather by juvenile delinquents-teen elephants.

The story began a decade ago when the park could no longer sustain the increasing population of elephants. They decided to kill many of the adult elephants whose young were old enough to survive without them. And so, the young elephants grew up fatherless.

As time went on, many of these young elephants roamed together in gangs and began to do things elephants normally don't do. They threw sticks and water at rhinos and acted like neighborhood bullies. Without dominant males, the young bulls became sexually active, producing excessive testosterone and exhibiting aggressive behavior. A few young males grew especially violent, knocking down rhinos and stepping or kneeling on them, crushing the life out of them. Mafuto the gang leader eventually had to be killed.

The park rangers theorized that these young teen-aged elephants were acting badly because they lacked role models. The solution was to bring in a large male to lead them and to counteract their bully behaviors. Soon the new male established dominance and put the young bulls in their places. The killing stopped. The young males were mentored -- and saved.

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Ken Sowers, Mentor, Ohio; 60 Minutes (1-20-99).

Muslims are outraged over Pope Benedict’s recent speech, in which he denounced violence as a means of bringing about religious conversion. How did they demonstrate their anger? Ironically, with violent protest — even murder.

The highlight of the Pope’s visit to his native Germany was an address at Regensberg, where he once taught. The speech was supposed to be memorable for its forceful response to the crisis caused by Western secularism. Instead, it’s more likely to be remembered as further proof, if we needed any, that irony — to say nothing of civility — is not one of Islam’s strongest suits.

The Pope spoke about the importance of reason within Christianity. As he put it, “The encounter between the biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.” It was intended by God.

This “encounter” helped create Western civilization. And in rejecting Christianity, the Pope warned, Europe is rejecting the basis of the rationality that made Western achievements possible. That is a point you heard me make in commentaries on Rodney Stark’s terrific new book, THE VICTORY OF REASON.

This part of the Pope’s remarks was well received, even by some of his harshest critics. Unfortunately, this part, which was ninety percent of the speech, was washed away in the controversy.

The fuss is about what the Pope said about Islam. He quoted a fourteenth-century Byzantine Christian emperor, who, in a discussion about Christianity and Islam with a Persian scholar, said this: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Benedict’s point was that “forced” conversion is “contrary to God’s nature,” as well as to both reason and faith. The effort to forcibly convert people to Islam is, for Benedict, an example of how the differences between the Christian and Islamic conception of God manifest themselves in the “real world” — a difference on display just a few weeks ago when Islamists tried to force the conversion of two Fox News journalists taken hostage.

In response to the Pope’s reasonable and factual comments, Muslims took to the streets demanding an “apology” and attacking Christian churches. The Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda pledged to “break the Cross and spill the wine,” leaving Christians with no choice but “Islam or death.” And on Sunday, Somali Islamist gunmen shot in the back and killed a Roman Catholic nun ministering to the poor in Mogadishu.

If Muslims had protested peacefully, they would have undercut the Pope’s remarks. Instead, they proved him correct.

Pope Benedict is the second religious leader of international stature to really call Islam to account. Franklin Graham did it a while back and was beaten up by the press for months. Well, the Pope is now going to suffer the same fate. The NEW YORK TIMES in a Saturday morning editorial BLAMED THE POPE, and no mention was made of Muslim violence.

This controversy underscores the unpleasant truth that Islamic violence is deeply rooted in both the religious and cultural fabric of the Muslim world. It is time for the West to face that painful truth and to buckle down for what will be a long struggle. Thankfully, Pope Benedict is making us do that.

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

Just in time for the holidays, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, based Urban Outfitters rolled out a new ornament. “Bust a cap in your tree with this superglittery ornament in the shape of a handgun,” the company’s catalog enthused. The company said the $6 black revolver ornament is one of several “dark humor items” meant to impart an “ironic twist” on the holidays. Asked to comment, a Philly police spokesman said news reports on the ornament just played into Urban Outfitters’ hands, with the “potential to raise their profile.” Sure enough, once the story broke the company quickly sold out of the ornament.

________

Philadelphia Inquirer

Hundreds of worshippers lifted their heads and raised their hands as water blasted down from fire hoses during a symbolic street baptism in South Los Angeles.

The mass baptism was organized by the United House of Prayer for All People, one of the nation’s largest black denominations, as part of its 80th annual Holy Convocation. The 3-million-member organization has held outdoor baptisms with fire hoses in Eastern cities such as New York and Philadelphia, but this was the first street baptism for California, according to church officials.

“It’s a baptizing for the city of Los Angeles,” said Pearl Fuquay, who lost one son and is trying to raise another in a gang-racked neighborhood known as the Jungle. “It’s a cleaning of the city.”

All members of the local organization were encouraged to take part, even those who had already been baptized. Community members also were invited, as were members from congregations around the country. Worshippers, mostly dressed in white, came from places including San Francisco, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

“It’s a spiritual healing,” said 34-year-old Renico Smith. Smith said he dedicated his prayers to fellow soldiers serving in Iraq. “They’re fighting a very dangerous battle. They need the prayers so they come home safely to their mothers and fathers.”

The fire hoses, held by church elders, were turned on at about noon. Brass bands played as men, women and children danced, exulted and sobbed in the middle of Vernon Ave outside the church, where less than half a block away last week a young man was shot to death.

“Father, we ask you to drive away the violence,” called Apostle C.M. Gibbs, who came from Baltimore. “This city needs healing.”

The hoses were turned off after about 10 minutes, and the street was reopened to traffic.

“I feel blessed,” Fuquay said.

The United House of Prayer was founded in 1919 in Wareham, Mass., by Bishop Charles M. “Sweet Daddy” Grace and incorporated in 1927. The organization is known for its brass bands, ecstatic worship and exultation of its bishops.

History has a way of provoking life’s most basic questions, sometimes with deadly force. Standing beside ruins and devastation, newscasters daily relay horrors. As harsh realities take hold, the irrepressible “why?” often surfaces in the mind of the beholder. Occasionally, even national conscience is so aroused as to ask “why?”

Yet in reality, the question of “why?” in a violent act, as painful as such a mindless atrocity can be, is nevertheless meaningless to raise unless we also ask the question of life itself -- why are we here? But alas! that question is dismissed as no longer relevant in an academically sophisticated culture.

Is this not, then, a self-destructive contradiction for one who debunks the notion of objective morality? A whole host of secular thinkers glibly explained away the need for a Creator, and in positing a mindless, accidental universe, in effect stated that there is no need to ask “why?” of the Big Bang. Why, then, is it necessary to raise the question of any other explosion? It is evident that those who vent such hostility toward the absolute never take into account that they must then, forfeit the right to raise questions that imply a moral framework. Those who reduce the world to merely the physical cheat when they stray into the metaphysical.

In stark distinction, it is here once again that God’s Word beckons with his pleas to a morally deaf world. Granted, the questions raised come from two groups. The deep and private pain of those for whom the loss is personal and devastating cannot be simplistically addressed. For them there is one who speaks from a Cross. But there is another side to this query, and that is in understanding how and why hatred and murder can be conceived and nurtured in the human heart in the first place. To that question there is an answer; there are answers. “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

Interestingly enough, the very first murder in the Bible did not occur because of two irreconcilable political theories. The murder of a man by his own brother was an act unmistakably born out of their differing responses to God. Trapped by the temporal, Cain was deluded by the belief that he could vanquish spiritual reality with brute force. God saw the inevitable result of the jealousy and hatred deep within Cain’s heart, and in a challenge that would determine his destiny, warned him to deal with it. “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7).

There are only two options; either come to God on his terms and find our perfect peace in his acceptance of us, or “play God” with self-defining morality and kill -- becoming as a result restless wanderers, ever running from the voice of our brothers’ blood which cries out from the ground. At its core life is sacred and of inestimable value, whether it is the life of a darling child in the fresh blossom of childhood, or the life of an elderly, weak, and frail recluse. Both have one thing in common -- they are made in the image of God. That is why murder is described in Scripture for what it is, an attack upon God’s image -- a denial of our spiritual essence. It is that essence which gives us our dignity and our worth. It is that essence which is our glory.

We may try by intellectual duplicity to rearrange the furniture of life and define it only in material terms, but each time we sit back and read of the human experience in Darfur or Virginia, Bosnia or Rwanda, we shift and turn with revulsion, realizing that there is no harmony in the secular “decor,” for the cry within of the sacred cannot be suppressed. That is the reason we scream forth “why?” at the headlines: we cannot silence the still, small voice inside that speaks of the intrinsic sanctity of life, and that it ought not to be violated.

Try as we will, the logical outworking of a denied absolute cannot be escaped. God said it to Cain then and He says it to us now. “If you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door, and desires to have you.” Cain became a murderer because he willfully refused to worship the living God and chose, by violence, to enthrone himself.

This is an aspect of modern society we have grossly underestimated, and in the process we have robbed ourselves of even common sense. God is not only the Creator who defines us philosophically, but He is also the Provider who meets us existentially in our greatest need, and gives us the confidence and comfort that we are beloved and not orphaned in this world. The Apostle Paul voices this greatest of all satisfactions to the entire created order, saying that we are created for our heavenly Father’s glory -- for his praise. That is why we are here. What a moment it will be when you and I stand before Him, and He says, “Well done! Well done! Well done!” God’s created order and God’s care-filled involvement in our lives are intrinsic to the solution of violence.

If we are to ever find an answer to the haunting problem of violence, there will need to be a radical shift in our understanding, and recognize not only the seen, but also the reality of the unseen, for the latter precedes the former. We would do well to take note that long before headlines hit like explosives in our minds, an even greater implosion had taken place in the minds and hearts of those who set the news in motion. Human government cannot deal with that internal devastation, but God can. That “unseen” war is a spiritual struggle -- the choice between turning to God or playing God. For that triumph only God is big enough, and the sooner we realize and acknowledge our need for Him the closer we will be to moving from the symptomatic and superfluous to the cure.

________

Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

What are America’s most sinful cities? How could we know? Well, give FORBES magazine credit for giving this ranking challenge a try. The magazine recently offered rankings on the traditional seven deadly sins -- and ranked America’s “top ten” on each sin.

The folks at FORBES determined a way of tracking statistics on each of the sins. As the staff explained, “For each sin we stretched our imagination to find a workable proxy -- murder rates for wrath, per capita billionaires for avarice -- then culled the available data sources to rank the cities. Some of the results were surprising: Salt Lake City as America’s Vainest City. Some were not: Detroit as America’s Most Murderous.”

Here are the sins and the top cities in each sinful category:

MOST LUSTFUL: Denver ranked first, joined by San Antonio, Portland, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Boise, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Columbus, Baltimore and Buffalo/Rochester. The research firm of AC Nielson used sales figures for contraceptives and sex items in ranking the list.

MOST JEALOUS: Memphis tops the list, followed by Charlotte, San Antonio, Seattle, Providence, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Chicago. The rankings were linked to crime rates for personal property.

MOST OBESE [Gluttony]: Memphis, Birmingham, San Antonio, Riverside/San Bernardino, Detroit, Jacksonville, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, San Diego. Health statistics drove this listing.

MOST AVARICIOUS [Greed]: San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Boston, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, Miami. The rankings on this sin were determined by looking at the concentration of great wealth.

MOST MURDEROUS [Wrath]: The crime statistics are clear -- the most murderous city is Detroit, followed by Baltimore, New Orleans, Newark, St. Louis, Oakland, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Buffalo.

MOST SLOTHFUL [Sedentary]: Memphis tops this list as well, followed by New Orleans, Las Vegas, Detroit, Birmingham, Louisville, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Nashville, and Miami.

MOST VAIN [Pride]: “Pride is supposed to be a deadly sin. When it comes to their looks, however, fewer Americans are seeing it that way,” say the reporters, who used plastic surgery as the marker for this sin. Perhaps surprisingly, Salt Lake City ranked first, followed by San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Miami, Louisville, Nashville, Virginia Beach, New York, and Los Angeles.

Interestingly, the Bible and the Christian tradition often associate sin with cities. The concentration of human beings in cities often fuels the business of sin and presents opportunities not available elsewhere. From the “cities of the plains” to Nineveh, Babylon, and Rome, cities often became symbols of human pride, lust, and egoistic sin.

Similarly, John Bunyan’s PILGRIM’S PROGRESS -- perhaps the most influential book in English (other than the Bible) among Christians -- symbolized the sinfulness and allure of the city in its portrayal of Vanity Fair.

But what about the FORBES list? In the final analysis, it is probably not worth more than conversation points. Are the folks in Salt Lake City really more vain than those in Atlanta? Are citizens of Memphis really more jealous than those of Houston? Who can know? The statistics chosen for the report tell only part of the story.

Still, it is interesting to ponder the question of whether sins are particularly celebrated and concentrated in certain cities. It would be hard to ignore the self-advertisement of Las Vegas. Yet, it is not true that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Sins spill over quite readily, and sin is a powerful contagion.

In reality, the whole world is a Genesis 3 world -- a fallen world inhabited by sinners. Sin is a universal problem and every single human being is a sinner. Put sinful humanity in close quarters, and sin inevitably multiplies.

If anything, the FORBES sin listings should remind Christians of the great challenge of evangelizing the cities -- a task that demonstrates Christian failure to date. In that sense the FORBES list is haunting, humbling, and heart-breaking. Yet, in another sense, it may also be motivating. We can hope.

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.

Cammy Franzese is a woman who stood by her man to a degree that would make even Tammy Wynette flinch if she were still alive. But by greeting his shortcomings with – now keep an open mind, ladies – love and prayer, she managed to change him.

Cammy Franzese is the reason her husband Michael Franzese – a.k.a. “The Yuppie Don” – became the first high ranking member of the Mafia to publicly walk away from a life of crime and into a life of Little League coaching and churchgoing. And if she can do that, there’s still hope that you can help your man walk away from a life of crumbs on the counter.

Cammy grew up in Anaheim, California, one of seven children born to Irma Garcia, a devout churchgoer, and Seferino Garcia. She graduated from Anaheim High in 1981. While studying dance at Cal State Fullerton, she got a chance to go to Miami as a back-up dancer on the set of the movie “Knights of the City.”

It was there in 1984 that she met Michael Franzese, the producer of the movie. He was young and handsome – and 11 years older, to her dismay. But he was sweet. He told her he was Catholic and had once been an altar boy. He didn’t tell her that he had already escaped five white-collar crime indictments. Or that he was “heir apparent” in the Colombo family.

Cammy returned to Anaheim when the movie finished shooting, but their relationship continued. One day not long after, Mike’s friend Frankie called: Mike had been arrested, something about tax evasion. At this point she still thought her boyfriend was just your average businessman. While the New York papers were having a field day with the Mob charges, it wasn’t making headlines in California.

When Michael made bail he flew out to the West Coast and told Cammy he wanted to spend his life with her. The day after their engagement party, he was acquitted. They married that July in Beverly Hills and bought condos on Long Island and in Brentwood. Cammy gave birth to a baby girl.

But the good times didn’t last long. When their daughter was 7 months old, Michael was indicted for racketeering. This time he went to prison. That same year he was listed as the youngest capo on Fortune magazine’s 1986 chart of “The 50 Biggest Mafia Bosses,” according to a Life Magazine article. He was 33.

“It was a blessing that I was young and idealistic and naïve at the time,” Cammy says. She didn’t ask her husband questions, fearing she would hear something she didn’t want to. She didn’t read newspapers. Or watch the news. Instead, over the next four years, she visited him every weekend – and prayed for him.

Cammy’s mother counseled her to forgive him and shared her vision. “He’s going to speak to millions,” she told her. “And she was so right. My mother was just so loving and forgiving and she believed in second chances and transformation and miracles,” Cammy says.

Well, Michael finally came home four years later. Law enforcement wanted him to testify against his “associates.” He wouldn’t do it. They threatened to throw him back in prison for a parole violation. He wouldn’t budge. One morning, after 18 months of freedom, he was back in prison.

By now they had two children. Money was tight so Cammy gave up the house with the elevator and nine bathrooms in Brentwood for a condo in Westwood.

“I just thought ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t do this again.’ I was angry. Michael was still living for Michael.”

But she still loved him. “I used to get on my knees and pray that God would protect him and change his heart ... and make him the husband and the father he needs to be.... And bring him home.”

Back behind bars, the Yuppie Don broke. “My heart hurt so much that night, it was the kinda pain I remember,” Michael says. “That night I had nothing but enemies.”

A prison guard walked up and pushed a Bible through the slot. It fell on the floor. Michael threw it against the wall. Then he reconsidered. “Ya know, I’ve got everyone in the world mad at me, I don’t need God mad at me.”

He opened the Bible. It fell on Proverbs 16:7. “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord even his enemies are at peace with him.”

He had let down his wife once again. “My life was in direct contradiction to everything that she was about and believed in,” he says. He remembered back when they first met and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her, and how pretty she was, as she talked to him about God. “Honestly, that didn’t really appeal to me at the time,” he says. “She could have been talking about anything. I was being polite. I wasn’t listening.”

Now he was listening.

“I loved her madly,” he says. “I think the main thing is, she knew that I would do anything for her.”

So finally he did. Michael Franzese renounced his life of crime. Behind bars, he granted an interview to Life Magazine. When “Quitting the Mafia” hit newsstands in 1987 the Warden called him into his office. “Franzese, do you have a death wish?” he asked.

“There’s an old saying that the only way to leave the Mafia is in a coffin,” the Life article began.

Michael was willing to take his chances. During his four years in the hole this second time around he read the Bible inside out and upside down. When he got out, the FBI came knocking. “You claimed you turned your life around, prove it,” they told him. They asked him to be in a video to warn young athletes not to be sucked into organized crime’s web of game fixing.

His videos led to speaking engagements. Today he travels the country, visiting colleges and churches, sharing his story. “Had I not met Cammy, I am certain I wouldn’t have taken the path I took and I would probably be dead or in prison,” he tells them.

Complete strangers have heard more about his double-dealings than wife has. “To this day, I’ve never sat down and discussed my past life with her,” he said. And she has never asked for details.

Michael has written two books, “Quitting the Mob” in 1991 and “Blood Covenant” in 2003. She hasn’t read a single page. “There’s probably a lot of things in there I don’t want to know about. I see it when he’s sleeping and tossing and turning. I can imagine it. I don’t need to see it in black and white.”

She remembers in the days after her husband got out of prison. “Every now and again someone would ask, ‘Are you fearful for your life or your children’s life?’ And I’d think, ‘Oh my God. Why should I be fearful?’”

Occasionally Cammy will join her husband and speak publicly to married couples about how they held it together.

“It’s definitely easier to say I didn’t sign up for this and walk away,” she will tell them. “But whatever his old life was, it doesn’t matter, because that’s not the man he is today. I’m married to this man and I’m in love with this man.”