Top 10 News Stories of 2004

1. The re-election of George W. Bush and the new prominence of the “values voter”
Despite a difficult war and the concerted opposition of most of the “old media,” the president on a solid victory and plans a big second-term agenda. Key to Bush’s victory were evangelicals and “values voters,” who once again were turned off by the secular Democrats.

2. The marriage debate
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered state lawmakers to legalize marriage between homosexuals, President Bush decided to support the Federal Marriage Amendment (which failed its first test in Congress), and voters in 11 states passed measures supporting heterosexual marriage in 11 states on November 2.

3. The stem-cell debate
With the deaths of Ronald Reagan and Christopher Reeve, supporters of embryonic stem-cell research (including John Edwards) largely ignored progress with adult stem cells and attempted to win public support for research that destroys nascent human life for uncertain and over-hyped scientific cures. California voters, already deeply in hock, voted to spend $3 billion for stem-cell research.

4. The Passion of the Christ
Despite wild charges that it (1) would spark anti-Semitism and (2) would be a financial flop, Mel Gibson’s self-financed film about the last hours of Jesus became a huge hit, earning more than $500 million. Many viewers said the movie changed their lives.

5. The battle for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan
Despite continuing terrorism, poverty, and widespread skepticism about a culture with no history of democracy, men–and women–in Afghanistan voted in a democratic government. In Iraq, meanwhile, terrorists attempted to wreak havoc before scheduled democratic elections. The U.S. death toll surpassed 1,300.

6. Hostage beheadings
Videos of Islamic terrorists beheading civilians in Iraq while chanting praise to Allah shocked the world. A sidebar to this story was the diffidence of the mainstream media to downplay or ignore this horror while hammering the Abu Ghraib story ad nauseam.

7. Abu Ghraib
The abuse and torture of prisoners by American soldiers came to light with the release of disturbing videos. The images seemed to undermine the moral status of the war in Iraq while confirming Muslim stereotypes of a “godless America.” The mainstream media prolonged the story for weeks, in an apparent attempt to undermine the re-election of the president.

8. Earthquake disaster
An earthquake and resulting tsunamis killed tens of thousands in south Asia. Measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, the temblor was the strongest in 40 years.

9. Florida’s hurricane hell
Four hurricanes hit Florida in succession in early fall, causing widespread anguish and devastation.

10. The death of Ronald Reagan
The summer passing of the 40th president after a long battle with Alzheimer’s sparked an outpouring of love and patriotism that shocked liberal and conservative alike, and presaged November’s election results.

Top 10 Religion Stories of 2004

1. The re-election of George W. Bush and the new prominence of the “values voter”
Despite a difficult war and the concerted opposition of most of the “old media,” the president won a solid victory and plans a big second-term agenda. Key to Bush’s victory were evangelicals and “values voters,” who once again were turned off by the secular Democrats.

2. The Passion of the Christ
Despite wild charges that it (1) would spark anti-Semitism and (2) would be a financial flop, Mel Gibson’s self-financed film about the last hours of Jesus became a huge hit, earning more than $500 million. Many viewers said the movie changed their lives.

3. The marriage debate
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered state lawmakers to legalize marriage between homosexuals, President Bush decided to support the Federal Marriage Amendment (which failed its first test in Congress), and voters in 11 states passed measures supporting heterosexual marriage in 11 states on November 2.

4. The stem-cell debate
With the deaths of Ronald Reagan and Christopher Reeve, supporters of embryonic stem-cell research (including John Edwards) largely ignored progress with adult stem cells and attempted to win public support for research that destroys nascent human life for uncertain and over-hyped scientific cures. California voters, already deeply in hock, voted to spend $3 billion for stem-cell research.

5. Sudan: good news, bad news
Peace was announced between Muslims, Christians, and animists after two decades of bloody civil war, but Muslim-on-Muslim genocide was occurring in the western Darfur region.

6. The Anglican Communion’s impending breakup
After Episcopalians in New Hampshire installed an open homosexual as their bishop–in defiance of church teaching–a much-anticipated report on the matter amounted to little more than a wrist-slap. So conservative Anglicans here and overseas began taking steps to break up the worldwide Anglican Communion, with Africans in some of the most high-profile roles.

7. The persecution and exodus of Christians in Iraq
As Iraq’s security situation deteriorated, extremist attacks against minority Christians and churches were reported. Tens of thousands fled the country.

8. The persecution of house-church Christians in China
The communist government launched a harsh new crackdown against unregistered house churches, including the December abduction/arrest of Zhang Rongliang, a prominent house-church leader.

9. The FCC’s crackdown on indecent broadcasting
Following Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, the Federal Communications Commission started handing out massive fines to polluters of the nation’s airwaves.

10. Partial-birth abortion ban blocked
Federal judges in three states ruled that the first restriction on abortion to be signed into law in three decades is unconstitutional.

Is Christianity a Religion of Peace?

In a recent commentary, I asked, “Is Islam a religion of peace?” After evaluating the violent history and teachings of Islam as well as some encouraging recent developments, I answered, Not yet.

Surprisingly, the harshest criticism I received came not from Muslims but from Christians. Pointing to violence perpetrated in the name of Christ down through the last 2,000 years, they asked whether the same could be said of Christianity. If Christians are having doubts about the essential nature of the Christian faith, then what must Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Hindus, and secularists be thinking?

Is Christianity a religion of peace? And, if so, what kind of peace? The Hebrew Scriptures use the word shalom, which means more than simply an absence of violent conflict. It also connotes wholeness and well-being. We will examine several lines of evidence–theological, historical, and personal–before rendering a verdict.

First, let us look at the theology of Christianity. What you believe about God determines not only your approach to eternity, but to the here and now. As Indian thinker Vishal Mangalwadi has said, “A people cannot be better than their gods.”

The God of the Old Testament has been described as merciless and bloodthirsty. Admittedly, the Hebrew Scriptures are full of violence, with blood sacrifices required to atone for sin, which is seen primarily as an offense against a holy God. Yahweh set apart his people to not only live holy lives for his glory, but to execute judgment upon the nearby peoples who killed their young, oppressed the poor, and did not fear him. At this brutal time in history, God sanctioned holy war by Israel, which was the world’s only truly theocratic state.

But the Jewish people mostly failed to follow God’s commands, reaping judgment on themselves in the process. However, they recognized God’s kindness along with His severity. The prophet Jonah complained to God when the wicked people of Nineveh, who were Israel’s enemies, turned from their violence and escaped judgment. “O Lord,” Jonah nearly spat out. “I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

Peace is a prominent theme of the New Testament. Speaking six centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet Isaiah foretold the coming of one who would be called the Prince of Peace. The familiar Christmas passage from the Book of Luke tells us that on the night Jesus Christ was born, multitudes of angels suddenly split open the quiet night sky outside Bethlehem, appearing to some lowly Jewish shepherds. The angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Jesus spoke of peace. To the wind and the waves, he said, “Peace, be still!” To his faltering disciples, before he went to the cross, Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” Jesus told his followers not to take revenge but to turn the other cheek and to pray for their persecutors. He not only taught this creed; he lived it.

The night Jesus was betrayed to the corrupt authorities of his day, the apostle Peter attempted to launch the first Christian jihad. Peter unsheathed his sword and took a wild swing at a man named Malchus, cutting off his ear. If ever a holy war could be justified, surely it would be this one. But instead, Jesus healed Malchus on the spot and said to his disciple, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

Jesus explicitly rejected holy war in his name. To the Roman procurator, Christ said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.” Hanging on the cross, his life ebbing away, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

After Jesus offered himself as a blood sacrifice for sin, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, Saul of Tarsus, a zealous Pharisee, attempted to prosecute a holy war against the followers of Christ. But Jesus opened his eyes on the road to Damascus, renamed him Paul, and sent him into the Roman world as the apostle to the Gentiles. Everywhere Paul went, he told people of the good news of “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Paul noted that Christ’s atoning death broke down “the dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and non-Jew. Like almost all the other apostles, Paul died while preaching this “gospel of peace” with God and with our fellow man.

It is true that Paul and some of the other New Testament writers called down God’s curses on their theological opponents–whether Jew or Gentile. Hindering the progress of the gospel was serious business, with eternal consequences. But although they were as close to theological truth and certainty as any human being had ever been, these men never attempted to enforce their beliefs through worldly means. They left such things in the hands of God, who had clearly said in the Old Testament, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”

What about the history of Christianity? There the record is regrettably mixed.

For several hundred years, Christians were powerless outcasts or afterthoughts in society. Rather than persecutors, they were persecuted. They were also the conscience of society. When the Roman world let unwanted babies die from exposure, Christians rescued them. When the mobs called for more blood in the Coliseum, with dignity Christians ended the practice. When society treated women as cheap labor and as sex objects, Christians regarded them as gifted fellow heirs of Christ’s blessings.

Then Constantine made Christianity legal in the Empire, and soon it became the state religion. Christ’s kingdom “not of this world” became thoroughly of this world–with disastrous consequences. This merging of temporal and spiritual power in Christendom eventually led to various false theocratic travesties such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, various church-supported persecutions of the Jewish people, brutality and murder sanctioned by the great Protestant reformers Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, and the Salem witch trials. It is worth noting that Hitler’s Holocaust grew in the fertile soil of European anti-Semitism, which the Protestant Reformation had not uprooted, but only watered.

While such abuses are by no means the whole story of the Christian faith, understandably they have defined it for many thinking people. Far too often Christians–seeking to inaugurate heaven on earth–have instead brought a taste of hell. Like Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and atheist utopians before and since, Christians too have been corrupted by state power. As Lord Acton reportedly said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The American experience suggests a better and safer course. Eschewing both a godless state and a state church, the United States was built on the foundation of Judeo-Christian virtues, but not on a state religion. While church and state may be legally separate here, they are not enemies. Rather, they are partners for the good of the republic. The state exists to provide order, allowing the church to do its good work in lives and societies. The state depends upon the existence of godly people formed in the church. John Adams, our second president, stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

This experiment has worked, for over two centuries. As the 19th century French social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”

And while looking at the history of the church, we dare not forget the innumerable deeds of peace done in the name of Christ. Missionary William Carey was instrumental in ending the Hindu practice of widow-burning in India. Parliamentarian William Wilberforce followed his Christian conscience and eventually helped end slavery in the British Empire. Christians took prominent roles in the abolition movement in the United States. Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, awakened a nation’s conscience and launched the civil rights movement. Mother Teresa, an unknown Catholic nun, saw dignity in people whom others regarded as trash.

Such acts of shalom continue. Go to any city and you will find hospitals and homeless shelters put there in the name of Christ. (When was the last time you saw a hospital built in honor of atheism?) Churches today are the glue that holds many faltering communities together.

In 2003, Ram A. Cnaan, professor of social work and founding director of the Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania, told Agnieszka Tennant of Christianity Today that the average North American church provides about $184,000 worth of social services annually. (With more than 300,000 churches in North America, that’s a lot of shalom.) Not incidentally, Christians are also at the forefront in global battles for religious liberty and against AIDS and sexual trafficking.

Now we quickly move on to the personal. Does Christianity provide peace? Like any religion, the Christian faith attempts to provide answers to the ultimate questions of life: What is the good? Why are we here? What happens to us when we die? On a sociological level, like other religions, Christianity enables people to live together in relative peace. (Unlike other faiths, however, it provided the intellectual and theological rationale for the development of science and democratic government, which in turn have brought unprecedented prosperity and freedom–well-being–to millions.)

But what of the personal level? While individual stories will differ, the Christian faith has produced countless examples of personal transformation–not by a religion called Christianity, but by Christ himself. Just a few will have to suffice here.

John Newton was a debauched 18th century slave trader who became a devoted churchman and humanitarian. David Berkowitz, New York’s tormented “Son of Sam” serial killer, found forgiveness and peace inside his prison cell through the humble Christian witness of a fellow inmate. Recently he told Focus on the Family, “Twenty-six years I have been in this prison, and I can honestly say that I am content.”

Charles Colson was a take-no-prisoners political operative who famously said he would run over his own grandmother if necessary, and then was imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal. But after meeting Christ, Colson began to see others–even the incarcerated–as made in the image of God and worthy of respect. When Colson got out, he launched Prison Fellowship, a ministry that has touched prisoners, their family members, and crime victims. His outstanding record rehabilitating prisoners by giving them dignity, hope, and job skills caught the attention of George W. Bush and has become a key component of the president’s faith-based initiative.

Now we come to one Stan Guthrie. Struggling with a physical disability and believing that the universe was probably just a mindless collection of atoms, I had no peace. I struggled to gain acceptance and love from others, and from myself. I didn’t know who I was, why I was here, or where I was going. I figured if there was a God, it was obvious that he didn’t care about me. Craving the attention of others, I nonetheless selfishly resented their wholeness.

Then quite unexpectedly I heard about Christ and his death on the cross. Far from being just another collection of esoteric religious doctrines, Christianity spoke of God stepping into human history in the person of Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for my sins. (If Christianity has a violent side, it is this, that God the Father punished his willing, sinless Son in my place.) This is the meaning of Christmas. I also learned that Jesus didn’t stay dead, but was raised, and that sufficient historical evidence exists to back up this astounding New Testament claim.

For the first time, I saw myself as a valuable person with an eternal future. Receiving his gift of forgiveness through the cross, I started a journey that has brought love, joy, and peace even during the trials of life. No longer afraid of dying, I am ready to live, running the race he has prepared for me. Confident that I am his, I have peace, no matter what the future brings.

So is Christianity a religion of peace? Despite its sinful followers, we must say, Yes. More to the point: Is Jesus the Prince of Peace? Always. As the Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

May God grant you his peace during this Christmas season.

Just Wondering 2

News item: Kerik withdraws his name from consideration to run the Department of Homeland Security over questions about an illegal nanny. Washington now awaits a reciprocal gesture from Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant.

Other than football, they haven’t figured out a way to commercialize Thanksgiving yet. Don’t worry, though. They’ve got a team of marketers working on it as we speak.

You probably didn’t know Chicago has a Department of Aging. Is this really necessary? People get old naturally. We don’t need any help from bureaucrats.

Anyone else bothered by the fact that using the word Christmas in public discourse is strongly discouraged this time of year? You hardly hear it at the office, in advertising, or at school. We don’t have Christmas trees anymore. Now they’re holiday trees. We don’t have Christmas parties, either. They’re holiday parties. Same with Christmas lights, Christmas vacation, and Christmas presents. It’s almost as if the Grinch came in the middle of the night and stole Christmas all over again.

Speaking of holidays, a lot of people have stopped saying Merry Christmas for the more generic Happy Holidays. My wife hates to tell them this, but holiday comes from holy day. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

If we have to give up Christmas because of its religious origins (the word means Christ mass), let’s not stop there. Say goodbye to goodbye (God be with you). No more blessing people when they sneeze, either. Kind of warms your heart, doesn’t it?

Anyone ever read John 3:16?

Hell hath no fury like a conservative crossed.

I heard a former professional football player say on the radio that he had no problem with the suggestive–or is that too weak a word?–Monday Night Football promotion for “Desperate Housewives.” He said the unasked for sight of Nicollette Sheridan dropping her towel and jumping into the arms of Terrell Owens gives parents the opportunity to open lines of communication with their kids about sex. (That’s funny; I thought we already had plenty of these “opportunities” in today’s culture.)

I must be getting old. I thought it was up to parents to choose the time and place to give “the talk.”

Want to see a real desperate housewife? Come home from the office and say something about the mess.

Television ads for SUVs are pretty unrealistic. They show motorized monsters tearing up what look like federally protected wilderness areas that no one could ever legally drive on. And besides, even if you do find the occasional dirt road, your wife will probably say No anyway.

The old joke–I was at a fight and a hockey game broke out–needs to be updated. Substitute basketball for hockey.

Why does so much of what passes for bioethics these days seem so unethical?

What is it with the Christopher Reeve crowd? Yes, he was a courageous man, but that didn’t give him carte blanche on science.

Why can’t folks on the left make the simple distinction between stem cells harvested from adults or umbilical cords (in which no killing is involved) and those taken from human embryos, which are destroyed in the process? Could it be they don’t want to make the distinction?

Why do many of the people who favor keeping abortion “safe, legal, and rare” also support embryonic stem cell research?

Hats off, Mr. Huxley. You were right. We appear to be killing ourselves with pleasure.

News item: Harry Reid says Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to the Supreme Court, and that his opinions have been poorly written. Did I blink, or was that the shortest political honeymoon on record?

Did you see W. turn around and snatch the Secret Service agent from the crowd in Chile? I know Kerry was the “war hero,” but which guy would you rather have at your side in a street fight?

Is Islam a Religion of Peace?

A Palestinian woman straps a bomb around her waist, kills herself and her unsuspecting Jewish neighbors, and is celebrated as a martyr. Yet we are told, “Islam is a religion of peace.”

On September 11, 2001, 19 Muslim men hijack and crash three passenger jets, killing about 3,000 people. Various parts of the Muslim world hail them as heroes, and the ringleader of the attack promises more of the same against the “crusaders” who support the Jewish state. Again we are told, “Islam is a religion of peace.”

After U.S. forces liberate Iraq from the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, holdovers from the regime join Islamic fanatics from outside the country, attempting to thwart the emergence of democracy. They blow up oil pipelines, kill coalition forces, slaughter Iraqi policemen, and kidnap and behead civilians involved in the reconstruction. And what are we told about the religion that motivates them? You guessed it: “Islam is a religion of peace.”

Not surprisingly, the American people are having a hard time reconciling the words of peace with the deeds of terror. In fact, seeing a clear disconnect, more and more of us are choosing to doubt the good will of Muslims. We wonder: Is there something inherently violent in Islam?

Looking at Muslim history is not reassuring. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, preached the brotherhood of man. Yet he was no stranger to the sword. In A.D. 610, Muhammad began receiving the visions that would later be incorporated into the sacred book of Islam, the Qur’an. In 622, fleeing from Mecca to Medina, Muhammad and his followers became practitioners of jihad, or holy war. Combining the power of religion and worldly arms, in 630, Muhammad and his troops marched on Mecca, forcing the city to surrender and submit to Islamic law. On one occasion, Muhammad ordered hundreds of Jews who had sought his overthrow to be slaughtered.

After Muhammad died in 632, his successors, called caliphs, proved they had learned the art of religious war. Starting in 636, Muslim armies quickly captured of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Damascus in the Middle East. Then they targeted ancient Christian centers in North Africa, including Alexandria and Carthage. Fusing religion and state power, Muslim forces held Spain and Constantinople (today, Istanbul) for centuries and repeatedly attempted to capture Vienna. Once territory fell into Muslim hands, it was considered Muslim land for all time.

The vanquished who survived were given a choice: Become a Muslim and enjoy full rights, or remain Christians or Jews and be tolerated (as “people of the Book”), forever second-class citizens. Those who converted to Islam were never allowed to return to their former faiths. The penalty for apostasy in Islam–though not always carried out–is death.

Too often the peace that Islam extols only comes after military conquest. However, Muslim rule in Spain—gained of course by force of arms—from 800-1200 was benign by the harsh standards of the day. In the book What’s Right with Islam, Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, a Muslim cleric from Egypt now leading a mosque in New York, calls that period “a rich flowering of art, culture, philosophy, and science. Many Jewish and Christian artists and intellectuals emigrated to Cordoba during this period to escape the more oppressive regimes that reigned over Europe’s Dark and Middle Ages. Great Jewish philosophers such as Maimonides were free to create their historic works within the pluralistic culture of Islam.”

Unfortunately, as detailed in Ernest Volkman’s fascinating book, Science Goes to War, Islamic thinkers who believed the study of science would undermine Muslim beliefs soon gained ascendancy. Their theology stifled intellectual development and scientific innovation. Also weakened by the bloody encounter with Catholic fanaticism during the Crusades (in themselves partly a response to earlier Muslim aggression), the world Islamic community slowly imploded into a smoldering heap of poverty and despotism.

While this was happening, the influence of Christendom, spurred by the Protestant Reformation and, later, the Scientific Revolution, was growing exponentially. As Michael Novak and others have pointed out, science and democratic capitalism emerged from a Christian worldview in which God is seen as active and involved in His creation, and in which man is seen as a steward of the Almighty, developing the creative potential of the earth for the good of others and for the glory of God.

In recent years, Freedom House and others have spotlighted the integral connection between economic freedom and political freedom. For most of the last millennium, the bulk of the Muslim world has had neither. As scholar Bernard Lewis said in The Atlantic, “In the course of the 20th century it became abundantly clear that things had gone badly wrong in the Middle East—and indeed, in all the lands of Islam. Compared with Christendom, its rival for more than a millennium, the world of Islam had become poor, weak, and ignorant.

“The primacy and therefore the dominance of the West was clear for all to see, invading every aspect of the Muslim’s public and even—more painfully—his private life.”

Muslims generally have responded to this state of affairs in one of two ways. The first is to turn away from Islam’s perceived backwardness and embrace “Western values.” Early last century, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern state of Turkey, took this route. Saying, “Uncivilized people are doomed to be trodden under the feet of civilized people,” Ataturk abolished the caliphate and attempted to secularize the country (forgetting that economic development was born in a Christian, not a secular, milieu).

The second is to return to Islam’s supposed “golden age” by more strictly enforcing Islamic law. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden champion this radical approach, to the point of killing “infidels” (i.e., Christians and Jews) and other Muslims deemed not sufficiently faithful. The existence of the state of Israel is one grievance of these fanatics, but certainly not the only one.

George W. Bush is gambling on a third way, saying that Islam itself supports democracy and advancement. With elections scheduled in January, the Iraq front in the war on terror hangs in the balance. The president says that Muslims’ key problem is not Islam but oppression. While many on both the left and the right scoff, the president has picked up a compelling ally: Natan Sharansky. The former Soviet dissident has just written a book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.

But the jury, quite frankly, is still out on Islam. For every verse in the Qur’an suggesting that freedom can grow in Muslim soil (such as “there is no compulsion in religion”), there is another commanding oppression in the name of God (“make war on them until idolatry shall cease”).

Earlier this year at a White House conference on women’s rights, Bush chose to emphasize the positive, saying, “A religion that demands individual moral accountability and encourages the encounter of the individual with God is fully compatible with the rights and responsibilities of self-government.”

(For now, we’ll skip a discussion about whether Islam actually does encourage people to encounter the God who is there. Many Christians say it does not, adding that spiritual rebirth through Christ is the only long-term hope for sinful men and women.)

Notwithstanding the depressing weight of Muslim history and the sorry human rights, development, and political records of most of today’s Muslim-majority states, there have been some encouraging signs of late. In Turkey, where a military-backed secular government makes the rules for a population that is over 99 percent Muslim, conversion to Christianity is discouraged (but not punished by the death penalty, as in Saudi Arabia). The relatively few churches encounter many administrative roadblocks. That is finally starting to change.

Seeking to gain admittance to the European Union in the next few weeks, officials there are trying to clean up the country’s abysmal human-rights record. “The political atmosphere in Turkey has improved enough . . . to allow Christians to meet openly, to have summer camps attracting several hundred people and to have public baptisms in the Mediterranean Sea,” reports the Washington Times. An American who pastors a small church in the east told the newspaper, “We are relatively free and we are tolerated now.”

Johan Candelin, Goodwill Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance (an international umbrella group), reports that evangelical churches and Turkish authorities are holding regular talks. Candelin says the government will issue new ID cards and social security cards next year. The cards will not mention religion, making discrimination against non-Muslims less likely. And in November, the Turkish Ministry of Culture approved the first new Protestant church to be built in the southeast since the country’s founding. While such acts come from the top down and not the grass roots, they nonetheless represent a real beginning.

Last April, Istanbul was the site of a conference on Islam and democracy sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. An Indonesian lawmaker said there that Islamic law “includes rights and foundations well-established enough to build a democratic society.”

Morocco, more than 98 percent Muslim, is also undergoing political and social reform. Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals was part of groundbreaking meetings between Moroccan officials and an international delegation of Christians that ended in early March. Cizik told me the trip was “a breakthrough in relations with an Islamic state that we believe will build a more respectful positive dialogue between evangelical Christians and Muslims around the world. Other nations are looking at what's occurring in Morocco, and we believe it's a model for dialogue that could be patterned elsewhere.”

So is Islam really a religion of peace? If we go by much of its history, reluctantly we must say, Not yet.

Turning the other cheek is a Christian duty, not a Muslim one. Unlike Western democracies, Islam fuses “mosque and state,” leading to many abuses in the name of religion. Unlike the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, Islam’s founder was a warrior. And like other faiths (including Christianity), Islam has many elements that sinful people have interpreted as sanctions to slaughter.

But the good news is that the Muslim religion also has elements that teach respect for human dignity, elements that we can encourage. As Christian theologian Timothy George says, “Fundamentally this is not a dispute between Christianity and Islam but rather a debate within Islam itself.”

Ultimately, it matters little whether Christians think Islam is a religion of peace, but it matters terribly what the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims think. Our tasks are to pray that Islam becomes a religion of peace–and to help make it happen.