{"id":43966,"date":"2015-03-15T00:06:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T00:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=43966"},"modified":"2015-03-15T01:50:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T01:50:11","slug":"the-man-who-could-help-prevent-a-holy-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=43966","title":{"rendered":"The man who could help prevent a holy war"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ Charles Cameron<\/strong> — Garry Wills sees “holy war” lurking just around the corner ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"Christ-flag<\/a>
Pro-Russia fighters near the eastern Ukrainian city of Starobeshevo in Donetsk region, on 25 February. Photograph: Vasily Maximov\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

Let’s be clear. the image above is from the confrontation in Ukraine, whereas the holy war that Garry Wills<\/strong> sees is quite another business. Under the headline that also heads this post, he writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Discussions ricochet around Pope Francis\u2019s ability to reconcile the Catholic Church\u2019s bureaucracy, theology and practitioners. But for a man of Francis\u2019s scope and skill, this is too narrow an assignment. His real task, for which he is ideally situated, is to prevent the world\u2019s descent into religious war. <\/p>\n

Many people want to make our \u201cwar on terror\u201d a war on at least a segment of the Muslim religion. Sen. Lindsey Graham (RS. C.) makes this very clear: \u201cWe are in a religious war<\/a>.\u201d Some think of this war as being waged in revenge for the attacks of 9\/11 \u2014 to prove, as former deputy undersecretary of defense Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin once put it, that their God is greater than Islam\u2019s<\/a>. But there are 1.3 billion followers of Islam scattered around the world, and an ambitious Gallup poll of Muslims in 35 heavily Muslim countries<\/a> found that the vast majority of them did not approve of the 9\/11 attacks. Significantly, those who condemned the attacks based their opposition to violence mainly on religion, while the 7 percent who considered them \u201ccompletely justified\u201d relied heavily on political arguments. How can we blame the Muslim religion for this horror?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t agree with everything that Wills says, but his view of Francis’ “scope and skill” is worth pondering.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

I posted the image above because it gives a vivid and immediate sense of what “Onward, Christian Soldiers” might look and feel like, if it left the churches and turned up on the evening news.<\/p>\n

Image source:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
  • The Guardian, Frontline Ukraine:’How Europe failed to slay the demons of war’<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    [ Charles Cameron — Garry Wills sees “holy war” lurking just around the corner ] . Pro-Russia fighters near the eastern Ukrainian city of Starobeshevo in Donetsk region, on 25 February. Photograph: Vasily Maximov\/AFP\/Getty Images ** Let’s be clear. the image above is from the confrontation in Ukraine, whereas the holy war that Garry Wills […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,497,87,888,753,960,91,1026,1,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-foreign-policy","category-francis","category-islam","category-pope","category-russia","category-ukraine","category-uncategorized","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43966"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43982,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43966\/revisions\/43982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}