Mr. Dalrymple calls himself an unbeliever, although he sounds reluctant. His unbelief does not forestall a smart take-down of those atheists, nor a wistful appreciation of Christian charity:
Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:
With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.
Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?
No doubt it helps that Hall lived at a time of sonorous prose, prose that merely because of its sonority resonates in our souls; prose of the kind that none of us, because of the time in which we live, could ever equal. But the style applies to the thought as well as the prose; and I prefer Hall’s charity to Harris’s intolerance.
The entire article, as with all that Mr. Dalrymple writes, is well worth reading.
Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and the Second Coming of Hope, has recently raised himself high enough in the running for the Republican presidential nomination that he merits a looking over.
The First Amendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred.
My faith is my life – it defines me. I don’t separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.
Real faith makes us more humble and mindful, not of the faults of others, but of our own. It makes us less judgmental, as we see others with the same frailties we have.
Faith gives us strength in the face of injustice and motivates us to do our best for “the least of us.”
Our nation was birthed in a spirit of faith – not a prescriptive faith telling us how or whether to believe, but acknowledging a providence that pervades our world.
This is the first issue listed, so takes pride of place among Gov. Huckabee’s statements. As stated, his position on this issue closely aligns with my own. Unless you harbor deep-seated suspicions that anyone with strong religious beliefs is planning on instituting theocracy once in power, this issue is either neutral or positive.
