Here is the lead sentence from Time mag’s latest story from Iraq:

There is good news from Iraq, believe it or not.

What are they, Ripley’s? Believe it or not? Anyone who’s been following the non-MSM-reported news from Iraq over months or years already know that there is no shortage of good news from Iraq, never has been a shortage.

It’s Time’s editorial staff that can hardly believe this. After all, “the war is lost,” according to a senator. So, grudgingly, Time does report some good news, but let’s you know in the very first sentence you can believe it … or not.

That apparently is Time’s standard of “objective” reporting, believe it or not.

An epoch-dividing event recently took place in the religion that brought us B.C. and A.D. Too bad hardly anyone noticed.

For years, a dispute has boiled between the American Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion it belongs to, with many in the global south convinced that Episcopalians are following their liberalism into heresy. This month, Archbishop Peter Akinola, shepherd of 18 million fervent Nigerian Anglicans, reached the end of his patience and installed a missionary bishop to America. The installation ceremony included boisterous hymns and Africans dressed in bright robes dancing before the altar — an Anglican worship style more common in Kampala, Uganda, than in Woodbridge.

The American presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, condemned this poaching of souls on her turf as a violation of the “ancient customs of the church.” To which the archbishop replied, in essence: Since when have you American liberals given a fig about the ancient customs of the church?

“Missionaries in Northern Virginia,” by Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. RTWT.

HT: Peter Wehner, via email.

Combat and the problem of forgiveness

For someone who professes to follow Jesus Christ, or at least follow his teachings, the subject of forgiveness is probably one of the most vexing. Jesus taught plainly that his followers are obligated to forgive, for example, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt. 6:14-15).

On the face of it, this would seem simple enough because most of the wrongs we suffer are petty enough that it is not worth carrying a grudge. In fact, we tend to think someone odd or a little unbalanced who nurses such grudges and always wants to balance a score, no matter how slight and unimportant the offense by any objective standard.

But hardly any of us suffer wrongs by someone who can realistically be called an “enemy.” An adversary perhaps, even an opponent, more likely a friend of family member, but how many of us have actually enemies, who seek to do us actual, genuine harm? I don’t mean only physical harm. Even so, I’d wager a small minority of people endure the blows, physical or otherwise, of actual enemies.

Except combat soldiers, who face very real and very lethal enemies practically daily. I use “soldiers” in its ancient, generic sense of any member of the armed forces who engages in direct combat or suffers its lethal effects.

Soldiers have actual enemies who really do wish them lethal harm and try to achieve that end. Are soldiers, the ones who profess loyalty to Christ, required to forgive those who try to kill them, or who succeed in killing or harming close friends?

If, in combat, an enemy takes the life of your best friend, or blows off your leg, and if you think of yourself as a disciple of Jesus Christ, are you required to forgive that enemy? Is a Christian soldier required by the commandments of Christ to forgive those who have sought to kill him, or who have killed or wounded his comrades?

Do soldiers in battle do anything, absent atrocities, for which forgiveness is required by their enemies?

I know that ordinary soldiers, fighting for the right, can commit heinous acts that later repulse their own consciences. I have known former soldiers who have carried guilt of such deeds for many years. But I am not addressing whether soldiers need to be forgiven for deeds they have committed - a topic for another post, perhaps - but whether they are required to forgive their enemies. I reiterate, I speak from a Christian perspective.

“All alike have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” whether fighting for justice or oppression. To say “just warrior” implies that the just warrior’s enemy is unjust, yet both alike will be judged by God.

By this question, I do not mean that warfare somehow provides a magic exemption from the commandments of Christ. If so, where would we stop naming other exemptions?

I mean, Is soldiering in war generally just a all-around “suckathon” for which the enemy’s mere participation incurs no offense requiring my forgiveness, though God must still be faced by us both alike?

Jesus again:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” [Matthew 5:43-45]

It’s a little flip to say that the command to “love your enemies” cannot possibly include killing them in battle; I’m not going to argue that point here. Go read Aquinas. This post is not about the abstractness of Just War Theory but about the concreteness of a seemingly simple question: Do the duties of a Christian soldier vis-a-vis armed military enemies include forgiving them?

Comments on

“… in a clean facility where the immigrant workers speak our language.”

So bemoans Margret Kopala, writing in The Ottawa Citizen. Canada’s birth rate has fallen to 1.5 births per woman. As I’ve written about before, the West is committing demographic suicide. It takes 2.1 births per woman just to stay level in population. Canada’s rate of 1.5 means that it is not far from falling off a demographic cliff. If the rate falls to about 1.3, as it has done in two or three European countries, there is almost no chance that it can recover.

There is no longer a single country in Europe where people are having enough children to replace themselves when they die. Italy recently became the first nation in history where there are more people over the age of 60 than there are under the age of 20. This year [1998 - DS] Germany, Greece and Spain will probably all cross the same eerie divide. [link]

Ms. Kopala also observes,

Greece has 1.3 births per couple — the “lowest low” from which no society has ever recovered; Russia, where 60 per cent of pregnancies are terminated, has the fastest-growing rate of HIV in the world and, by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts or uncles. …

Most European countries compensate for their low birth rate by importing very large numbers of immigrants, particularly from or through Turkey and from northern Africa. This habit produces its own set of problems, especially since most of these immigrants are Muslims and “Old Europe” has never actually desired that they become assimilated into traditional European culture. France especially has had very rough time which I wrote about in some length in Nov. 2004 in part four of “The Forever Jihad” (all parts combined here).

But back to the original topic. In Canada, Kopala says, one couple out of 15 are medically diagnosed as infertile. And women who do bear children are delaying it much longer than before; a mother’s average age of of first birth is 29.5 years. But the older women are the less likely they are to conceive and the more likely the pregnancy will miscarry.

Compounding the problem, earlier and increased sexual activity means a greater likelihood for contracting gonorrhea or chlamydia. In women, pelvic inflammatory disease and, in turn, blocked fallopian tubes or ectopic pregnancy may result. In men, sterility is possible. According to healthyontario.

com, rates of STD infection are up 60 per cent since 1997, with girls between the ages of 15 and 19 incurring the highest rates. In 2003, 20,000 new cases of chlamydia were reported in Canada. …

On this front, Mark Steyn blames the “progressive agenda” — abortion, gay marriage, endlessly deferred adulthood — and he’s right. He doesn’t get into many specifics but they are easily identified. In the U.S., 48.5 million abortions since Roe v. Wade only slightly exceeds the estimated 47 million civilians lost in the Second World War. And, as the University of Calgary’s Rainer Knopf predicted, gay marriage means any public distinction between procreative and non-procreative sexuality is now totally abandoned.

On that last point, see my Wall Street Journal op-ed of march 2004, “Save Marriage? It’s Too Late” - their title. not mine.

When society decided-and we have decided, this fight is over-that society would no longer decide the legitimacy of sexual relations between particular men and women, weddings became basically symbolic rather than substantive, and have come for most couples the shortcut way to make the legal compact regarding property rights, inheritance and certain other regulatory benefits. But what weddings do not do any longer is give to a man and a woman society’s permission to have sex and procreate.

Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of “saving marriage” is pretty specious. There’s little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it.

That the United States’ birth rate is barely under the 2.1 repalcement rate should be of no comfort. The demographic trend has been for decades that American women are having their first children at steadily advancing ages (see “The Vanishing American Family).

“Shrinkwrapped,” the nom de blog of a psychoanalyst, writes that the “me” generation (meaning practically anyone born after World War II) exhibits a kind of social narcissism that also helps drive down the birth rate:

People decide not to have children for all sorts of reasons and much of the time their narcissistic pathology doesn’t enter into the calculation. However, on the margins, a society that has exalted the individual as its highest value, is a society that will have many individual members who do not know how, or are poorly equipped psychologically, to make the difficult compromises necessary to raise children. In such cases, eschewing children in favor of “self actualization” becomes the choice of enough people that Demographics are effected. When this is combined with a loss of faith in one’s society (as seems to be so prevalent in Europe, where nothing but the profane is sacred), a staggering financial burden, and social opprobrium, Demographic decline can border on Demographic suicide.

The procreation of children is the ultimate expression of faith in the future. Yet to come, how religious environmentalism devalues human life and has convinced countless people (most astonishingly, Christians) that human beings are bad for the planet. Some advance reading assignments:

Nature is not your friend

“Environmentalism as Religion,” by Michael Crichton

“Children ‘bad for planet’”

“Eco-Extremist Wants World Population to Drop below 1 Billion. Sea Shepherd founder says mankind is a ‘virus’ and we need to ‘re-wild the planet.’ “

The latest email bomb goes like this:

Don’t pump gas on May 15th.

In April, 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight. On May 15th, 2007 all internet users are asked to not go to a gas station and pump gas in protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most places.

There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the internet network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up. If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,292,000,000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companies pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the middle eastern oil industry for at least one day.

If you agree, re-send this to everyone on your contact list with it saying ‘’Don’t pump gas on May 15th”.

The problem, of course, is that even if every driver in American actually did stay away from the pumps on May 15, all they would do is give the station owners a free vacation day. As Snopes reasonably explains, the “gas out” day does not actually reduce gasoline sales because drivers still drive their normal miles that day. The people who would have bought fuel on May 15 will instead buy fuel on the 14th or 16th.

Nor was there a gas out in April 1997 that caused gas prices to drop 30 cents overnight. Sam Cook explains,

David Emery, author of Urban Legends and Folklore, debunks the claim of a 1997 Gas Out on his Web site.

“There was one in 1999, but it didn’t cause gas prices to drop 30 cents per gallon overnight,'’ he says. “In fact, it didn’t cause them to drop at all. Despite the popularity of the e-mail campaign, the event itself attracted scant participation and was completely ineffectual.'’

Now, my wife will sign up for dinner out on May 15 - or any other day of the year - but we’ll let the “gas out” roll on by.

The IHT:

An Israeli archaeologist on Tuesday said he has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land - a potentially major discovery that capped a 35-year quest for the researcher.

This is a major find indeed if it is confirmed. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod and the gospel also says that Herod ordered the slaughter of every boy aged two years or less in an attempt to snuff out Jesus’ life. By then, however, Jesus and his parents had moved to Egypt.

Herod is a very significant figure in the history of the Jews and the Jewish nation. Herod ruled the Roman province of Judea, corresponding roughly to the old Jewish kingdom of Judah. The Romans did not rule Judea directly until after Herod’s death. Herod was a very brutal king, not hesitating to have executed even some of his own sons when he thought they were plotting to dethrone him. Caesar Augustus then remarked that it was better to be Herod’s pigs than his sons. Herod ordered major building projects in Jerusalem and Judah, many of which survive today.

The Herod whose tomb is claimed found is not the same man who refused to judge the grown Jesus and sent him back to Pontius Pilate. That was Herod Antipas, son of the Herod referenced in the find.