CNN Viewers Prove Much More Encouraging Than "God's Warriors"

It’s truly heartening that the statements by CNN.com readers and the follow-up comments by others contain almost none of the ridiculous claims voiced with such misplaced fervor by all of “God’s Warriors”—Jewish, Islamic or Christian—portrayed so accurately by Christiane Amanpour in her outstanding six-hour analysis. The feedback is available at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/23/faith.reader.feedback/index.html

As observed by several insightful commentators, what is fundamentally under attack is not religion but what may be the United States’ best gift to the world, the wall of separation between church and state enshrined in our Constitution’s First Amendment. The Founders had experienced state religion, sects that claimed to have the only truth about God, and persecution by religionists in God’s name. The First Amendment religion clauses were crafted specifically and consciously to keep those abuses from happening here.

The blood-thirsty insistence by “God’s Warriors” that they must destroy anyone who disagrees with them is the strongest present-day confirmation that that the wall of separation is the perfect antidote to intolerant self-worship masquerading as faith—and that the sooner it is adopted in every nation on earth, the safer the world will be.

Nowhere is it more urgent than in Jerusalem, where the three major religions need to affirm together that all of their claims have some historical justification, and that the only way they can enjoy their own claims is by allowing the other two religions to enjoy theirs in the same time and space.