Sublime

More than any other religious demographic in America, white evangelical Protestants support preemptive war, condone the use of torture, and favor the death penalty.

If, after all, he looked like leading a whole town astray, then Deuteronomy 13:12–18 would come into play; it has been suggested that this was why several towns refused to countenance his teaching, since to do so would court disaster for them as well as for him.

passage is adultery. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul adds another ground—namely, willful desertion. These actions essentially break the covenant vow so thoroughly, that, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:15, the wronged spouse “is not bound.”

This is at the heart of the way in which I believe we can today restate the doctrine of final judgment. I find it quite impossible, reading the New Testament on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, to suppose that there will be no ultimate condemnation, no final loss, no human beings to whom, as C. S. Lewis put it, God will eventually say,

Were evangelicals embracing an increasingly militant faith in response to a new threat from the Islamic world? Or were they creating the perception of threat to justify their own militancy and enhance their own power, individually and collectively?