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But all four pundits show less understanding than President Bush regarding what Americans are fighting, and why we are fighting it. This is not a war against fundamentalism, unless these armchair generals want America to wage a centuries-long reverse Crusade against all people who believe in objective truth, miracles, an afterlife, or natural law.

The enemy is clear: terrorism. What America is defending also is clear: the freedoms of a democratic republic. Those freedoms include the right to worship God, to deny God's existence, or to write an unfair essay about fundamentalists for The New York Times. By ruling of the Supreme Court, those freedoms also include some of the most permissive abortion policies in the world—and the right to peaceful protest and political lobbying to correct those policies. And those freedoms include the right to make horrible, costly choices about sexual behavior—and the right to preach that God designed sex for the covenant of marriage.

As difficult as this must be for pundits to understand, most Christians (even most who happily call themselves fundamentalists) recognize and respect the freedoms of this great nation. Most Christians know the difference between joyously sharing the Good News and "negating" all other beliefs (if such negating were possible). Most Christians maintain a coherent faith that respects the Bible as God's self-revelation and is not terrified by the challenges of modernity.

We are confident that, just as love is stronger than death, freedom eventually will prevail over terrorism. And we are thankful that writers who see fundamentalists in every shadow are not in charge of waging this war.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Columns discussed in the editorial include:

Religion's misguided missilesPromise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster (Richard Dawkins, The Guardian, September 15)

This is a religious warThe religious dimension of this conflict is central to its meaning (Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times, October 7)

Fundamental flawsAmerica's religious Right and the West's romantic Left now share an Arcadian, pre-modern vision similar to that of Muslim conservatives (Michael Lind, The Guardian, November 11)

Foreign affairs; The Real WarThe current war against terrorism is not about eradicating terrorism but seeks to defeat an ideology, namely, religious totalitarianism (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, November 27)

Christianity Today's Weblog commented in October that several columnists and pundits—such as Dawkins and Sullivan—turned the war on terrorism into a war against exclusivism.

Another article appearing today on our site also examines secularists' pleas for non-religious politics.

In 2000, Sullivan wrote an article on his interaction with conservative Christians (his "enemies") at Pat Robertson's 70th Birthday celebration. He found them to be "really quite nice."

Recently, The Washington Post interviewed Friedman about his increased exposure and controversial columns since the September 11 attacks.

Christianity Today recently reviewed Aaron Sorkin's West Wing. Read more about the show's religious terrorism episode.

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January 7 2002, Vol. 46, No. 1