Today's Top Five

1. Tom Fox's body discovered
Tom Fox, who had worked as a Quaker youth leader and as a musician in the United States Marine Band before joining the pacifist Christian Peacemaker Teams' efforts in Iraq, was found dead in Baghdad Thursday evening. A group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigades had held him and three other Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) activists hostage since November 26. The three others remain captive.

Not everyone has been sympathetic. Columnist Cal Thomas called the death "doubly tragic … because the likelihood that the presence of Mr. Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none." He also criticized CPT's theology, noting the group's statement about Fox having "firm opposition to all oppression and the recognition of God in everyone."

"Perhaps if Christian Peacemaker Teams had gone to Iraq during Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, or to China while Mao Tse-tung was slaughtering millions, or to Moscow while Josef Stalin practiced genocide on his people, or to any number of other capitals of carnage, they might be taken more seriously, though under those regimes they might have disappeared much quicker," Thomas wrote. "Was God 'in' these mass murderers, or was it Lucifer?"

In a sense, Fox addressed this question in an item he wrote the day before his abduction. Even our enemies—and there are indeed enemies in this world—bear the image of God, he wrote. And we're called to show them radical love:

Why are we here? If I understand the message of God, his response to that question is that we are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I understand the message of God, how we take part in ...