Infidels

The exlusionary nature of salvation as preached by many religious bodies seems harmless enough, a simple reinforcement of the benefits accruing to the faithful -- until one considers what it implies about the fate of the other, the un-faithful, the infidel.

Nicholas Kristof is entitrely right in saying, in the article from which his quote above is taken:

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit

and to observe accordingly that:

It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety

in our own popular fiction.

The Saudi publication with which I'm pairing this quote from Kristof (and his invocation of the Left Behind series) is likewise notable for the frankness with which it attacks notions of religious equivalence, and particularly those which would equate Christianity or Judaism with Islam, on the grounds that such equivalence reduces the incentive to jihad...

The theological correctness of the exclusionary position in each case (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) can be (and is) argued from scripture -- and yet, as I hope the next DoubleQuotes will show, there is that within us which can see beyond the sectarian to a deeper and more universal truth.