Submitted by Steve Meikle, Dec 14, 2007 14:17

Mr Kirsch sets up a false dichotomy when he says it is either to sit in peace under one's own fig tree or to convert the heathen.

The Christian God offers both, indeed one is not fit to convert the heathen until he has learned the art of sitting at peace under his own fig tree. Any kind of converting done without peace is an obscenity I have witnessed time and time again among the christian fundamentalists. It's premises are heresy and its results blacken the name of the Church and of God Himself

I am ceasing to have the tensions that the author describes as bedevilling Mr Walzer because for me, though my fig tree may be figurative, my God is not.

The freedom I am fast approaching attainment of is that not given by the world, therefore it is not in the purview of the state.

But being given not by the world, but by God Himself, no man wil ever be able to take ti from me. So the questions that perplex both the author of the article reviewed and the reviewer become distant memories

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