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A Misunderstanding Between Friends
This November I received a disturbing e-mail. Presbyterian pastors like me were being alerted that the national headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) had received an anonymous letter threatening arson attacks against Presbyterian churches. "You bet your ass this is a terrorist threat," the would-be arsonist wrote in closing. Re-reading the sentence in my email, I was struck that my seminary education, excellent though it was, never taught me how to defend my congregation against crazy people.

The arson threat was only the latest expression of anti-Presbyterian rhetoric since last June, when the Presbyterian General Assembly took actions that The Wall Street Journal called "anti-Semitic" and that Alan Dershowitz called "immoral, sinful, and bigoted denigrations of the Jewish state." Dennis Prager said we Presbyterians were "morally sick" and "infested with a particularly virulent strain of moral idiocy," and the B’nai B’rith, citing the "hostile, aggressive, and profoundly insulting" actions of the Presbyterian Church, called for an end to interfaith dialogue....