GOD IS BACK

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

is supremely witty and on point in his analysis of the resurgence of the role of religious life in America in his new book "GOD IS BACK."

Of course, God never went away, we just didn't give him all that much play. Adrian Wooldridge is the bureau chief of sorts of the Economist Magazine here in Washington and previously wrote the "Lexington Column."

A positively delightful character and I highly recommend you have him speak to your event.

"God is Back" opens, as Adrian explained in his talk to some DC ethics and public policy forum that has George Weigel's name all over it, in a scene of an apartment home church in China where scripture is read and projected on a wall to a group of 25 or less people, as only 25 people at most may gather for fear of attracting too much attention. Christianity is still not a favored activity in China and persecution means more than the left boot of fellowship; it can mean the lock up for merely gathering en masse to celebrate a Mass. No First Amendment in

China. We need to export it, he argued. The non-establishment of religion has served both the state and all religions in a non-monopolistic competition of ideas and religious worship and expression that should well be exported into the world. He traced the European history, treaty of Westphalia and all that sought to forever prevent the war of religions in Europe that were bloody aweful. Note to that Bishop in Kansas that keeps calling the culture wars "War"- been there, done that.

Adrian predicted that in the not too distant future China may have a competing large population of Christians and a large population of Muslims who will try to worship without fear

in a country that is hospitable to neither. Adrian is nothing short of brilliant in his exposition of

religion in western civilization- all of it actually- the European post-Voltaire secularization and the modernity that co-exists with American religious expression and worship. He gives the American version of religious freedom the thumbs up and declares us tolerant and more enlightened than The Enlightenment.

He noted his book "God is Back" is liable to tick off just about everyone, at least superficially until they actually read it; the Right will be offended because God never left, the athiestic Hitchens variety of self-annointed prophets of nothingness will declare it nonsense.

The left curve question of the evening came from me- how would the Europeans respond to the fact that 55 or so bishops are facing down the President by declaring him unfit to speak at a major catholic college with over a quarter million signatures of ticked off alumns who won't buy season tickets to the football game anymore? To this he rippped Roe v. Wade a new one and said it was a jurisprudential piece of sloven american dementia essentially without any real jurisprudential penumbral intelligibility based on the fabrication of rights which mean whatever circularly you want them to to support the conclusion. England dealt with the issue with a serious series of hotly contested referenda politically which gave legitimacy to the legalization of abortion through a democratic process. He noted that the time frame in England wherein it is legal to have an abortion has been decreased recently (as viability is feasible earlier and earlier)- and that it is apauling that in America anyone would think that an abortion at any phase in a pregnancy should be permitted. Off the radar appauling. [At some point you have to acknowledge that the life of any post-viability pre-born infant in the womb- a PVPBI- has to be protected as any life human-and it isn't the mother's right to knock it off- because it can live with the care of anyone who will care for it. He didn't say that- I submit it's common sense]

This person speaks imminent undiluted truth, not poisoned by the American political finance system that beholds anyone to anyone or anything- He is a rare gem. Get him to speak to Congress and get his book. He is a ray of delightful sanity.