Will we have religious wars?
• Religious Intolerance
Boykin's Pentagon superiors did not seem to take offense, but Muslim leaders did, and so did members of Congress. Boykin's remarks can only inflame Arab perceptions. On Friday the general offered a sort of apology.
"I am neither a zealot nor an extremist," he said, "only a soldier who has an abiding faith."
The general's critics are right to deplore the denigration of the faith of Muslims, but the problem goes deeper than a crudely expressed religious chauvinism. In point of fact, the general's remarks do not make him an extremist. It was unfashionable of him to speak aloud the implications of his "abiding faith," but exclusivist claims made for Jesus Christ by most Christians, from Vatican corridors to evangelical revival tents, implicitly insult the religion of others. When Catholics speak of "salvation" only through Jesus, or when Protestants limit "justification" to faith in Jesus, aspersions are cast on the entire non-Christian world.
James Carroll, Boston Globe: Warring with God
Earlier: I knew my God was bigger than his and Survey believers don't think faith causes violence.