WASHINGTON, DC: William Blake expressed the proper attitude of religious people toward satirical blasphemy. Those who believe they hold an eternal truth about the nature and destiny of the universe cannot find a cartoon or novel to be genuinely threatening. The Parthenon or the Great Pyramid is not destroyed by some graffiti scrawled on its base. Equanimity is one manifestation of mature faith.

The discrediting of religion is usually an inside job—often by religious people who allow their faith to be exploited in pursuit of someone else’s ideological agenda. Think of the “German Christians” who applauded Adolf Hitler’s rise in the 1930s. “”Our Protestant churches have welcomed the turning point of 1933,” said one Lutheran theologian, “as a gift and miracle of God.” What vulgar anti-religious satire, what urine-soaked crucifix, could possibly be more damaging than this?

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