By ROGER SCRUTON How did the universe begin? Some think the question has no answer—that it lies beyond the limits of human reason. Others think the question has an answer, but that the answer depends not on reason but on faith.

What almost no one believes is that there is a single, rational scientific theory that tells us how the universe emerged from the primeval nothingness. How could there be such a thing?

When Isaac Newton proposed his laws of gravity, he did so in a spirit of awe and reverence before the simplicity and beauty of the physical world. He did not doubt that so perfect a design implied a yet more perfect designer.

Immanuel Kant, who believed that Newton's laws of gravity are not merely true but necessarily true, argued that we humans lack the ability to comprehend the universe as a whole, and thus that we can never construct a valid argument for a designer. Our thinking can take us from one point to another along the chain of events. But it cannot take us to a point outside the chain, from which we can pose the question of an original cause.

Indeed the question of how the universe began does not make sense. The concept of cause applies to the objects of experience, linking past to future through universal laws. When we ask about the universe as a whole we are attempting to go beyond possible experience into a realm where the concept of cause has no purchase, and where the writ of reason does not run.

All physicists since Kant have been influenced by this argument. Some admit the point, like Albert Einstein, Others, like Stephen Hawking, express the point in a language of their own.

But Mr. Hawking now wishes to break with this consensus and to argue that science actually does have an answer to the question of origins. We can know how the universe was created, he suggests, since the laws of physics imply that there are limiting conditions, in which universes come into being by the operation of those very laws. There is no room for the creator, since there is no need for Him. The laws of physics do it all by themselves.

Mr. Hawking, of course, dazzles us with his scientific discoveries. Einstein broke with the common-sense view of the world when he decided to treat time as a fourth dimension, on a par with the three dimensions of space. Mr. Hawking gives us dimension upon dimension, assuming that because every continuum can be squeezed into the axioms of a geometry there is no limit to the number of dimensions in which we humans find ourselves suspended. Nor is there a limit to the number of universes, even though we happen to inhabit only one of them and the others may be forever inaccessible to us.

The laws of physics are fast ceasing to be laws of the universe and are becoming laws of a "multiverse" instead. By the time people absorb all of these shifts, they have little strength left to dissent from the view that "the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing" or to question Mr. Hawking's conclusion that therefore there is no need for God.

But what exactly has changed? Have we really moved on from the position that Kant presented? Have we really lifted ourselves outside of everything and everywhere, and achieved the view from nowhere that tells us how things began?

If Mr. Hawking is right, the answer to the question "What created the universe?" is "The laws of physics." But what created the laws of physics? How is it that these strange and powerful laws, and these laws alone, apply to the world?

There are those who will say that the question has no answer —that it lies at or beyond the limits of human thought. And there are those who will say that the question has an answer, but that it is answered not by reason but by faith.

I say that perhaps, in the end, they are the same position. That is what Kant believed. You find out the limits of scientific understanding, he said. And beyond those limits lies the realm of morality, commitment and trust.

Kant, who destroyed all the systems of metaphysics and dug a grave for theology, was also a believer, who, as he put it, "attacked the claims of reason in order to make room for those of faith." It seems to me that he was right.

Mr. Scruton, a philosopher, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

A religious test all our political candidates should take
By Damon Linker
Sunday, September 19, 2010; B01




Fifty years ago, in the midst of his presidential campaign against Richard Nixon, Sen. John F. Kennedy gave a speech to ease voters' concerns about his Catholic faith. Speaking in Houston, Kennedy emphasized that Article VI of the Constitution maintains that no "religious test" may keep a candidate from aspiring to political office. He went further, implying that his Catholicism should be off limits to public scrutiny. To treat a politician's religious beliefs as politically relevant was an affront to America's noblest civic traditions, he declared.

The speech was a huge success -- and not only because it helped Kennedy win. Its most enduring legacy was to persuade journalists, critics and citizens at large not to question the political implications of candidates' religious beliefs. While it was still acceptable to assess the dangers of generic "religion" in public life, evaluating particular faiths came to be viewed as bigotry.

No longer. Since the rise of the religious right in the late 1970s, traditionalist believers have actively injected faith into the political realm, pushing public figures to place their religious convictions at the core of their civic identities and political campaigns. From Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush, U.S. presidents have made overt -- and largely innocuous -- gestures toward satisfying this expectation.

Today, President Obama's religious beliefs are at the forefront of public debate. While Fox News personality Glenn Beck decries Obama's alleged left-leaning Christianity as "liberation theology," nearly a fifth of the country believes, mistakenly, that the president is a Muslim. It is tempting to stick with the old Kennedy argument and respond that the president's faith is irrelevant as well as off limits. But it is neither.

The battles over an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan and a Florida pastor's threat to burn the Koran on Sept. 11 underscore the relevance of political leaders' views on faith -- their own as well as others'. Instead of attempting the impossible task of abolishing faith from the political conversation, we need a new kind of religious test for our leaders. Unlike the tests proscribed by the Constitution, this one would not threaten to formally bar members of specific traditions from public office. But religious convictions do not always harmonize with the practice of democratic government, and allowing voters to explore the dissonance is legitimate.

Every religion is radically particular, with its own distinctive beliefs about God, human history and the world. These are specific, concrete claims -- about the status of the religious community in relation to other groups and to the nation as a whole, about the character of political and divine authority, about the place of prophecy in religious and political life, about the scope of human knowledge, about the providential role of God in human history, and about the moral and legal status of sex. Depending on where believers come down on such issues, their faith may or may not clash with the requirements of democratic politics. To help us make that determination, all candidates for high office should have to take the religious test, which would include the following questions:

How might the doctrines and practices of your religion conflict with the fulfillment of your official duties?

This question would be especially pertinent for evangelical Protestant candidates -- such as Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister -- who belong to faith traditions that emphasize transforming the world in the image of their beliefs. The Southern Baptist confession of faith asserts, for instance, that "all Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme . . . in human society." What would this mean for a Southern Baptist seeking to lead a nation that includes many millions of non-Christians?

Muslim candidates, meanwhile, should be asked to discuss their view of the proper place of sharia law in a religiously pluralistic society. Jewish candidates, too, should be questioned about their faith, as Sen. Joe Lieberman was during his 2000 campaign for the vice presidency, when he was asked to explain how he would negotiate the inevitable tension between the laws of religious observance (including the Sabbath) and serving the nation at its highest level.

How would you respond if your church issued an edict that clashed with the duties of your office?

This would apply primarily to candidates who belong to churches that make strong claims about the divine authority of their leaders. The Roman Catholic hierarchy, for example, has frequently asserted that the authority of the pope and bishops is binding in matters of faith and morals. As Sen. John F. Kerry learned during his 2004 presidential campaign, members of the hierarchy have begun to demand that Catholic politicians not only refrain from having abortions and encouraging women to procure them, but also work to outlaw the procedure -- even though the Supreme Court has declared it a constitutionally protected right, and even if the candidate's constituents are overwhelmingly pro-choice.

The dilemma faced by devout Mormon candidates is potentially greater. Mormons believe that the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a prophet of God, which seems to give his statements far greater weight than those of any earthly authority, including the president of the United States. In his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney skirted questions related to his Mormonism by playing down its theological distinctiveness. "The values that I have are the same values you will find in faiths across this country," Romney said in one debate. If he (or another Mormon) runs for the presidency in 2012 or beyond, he should explain how he would respond to a prophetic pronouncement that conflicted with his presidential duties.

What do you believe human beings can know about nature and history?

Many evangelical Protestants and Pentecostals believe in biblical inerrancy, which leads them to treat the findings of natural science (especially those of evolutionary biology) with suspicion. Many of these Christians also believe that God regularly intervenes in history, directing global events, guiding U.S. actions in the world for the sake of divine ends and perhaps even leading humanity toward an apocalyptic conflagration in the Middle East. Potential candidates who belong to churches associated with such thinking, such as the Pentecostal Sarah Palin, owe it to their fellow citizens to elaborate on their views of modern science and the U.S. role in the unfolding of the end times. Given the ominous implications of a person with strong eschatological convictions becoming the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, it would be profoundly irresponsible not to ask tough questions about the topic.

Do you believe the law should be used to impose and enforce religious views of sexual morality?

America's traditional religious consensus on sexual morality -- which supported laws against abortion and all forms of non-procreative sex, from masturbation to oral and anal sex, whether practiced by members of the same or different genders, inside or outside of marriage -- began to break down in the 1960s. The nation today is sharply divided between those whose views of sex are still grounded in the norms and customs of traditionalist religion and those who no longer feel bound by those norms and customs. Given this lack of consensus, the law has understandably retreated from enforcing religiously grounded views, leaving it up to individuals to decide how to regulate their sexual conduct.

The religious right hopes to reverse this retreat. That opens the troubling prospect of the state seeking to impose the sexual morals of some Americans on the nation as a whole. All candidates -- especially those who court the support of the religious right -- need to clarify where they stand on the issue. Above all, they need to indicate whether they believe it is possible or desirable to use the force of law to uphold a sexual morality affirmed by a fraction of the people.

Asking candidates about their faith should not be taken as a sign of anti-religious animus. On the contrary, this sort of questioning takes faith seriously -- certainly more seriously than most of our politicians and news media currently do. Candidates think they benefit from making a show of their faith, and journalists, aiming to avoid uncomfortable confrontations, usually allow them to leave their pronouncements at the level of platitudes. We need to go further.

Pastor Rick Warren's conversation with John McCain and Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign was a move in the right direction, though Warren was such an anodyne interviewer that the candidates were permitted to speak mainly in bromides. Better, perhaps, would be a special presidential debate devoted to faith and morality, in which journalists and religious leaders would pose pointed questions about candidates' beliefs.

It matters quite a lot if, in the end, a politician's faith is merely an ecumenical expression of American civil religion -- or if, when taking the religious test, he forthrightly declares (as Kennedy did) that in the event of a clash between his spiritual and political allegiances, the Constitution would always come first. Those are the easy cases. In others -- when a politician denies the need to choose or explain, insisting simply that it's possible to marry his or her religious beliefs with democratic rule in a pluralistic society -- we need to dig deeper, to determine as best we can how the candidate is likely to think and act when the divergent demands of those two realms collide, as they inevitably will.

Obama's 2008 speech on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his own Christian faith and its complicated intersection with the wrenching story of race in America stands as a particularly eloquent example of how to take -- and pass -- the religious test. Obama resisted giving the speech, but many Americans learned something important about the man and his mind as they listened to him talk through some of life's deepest moral, political and spiritual questions. A political process that compelled candidates to engage regularly in such thinking about the tensions and links between faith and governance just might foster increased religious understanding -- which, these days, feels in short supply.

[email protected]

Damon Linker, a contributing editor at the New Republic and a senior writing fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of "The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders."

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Jim Wallis on the story behind Pastor Terry Jones's change of heart
By Jim Wallis
Sunday, September 19, 2010; B04




It is easy to believe that hostility toward Muslims is on the rise in America. Media coverage of the battle over the proposed Islamic community center in New York, together with the hateful rants of Florida pastor Terry Jones, who threatened to burn Korans on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, paints a picture of tension between faiths.

But this narrative of constant conflict doesn't tell the whole story. In my work with religious communities across the country, I have seen interfaith relationships strengthened in recent years, not in spite of 9/11 but because of it. And these connections helped avert a tragic conclusion to the Jones saga last weekend.

Although the media focused on the role that political and military officials, including President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus, played in getting Jones to back down from his plan for a Koran bonfire, the faith community also had a key part. Religious leaders from many traditions condemned Jones's threats, while behind the scenes, a number of us reached out to stop Jones and support Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the proposed Islamic community center in New York.

Even before Jones's threats, I had been in close dialogue for several weeks with the imam and his wife, Daisy Khan. I have been friends with Rauf since a few months after the 2001 attacks, when we participated in a forum on religious fundamentalism at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York. From his words that day, I trusted him and knew that we would be able to work together as peacemakers between faiths.

The storm around the imam, his wife and their proposed community center was already bad enough when, on Thursday, Sept. 9, it threatened to get a lot worse. That afternoon, Jones announced that he would be heading up to the Big Apple to talk with the imam on the 9/11 anniversary. He seemed to think that he could leverage his Koran-burning threat to pressure Rauf to move his center -- in the process getting even more attention. The idea was offensive: It suggested a moral equivalence between burning the holy book of a billion people and building an interfaith center, and it presumed that one of the world's most important and courageous moderate Muslim leaders should bargain with the irresponsible, incoherent pastor of a tiny church.

How, I wondered the next morning, could evangelicals -- members of the faith tradition that Jones and I both claim -- run interference? I felt strongly that we were the ones who should deal with Jones, rather than a respected imam whose faith he had demonized.

At that moment, I got a call from another dear friend, Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance. He was in New York and wanted to know what he could do to help Rauf. He explained that he had Jones's cellphone number and had spoken to him earlier in the week. In an effort to talk Jones out of his original plan, he had asked him: "Will you be willing to be with me when I have to talk to the widow of an evangelical pastor in the Middle East who is killed because of what you are about to do, or to a congregation whose church is burned to the ground as a result of your Koran burning? Will you help me explain to them why you had to do this?"

Tunnicliffe seemed like the right person in the right place at the right time. We strategized how we could stop Jones from confronting the imam. I called Khan and asked her and the imam to trust Tunnicliffe; meanwhile, he pulled together many of New York's best young evangelical leaders to meet with Jones.

That afternoon, Jones got to town and checked into a hotel in Queens. He was immediately surrounded by police officers, who, he later told Tunnicliffe, warned him that his life was in danger and advised him not to go out. With a terrified Jones now reluctant to leave his hotel, a conference call replaced the face-to-face meeting that Tunnicliffe had planned. Without going into the details of a private dialogue -- one Tunnicliffe hopes will continue -- he later told me that the pastor seemed "lost." Others described the exchange as "powerful," "productive" and "reflective." During the conversation, Jones vowed never to burn a Koran and even asked what an apology might look like.

He did not seek out a confrontation with Rauf the next day. Instead, he went home. (Unfortunately, he seems to be missing the spotlight now that he is back in Florida, and he has returned to his old anti-Muslim rhetoric.)

I saw similarly powerful, productive and reflective exchanges in churches all over the country after 9/11, when hundreds of people routinely turned out to hear a visiting Muslim scholar or imam speak to their congregation. I have seen them in the work of the Interfaith Youth Core, started eight years ago by Eboo Patel, a young Muslim leader committed to helping people from all religious backgrounds find common ground.

I saw them last weekend in Jones's hometown of Gainesville, where Trinity United Methodist Church, next door to Jones's little congregation, brought together an estimated 2,000 people for a "Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope" on the night of Sept. 10 -- but failed to spark a media sensation.

And I see them today at Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tenn., which -- in a rare departure from the cable networks' steady drumbeat of conflict -- was featured on CNN last weekend. A year and a half ago, Heartsong's pastor, Steve Stone, learned that the Memphis Islamic Center had bought land adjacent to his church. Did he protest the plans for an Islamic center next door? No. He put up a large red sign that said: "Heartsong Church Welcomes Memphis Islamic Center to the Neighborhood."

The Muslim leaders were floored. They had dared to hope only that their arrival would be ignored. It had not occurred to them that they might be welcomed.

The Islamic Center's new building is still under construction, so its members used Heartsong Church for Ramadan prayer services this year. Heartsong's community barbecues now serve halal meat. And when I talked to Stone last week, he said the two congregations are planning joint efforts to feed the homeless and tutor local children.

A few days ago, Stone told me, he got a call from a group of Muslims in a small town in Kashmir, Pakistan. They said they had been watching CNN when the segment on Heartsong Church aired. Afterward, one of the community's leaders said to those who were gathered: "God just spoke to us through this man." Another said: "How can we kill these people?" A third man went straight to the local Christian church and proceeded to clean it, inside and out.

Lately, we have heard much about hostility toward Muslims in America. We have heard an awful lot about Jones's threats and about arson at the site of another Tennessee mosque project, in Murfreesboro. But we have heard little about people like Tunnicliffe and Stone and Stone's admirers in Pakistan.

And that is everyone's loss. Stone says he is just trying to love his neighbors, as he says Jesus instructs him to do. For their part, the residents of that small town in Kashmir told him: "We are now trying to be good neighbors, too. Tell your congregation we do not hate them, we love them, and for the rest of our lives we are going to take care of that little church."

Jim Wallis is president of Sojourners, a Christian social jusice network, and the author of "Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street."

For previous Outlook coverage of the controversies surrounding the Islamic center in Manhattan and Florida Pastor Terry Jones, see Tariq Ramadan's "Even now, Muslims must have faith in America," Karen Hughes's "Move the New York City mosque, as a sign of unity" and and Edward E. Curtis's "Five myths about mosques in America."

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I remember very clearly what would nowadays be called my spiritual awakening, the moment when faith became something personal to me. Until that day, I had been an extremely lucky child. I had a loving family and a comfortable life, and my father was a successful lawyer.

When I was 10, my father, just 40, suffered a severe stroke and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors were uncertain if he would survive. My mother, trying to keep a sense of normality for her children, sent us to school that morning.

To provide comfort to a frightened and bewildered boy, the head teacher, who was ordained, suggested that he and I kneel and pray for my father's recovery. I knew this was not as straightforward as he thought, and I plucked up the courage to whisper, "I'm afraid my father doesn't believe in God."

My teacher's reply was to make a lasting impression on me. "That doesn't matter," the man said. "God believes in him. He loves him without demanding or needing love in return."

My father ended up making a good recovery after a long rehabilitation. Nearly 50 years later, he remains an atheist. And while I did not become a fully committed and practicing Christian overnight, that conversation with my teacher started the process in which I came to recognize that there is a purpose to our existence beyond ourselves.

I was confirmed while I was at college, and faith has been a constant in my life. Yet even for nonbelievers, faith cannot be ignored. Today, religious beliefs -- whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or other creeds -- are at the core of the lives of two-thirds of the world's population, giving them sense and direction. And it is not only a matter of numbers -- faith matters because it inspires people to act and raise their sights beyond themselves.

Sadly, religion can be distorted into violent extremism. Having spiritual beliefs has never rendered a person incapable of doing wrong or evil. But far more often, faith can be a force for good. I have witnessed its positive impact wherever I've gone in the world. I've seen it at major disasters in the incredible humanitarian efforts of the Red Cross, Islamic Relief, or World Jewish Relief, all organizations inspired by belief. I've also seen it in the central role of synagogues, churches, temples, and mosques in helping the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged in every country. In every case, men and women of faith who are trying to put the idea of unconditional love into practice are leading these efforts.

We should not allow those who use religion as a divisive force to succeed. We can harness its power and common values to bring us together. This is more important than ever in an age when the Internet, mass communication, and travel are shrinking the world.

None of this means giving up our own beliefs -- I always say that no matter the company, I remain a Christian. But it does require focusing on the vast areas we share and not on the much smaller areas that separate us. Two years ago, I launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Among our projects, we've connected students from different continents and religions to help them learn from one another. We've united faith communities to fight against malaria, a disease that kills one million people a year. And we recently held a competition in which young people around the world created short films that showed what their religious beliefs mean to them. 

That idea of unconditional love, which made such an impression on a frightened young boy so long ago, is at the core of all our great faiths. We need to get back to this guiding light. By understanding one another, respecting one another, and acting with one another, we can show why humanity is made not poorer by faith but immeasurably richer. 




Tony Blair, who served as Britain's prime minister from 1997 to 2007, is the author of the new memoir "A Journey: My Political Life." To read more about his work, go to tonyblairfaithfoundation.org.

A Chaplain and an Atheist Go to War

 Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal Religious Programs Specialist Philip Chute, left, keeps watch over Chaplain Terry Moran during patrol.

SANGIN, Afghanistan—They say there are no atheists in foxholes. There's one on the front lines here, though, and the chaplain isn't thrilled about it.

Navy Chaplain Terry Moran is steeped in the Bible and believes all of it. His assistant, Religious Programs Specialist 2nd Class Philip Chute, is steeped in the Bible and having none of it.

Together they roam this town in Taliban country, comforting the grunts while crossing swords with each other over everything from the power of angels to the wisdom of standing in clear view of enemy snipers. Lt. Moran, 48 years old, preaches about divine protection while 25-year-old RP2 Chute covers the chaplain's back and wishes he were more attentive to the dangers of the here and now.

It's a match made in, well, the Pentagon.

"He trusts God to keep him safe," says RP2 Chute. "And I'm here just in case that doesn't work out."

Prayer on Foot Patrol View Slideshow

Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal Chaplain Terry Moran led a service for combat Marines in a bombed- out house in Sangin, Afghanistan.

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The 460 Army, Navy and Air Force chaplains deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are prohibited from carrying weapons, counting on their assistants and the troops around them for protection. It can be a perilous calling. On Monday, Chaplain Dale Goetz, 43, of White, S.D., and four other soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar. Capt. Goetz is the first Army chaplain killed in action since the Vietnam War.

Army chaplains represent 130 religions and denominations, including Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. The military says it's common for assistants to be of different faiths from the chaplains they support, or of no faith at all.

"They don't have to be religious," says retired Navy Capt. Randy Cash, who served 30 years in the Chaplain Corps and now is its historian. "They have to be able to shoot straight."

In the case of Chaplain Moran and RP2 Chute, their theological paths diverged long before their career paths joined. Terry Moran grew up in Spokane, Wash., a Seventh-Day Adventist, a denomination that believes the Sabbath should be on Saturday, not Sunday.

Though he admits to some youthful indiscretions and flirted briefly with the lure of dentistry, by the age of 15 he was feeling the pull of the ministry. A minister spoke at his high school and read a passage from the Book of Revelation: "Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me."

In the audience, Lt. Moran "felt the spiritual become real." Two years later, in 1978, the same minister was back urging students to join the clergy. This time Lt. Moran took him up on it, becoming a student missionary in Indonesia, then studying theology at Walla Walla College. He preached at churches and counseled in hospitals. At the age of 39, just prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, he heard there was a shortage of Navy chaplains and signed up.

After several noncombat jobs, he volunteered to minister to the Marine infantry, knowing that such an assignment would likely mean he'd end up in Iraq or Afghanistan. "I needed another deployment in order to stay competitive with my peers," he says.

He drew Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, a unit headed for Afghanistan's violent Helmand Province. The Marine Corps is a Naval service, and Navy chaplains minister to Marines.

Lt. Moran takes the Bible at its word, rejects the evolution of species and believes the Earth to be 6,000 years old. He carries a large Bible with him into the combat zone, while RP2 Chute totes writings of Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and fierce critic of the notion that God designed the universe.

Philip Chute was raised a devout Baptist in Nova Scotia and moved to Greenville, S.C., as a teen. His avid reading of the Bible, however, weakened his belief that fact lay behind faith. Soon he was a "full-blown atheist," he says.

He "wasted" a few years after graduating from high school, then joined the Navy. As a Canadian citizen at that time, he found the interesting career fields were closed to him, including his top choice of nuclear-submarine technician. (He became a U.S. citizen in 2009.)

Religious programs specialist sounded better than cook. He rose to the rank of RP2, the equivalent of an Army sergeant, and worked with three other chaplains before he was paired with Lt. Moran late last year.

Soon after they were assigned to work together, they had the inevitable discussion about RP2 Chute's beliefs.

At first the chaplain got the sense RP2 Chute was agnostic. "I can work with that," Lt. Moran recalls thinking.

But a few days later RP2 Chute dropped the A bomb: He was an atheist.

Appalled, Lt. Moran contacted his fellow chaplains. He says he was simply seeking counsel about whether atheists can really be chaplain's assistants. RP2 Chute is convinced Lt. Moran was trying to trade him in for a believer.

RP2 Chute was senior among Lt. Moran's possible assistants. More importantly, he already had two combat tours under his belt, while Lt. Moran hadn't yet seen a bullet fly. In the end, Lt. Moran says, he chose experience over faith.

"We're here for security," says RP2 Chute. "We're not junior chaplains."

The theological differences between Messrs. Moran and Chute have practical ramifications, though, visible during a recent foot patrol in Sangin, a farm town of 20,000 where the Musa Qala and Helmand rivers meet in the heart of Taliban country. The chaplain's aim was to link up with a platoon from Lima Co. that had been fighting for days and provide the Marines spiritual resupply.

Sangin is crisscrossed with irrigation ditches. At one wide canal, Marine engineers had erected a metal bridge to allow the troops to penetrate towards the Helmand River and slice through Taliban strongholds. The Taliban figured that out, though, and an insurgent sniper had recently wounded two Marines at the bridge.

It was a spot that made the Marines nervous.

"Hey, sir, don't get out of the vehicle until I lay down a sniper screen," Gunnery Sgt. Mark Shawhan, an agnostic with a suspicion of organized religion, instructed Chaplain Moran before the patrol. "That's where he's been getting us, and when you cross the bridge—RUN."

Lt. Moran wasn't troubled. "I believe the Lord is going to protect us," he said. But he wondered aloud whether to finish his Meal, Ready-to-Eat packaged lunch before heading to the armored vehicle.

Gunny Shawhan shook his head in disbelief.

When their turn came, the chaplain and his assistant bolted across the bridge and pivoted into a cornfield, where the minister stood upright. RP2 Chute shouted at Lt. Moran to get down. "Take a knee," he yelled.

The patrol zigzagged through fields and waded through ditches, the only sounds the rustling of corn leaves, the muted crackle of a radio and the distant thup-thup of a helicopter flying sentry above.

During a pause to allow the minesweepers to check for booby-traps on the path ahead, the chaplain, wearing his prescription eyeglasses instead of anti-shrapnel goggles, sat down on the bank of an irrigation ditch, dropped his backpack on the ground and snapped a few pictures. RP2 Chute grimaced when he noticed. Insurgents have seeded the entire town with powerful explosives, and Marines step in the exact footprints of the man ahead to minimize the risk.

Lt. Moran says he follows the Marines' safety instruction and wears a helmet, despite his confidence in the divine. But the way he glides blithely through battle is a constant source of worry for his assistant.

"All my training and experience doesn't always help when the man I'm protecting isn't afraid of being hurt," says RP2 Chute.

The patrol stopped at a bombed-out house, where the men from 2nd Platoon were camped out, their fingers black with dirt and faces etched with exhaustion. One Marine asked the chaplain if he'd offer a quick service.

Lt. Moran happily agreed and laid out napkin-sized squares of fabric decorated with the small red-and-blue handprints of children—"prayer squares" sent by a church in Louisa, Va. The children prayed over the fabric, the chaplain told the Marines. "You can put them on your head, and you'll know you've been prayed over," he said, flopping one onto his own head like a newspaper in the rain.

He laid out a selection of religious books: The New International Version of the Bible in desert camouflage. A book called Freedom from Fear. Two books promoted the protective powers of the 91st Psalm.

"Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday," the psalm tells believers. "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee."

Lt. Moran told Bible stories about angels, but met with silence when he asked the Marines to relate their favorite angel stories. "Even now, where we are, I believe there are angels present," he said.

The chaplain tried to lead the men in a rousing rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but forgot the words after "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord," and had to resort to "lala-lala" to fill in the blanks.

But the men sang Amazing Grace enthusiastically and thanked the chaplain warmly for providing a few minutes of relief.

"Everybody made their deal with God before they came," said Lance Cpl. Justin Blaschke, a 21-year-old non-denominational Christian from Woodsboro, Texas.

RP2 Chute looked on, his impassiveness masking his disdain for talk of angels. "It's frustrating to listen to him tell people things I know not to be true, but I know it's not my place to get involved when people come to him for help," he said later.

There are times, however, when RP2 Chute feels he has to intervene and looses his own ample arsenal of biblical references, dredged up from his Baptist boyhood and doubting teenage years.

In August, the pair visited India Co. in dug-in positions on a ridge line overlooking the Helmand River. The company commander asked the chaplain to visit every foxhole. Lt. Moran did so, spending four hours in the mortar pit, fielding the Marines' questions about the End Times.

The chaplain was struck both by RP2 Chute's command of the Book of Revelation, and his refusal to take it seriously. "He's familiar with the Christian doctrine, but he chooses not to believe it," says the chaplain, a slender-faced, soft-spoken man with a fringe of gray in his black hair. "That's what I find puzzling."

On a visit to Kilo Co., a Marine asked for a biblical ruling on tattoos. Lt. Moran said the Book of Leviticus bans them. RP2 Chute disagreed. Leviticus, he said, says people shouldn't get tattoos to mourn the dead.

"I don't believe as Chaplain Moran believes," RP2 Chute often tells the Marines during these visits.

At the end of the foot patrol in Sangin, the Marines sprinted back over the metal bridge and jumped into the armored vehicles that waited on the far side. Lt. Moran crossed and then stood for many long seconds in the open, clearly visible from the compounds where the Marines suspected the insurgent sniper had his nest.

On the near side of the bridge, Gunny Shawhan got out of his own vehicle to yell at the chaplain to take cover, but Lt. Moran didn't seem to hear over the noise of the engines. "Tell the [expletive] chaplain to get behind the goddamn vehicle," Gunny Shawhan yelled into the radio.

"Like bullets aren't going to kill the goddamn chaplain," he muttered to the men near him.

RP2 Chute hustled Lt. Moran to safety behind the armor plating.

Later, Lt. Moran explained that he had been unsure which vehicle he was supposed to ride in. But his serenity had a deeper explanation.

"No matter what situation you find yourself in on planet Earth, God will protect you," he said after the patrol returned safely to base. "All He asks is that you trust and believe what He says. So, if I find myself in a combat situation, His promise of protection is still valid."

Write to Michael M. Phillips at [email protected]