Three of the Christian gospels give versions of the famous answer of Jesus when asked whether Jews should give taxes to the Romans who ruled them. He took a coin of the realm, pointed out that it had on it a picture of the reigning Caesar, and then informed the crowd (as we know in its English translation) that they should “render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.” Scholars and divines are divided about what this means in practical terms. In America, a country whose Constitution separates church and state, its application would seem to be that someone wearing the uniform of the state should, in case of conflict, defer to the uniform, Caesar rather than God.

Unfortunately, some Christian activists think you should never “render unto Caesar” -- or understand this story differently than most of us. (This is a good example of how different groups can get different lessons from the same Scripture.) Recently a Navy chaplain, LT Gordon Klingenschmitt, “brought the crowd to its feet” at a conference in Washington targeting what it called the “War on Christians” (all this according to The Washington Post, 29 March 2006) by announcing that he'd been forbidden by his CO from offering prayers in the name of Jesus. He then compared himself to an Afghan named Raman who for a while seemed in danger of being executed in Afghanistan for having abjured Islam for Christianity. Both the lieutenant and Raman, Klingenschmitt suggested, are “persecuted” as, he went on to suggest, “most Christians throughout history” have been.

I say give this guy's CO a medal for slapping him down. People like the lieutenant, with their persecution complexes and their conviction that any time, any place, is the right time and place to “witness to their faith” (as they'd probably put it) -- to insist that their way is the only way -- have caused more bloodshed than I'd like to think. When you're not a partisan of these, they all just seem horrible. In the Russia of Peter the Great many people died over the question of whether priests should bless with two upraised fingers or three. The Portuguese Inquisition continued to root out unbelievers in the colony of Goa until well into the modern era. And another example of too-great sectarian certainty is the Shiite-Sunni violence currently rocking Iraq. Shiites sometimes curse the first caliphs, successors of the Prophet and revered by Sunnis, because they displaced the Prophet's son-in-law Ali, who according to Shiites was the legitimate successor. This never goes over well with Sunnis. Outsiders shake their heads.

When I was a tyke, my mom made sure I understood that not everything was appropriate under all circumstances. You couldn't pick your nose in public, private parts were just that, and it wasn't nice to point out fat or ugly people. As I grew up, I realized that that was only the thin edge of the wedge. The world is full of rules on what's appropriate and what's not, what's the time to do something and what isn't. Witnessing to your faith isn't any different. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it isn't. In mixed company including people who do not pray in the name of Jesus, as a uniformed officer in a secular organization serving a country whose Constitution makes the separation of church and state, you do not look for ways to throw in references to your particular way of doing things. It's just not appropriate because it upsets people and there's no way to resolve such questions except by resorting to violence. And no, you're not being original when you say this goes beyond appropriate because it's about Truth and One Way and Eternal Life and so on and so on. The next guy or gal convinced that he or she has a short line to God is going to say the same thing. And how are you going to resolve that one? The basis of civil society is accepting that there are going to be some things we just don't agree about, and avoiding them, or making rules on when to allow them.

If there's a weakness in Middle Eastern societies it's (in my view) this: Islamic society may with time realize this to a greater degree than it has, and needs to be encouraged to do so. A standard understanding of the Koran, to be sure, is that there is no distinction between civil law and religious law. But Turkey makes it; other countries can too. You can only have leverage over people who sense your respect for them, as I've argued in this column for the chain of command. All Christians and Jews have to do is to respect Muslims as people seeking to fulfill God's commands and lead a moral life. Practically everything beyond that is negotiable.

My earlier column on teaching the basics of Islamic Culture to midshipmen at the US Naval Academy produced a flurry of outraged e-mails asserting that I was “teaching midshipmen the wrong thing.” The problem, I read over and over in various forms, is Islam itself. It says “smite the infidel” right there in the Koran! The Koran also tells us all other faiths besides Islam are based on error!

The bottom line to these wild-eyed e-mails was always that the U.S. is at war not with specific groups claiming to be Islamic, but with a religion itself. A secular society at war with a religion? But of course these e-mail writers don't like the fact that our society is secular: most of them clearly wanted carte blanche to witness to their faith in Jesus Christ at every moment of every day, and also claim that the US is a “Christian country” (it's those nasty humanists who deny this) and so on. So part of the problem is that the US isn't enough like a Christian version of an Islamic Republic?

All holy books, whether the Bible or the Koran, are complex overlayers with unclear and sometimes contradictory passages. Yes, some passages of the Koran enjoin believers to “smite infidels” (in usual English transliterations). But the fundamental fact about organized religion is that it's fallible people who organize them, so the particular way the Word of God is understood changes depending on who's doing the organizing. These passages can, for example, be understood in their historical context, and are so understood by many (but clearly not enough) Muslims. They're not less the word of God for being specific; the Prophet after all was a specific person.

I got screamers claiming they just knew that passages like these in the Koran had to mean that Muslims were supposed to kill all non-Muslims on sight. This leads to the conclusion that Islam itself is a “violent religion.” I'd say Christianity has just as bad a record. My screamers had answers for that too: to the extent that people have killed and murdered in the name of Christ, they weren't Christian. To the extent that they do in the name of Islam, they're Muslim -- it's when they act like normal people that they aren't. This, of course, is circular. If your Muslim neighbor doesn't shoot you instead of greeting you he's not Muslim at all?

Too great certainty that we fallible mortals have the short line to God has led to (conservative estimate) half the world's problems. We see some of them in the Middle East now. A mouthy lieutenant stoked with the fire of his own conviction (this one is Christian; what will it be next week?) isn't helping that situation one bit.