The Heart of the Whirlwind

“Relativism is too weak to resist the storm winds of religious fervour. Only an equal and opposite fervour can do that. I do not believe that the sanctity of human life and the inalienable freedoms of a just society are relative. They are religious absolutes. They flow directly from the proposition that it was not we who created God in our image but God who made us in His. They belong to the very tradition that Jews, Christians and Muslims – who have spent so much of their history in mutual hostility – share. Healing must come from the religious experiences of those whose lives are governed by those experiences. It must come, if anywhere, from the heart of the whirlwind itself.”

The Dignity of Difference, Prologue, p. 17