Once, in a discussion of the passage in Ephesians where Paul speaks of “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” a woman in the audience, making a two-handed figure eight in the air, said, “But if you have a sword, you’re supposed to smite somebody.” Where to begin. But it is just this kind of slippage, of the figurative into the literal, of affection for the traditions of Christianity into hostility toward those who are known or assumed not to share them, that makes the religion the opposite of itself. Does the word “stranger,” the word “alien,” ever have a negative connotation in
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