August 9 1999

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

Thank you for adding to my list of heroes and role models who practice and proclaim a "whole gospel" that includes God's justice and his care and concern for the poor and oppressed ["The Pragmatic Prophets," June 14]. John DiIulio, Millard Fuller, and Jim Wallis are men in positions of power and influence seeking to honor God with what they have been given by "preaching good news to the poor" and seeking to love and serve them. May God raise up many more like them who will lead the church into a greater understanding of God's nature and character as a God of justice and righteousness.

The profile of Prof. John J. DiIulio of Princeton ["The Criminologist Who Discovered Churches," June 14] credits DiIulio as the first crime expert to recommend religious faith as the solution to the crime problem—a common misimpression, for in 1994 I published a book titled Crime and the Sacking of America. Its thesis—controversial and novel then—was that crime is the most extreme form of selfishness, and that the only true solution to crime is religion. Through God's grace, the book became the most ac claimed conservative book on crime in two decades.

In September 1995, William Bennett told me he had recommended my book to DiIulio. Up to that time, DiIulio had not recommended religion as an antidote to crime. Indeed, only four years before, in his 1991 book No Escape: The Future of American Corrections, he took essentially the opposite view.

Less than three months after my conversation with Bennett, DiIulio published a now-famous article in the November 27, 1995, issue of the Weekly Standard. In CT he proclaimed that religion was the nation's best hope for reducing our high crime rates. No mention of ...