The Washington Post has launched a new section, entitled “Acts of Faith,” which promises “news, analysis, and opinion to keep you up on daily conversations about faith, spirituality, ethics, and values.” Thomas J. Whitley notes that both the title and the description seem to suggest not only a particularly Christian understanding of what religion is, but a particular kind of Christian understanding:

Defining “religion” as that which deals with matters of faith and belief necessarily precludes that which deals with matters of praxis and that is less obviously about, or not at all about, faith or belief. (That they have called it “Acts of Faith,” I think does not diminish from my point, especially given the first articles they have posted.) That is, the focus on faith prioritizes a Western and a Protestant notion of what counts as “religion.”

To further make the point that this is a prioritization of one interpretation of religion, we need go no further than the New Testament. The traditional understanding of the divide between Judaism and Christianity is that Christianity is about belief. John 3:16 is the go-to verse here: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Yet while belief is of primary importance in the Gospel of John, it does not hold the same weight in other New Testament texts.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.