. . . the threat by alumni to withhold donations in the hijab-wearing-professor case. I think college officials are stubborn enough to withstand it.

The problem:

. . . the college has said this action [moving to fire the professor] was not taken because of her decision to wear a hijab but because she failed to clarify what makes Christianity distinct from Islam, a conflict with Wheaton’s statement of faith signed by faculty members.

It leads one to look into the broader question, what’s the difference between Islam and Christianity?

Most item of difference, theologically speaking, is nicely stated here, in the online publication, Christianity in View, namely, who do these religions, Christianity and Islam, think God is?

One God, who exists in three distinct persons (The Trinity): Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).

One God (Arabic:Allah), who is not a trinity. The Islamic view of God is called strict Monotheism (Quran 112:1).

So for starters, we have a crucial difference, trinitarian or unitarian?

And while we’re at it, apart from the professor’s improbably using Pope Francis as an authority in an Evangelical context, as she did, what did Francis mean when he said the same thing?

His was not a doctrinal statement, explained Todd Aglialoro at the Catholic Answers blog, in March of 2013. Speaking at a major inter-faith gathering, he made the Muslim-God reference — among other “diplomatic niceties and specific expressions of good will aimed at Orthodox, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims” which characterizes such a gathering.

His remarks to the latter recognized that Muslims “worship the one living and merciful God, and call upon him in prayer.”

In this he echoed the 1964 [Vatican II] dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium, which gave a nod to “the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.”

Both the Vatican council and Pope Francis spoke with “a pastoral rather than doctrinal purpose,” however, which can be risky coming from one who historically has spoken as one with authority. Gets confusing sometimes.

The Catholic Answers writer has a lot more to say here, including that in an age of increasing “secularism and moral relativism,” Christians

. . .  look across creedal lines for friends and allies—comrades-in-arms in the fight for unborn life, traditional marriage and morality, religious rights, and a continued place for believers in the cultural conversation.

It can be an encouragement and a temptation, then, to look at Islam and see not warriors of jihad against Arab Christians and a decadent West, but fellow-soldiers of an “ecumenical jihad” against an anti-theist culture.

It’s a sort of an any-port-in-the-storm approach, gathering allies where we may.  In this regard the writer asks whether Islam can be a reliable ally and recommends

. . . by cop who says he saw a gun.  We should put ourselves in cop’s place.

According to the police records released Friday, the incident unfolded shortly after 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 7, 2013, when Chatman and two friends — Akeem Clarke and Martel Odom — beat and robbed a man inside his Dodge Charger while negotiating a deal to buy cellphone service from him. After the beating, Chatman took off alone in the victim’s car.

Fry and Toth, meanwhile, had been on routine patrol when they said they spotted the Charger rolling through a stop sign at 75th and Essex Avenue. They ran the car’s Wisconsin license plates, but the car came back clean, so they didn’t stop it at the time. When the call came over the radio minutes later about the carjacking, they doubled back and caught up with Chatman at the intersection of 75th and Jeffery Avenue.

The surveillance videos show Chatman bailing out of the car almost as soon as Toth and Fry get out of their unmarked Ford Crown Victoria.

Toth told detectives he was running to keep up with Chatman and didn’t notice an object in his hands, according to the reports released Friday. As they neared the corner, Toth said, he saw Chatman “make a move to his right” just before the shots rang out, according to the case incident report.

Like the shooter, he saw the victim turn to his right. Unlike him, he says he did not see an object, as shooter-cop says he did.

But in shooter-cop’s place, what would our split-second decision have been, with our partner at risk?

We should ask ourselves.

As for “punk,” it’s justified. He’d just joined two others in a beating-up of a man. We know that, shooter cop didn’t. In fact, he and his partner, spotting a stop-sign violation and probably seeing the driver, a young black man, maybe not, had  let it go until, minutes later, they realized the car was stolen.

Chase, shooting followed abandoning by thief and running and turning toward cop very close to him — and you have split-second time for shooter cop. Let him or her cast the first guilty vote who has never made a bad split-second decision.

More here: City releases hundreds of pages of documents in fatal shooting of teen – Chicago Tribune

Public unions are different from non-public ones. They are political. To belong to one is to make a political statement.

When a public sector union negotiates higher wages and benefits, that requires more money from taxpayers or less spending on other government services.

Teachers unions negotiate on such hotly debated public issues as tenure and merit pay. Some teachers disagree with the union position on those issues.

As Justice Anthony Kennedy said in oral arguments on Monday, “the union basically is making those teachers compelled riders for issues on which they strongly disagree.”

Those teachers being ones who object to paying so-called fair share of union expenses, including bargaining expenses.

For more, read this: The teacher who went to the Supreme Court – Chicago Tribune