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Yes, the letter written by President Ahmadinejad of Iran to President Bush last spring is a political document, and is no doubt duplicitous, multilayered and deliberately deceptive. Yet the letter, framed as an address by one believer in God to another, received little sensible comment in the American media. Suppose the appeal to Bush to take his Christianity seriously is at least in part genuine. Can we American Christians hear this appeal?

The taxi drove past a mural of the American flag. There were skulls where the stars should have been and the words Death to America! scrawled across the stripes. It was the only such sign I’d seen in Iran, but at ten stories tall, it made a strong impression. Just then the taxi driver asked me, “Madam, you German?” “No,” I replied hesitantly. “U.S.A.”