To the editor:

Now it comes to this. First, Paul Mirecki is spied on in what he assumed was a private e-mail conversation, and his intemperate remarks there are leaked to the press in an obvious (and somewhat successful) attempt to discredit him and his course on religious mythology.

Now he has been stalked and beaten by two men who, according to his account, “made references to the controversy.” One of his “most vocal critics,” John Altevogt, condemns the attack with one side of his mouth, then blames Mirecki himself out of the other, implying that he concocted the story or perhaps beat himself up in order to elicit sympathy (Journal-World, Dec. 6).

Mirecki was foolish for making the comments he did and assuming they were private. But his opponents were dishonorable in their own violation of the tenuous line between private conversation and public issues. And now, some of them have apparently taken the further step of crossing over to violence. Such brown shirt tactics must be condemned for what they are, along with the goals they support: nothing less than a fascistic form of Christian theocracy.

Will the good Christians be like the good Germans who remained silent when the Nazis rose to power, or will they take a stand against those who would, in the name of their religion, impose an order on all of us who surely the biblical Jesus would himself oppose?

Stu Shafer,

Oskaloosa