{"id":8138,"date":"2004-01-19T12:24:48","date_gmt":"2004-01-19T12:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html"},"modified":"2004-01-19T12:24:48","modified_gmt":"2004-01-19T12:24:48","slug":"does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html","title":{"rendered":"Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcentralstation.com\/011904F.html\">From Tech Central Station<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIslam needs no Pope. The confusion of political power with divine appointment has sparked terrible policies throughout history. Massacres and murders have too often been perpetrated in the name of all major world religions, when this mistake has been made. Furthermore, falsehood has been allowed to go unchecked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;.The Reformation saw the rule of law begin to emerge as an authority higher than any prelate. But it requires a deeply Conservative view of humanity for this to come about. One must first believe in the fallibility and natural selfishness of all men if one is to set laws above all men. One must also believe that all men are equal before such a set of laws. There is simply no place for an infallible Pope.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Tech Central Station Islam needs no Pope. The confusion of political power with divine appointment has sparked terrible policies throughout history. Massacres and murders have too often been perpetrated in the name of all major world religions, when this mistake has been made. Furthermore, falsehood has been allowed to go unchecked. &#8230;.The Reformation saw&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From Tech Central Station Islam needs no Pope. The confusion of political power with divine appointment has sparked terrible policies throughout history. Massacres and murders have too often been perpetrated in the name of all major world religions, when this mistake has been made. Furthermore, falsehood has been allowed to go unchecked. &#8230;.The Reformation saw&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-01-19T12:24:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell? - Via Media","og_description":"From Tech Central Station Islam needs no Pope. The confusion of political power with divine appointment has sparked terrible policies throughout history. Massacres and murders have too often been perpetrated in the name of all major world religions, when this mistake has been made. Furthermore, falsehood has been allowed to go unchecked. &#8230;.The Reformation saw&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-01-19T12:24:48+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html","name":"Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-01-19T12:24:48+00:00","dateModified":"2004-01-19T12:24:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/does_islam_need_a_pope_or_a_cromwell.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Does Islam need a Pope or a Cromwell?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}