Big Think

Dov Zakheim: Well they should co-exist alongside each other, and they shouldn’t intertwine. I think part of the difficulty is that one man’s faith is another man’s hearsay. Or one woman’s faith is another woman’s hearsay. The chief rabbi of England recently called a book called “The Dignity of Difference”, Jonathan Sacks. He was actually a contemporary of mine at Oxford. And he wrote something that has stuck with me: “There is only one truth in heaven, but there are many truths on earth.” Well, you know, truth is supposed to be indivisible. You know, it’s binary. Either it is or it isn’t. But once you accept that there is more than one truth on earth, then you can’t say, “It has to be my way.” I believe there’s a divine power. There’s a God. And you know, God will figure it out. But that’s in heaven. And so mixing religion and politics is a pretty dangerous mixture in my view.

Recorded on: 7/2/07