Ethan Casey juxtaposes, through personal stories, growing fundamentalism in the west. This story first appeared in The News, Pakistan.

Colorado Springs is a city in Colorado, one of the most beautiful states in the United States, 6500 feet above sea level and flush against the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Pike's Peak -- named for Zebulon Pike, the explorer who discovered it in 1806 -- looms over the city and looks especially impressive in winter and spring, when it's snowcapped.

I didn't grow up here, but my parents have lived here nearly 20 years. In many ways Colorado Springs is a typical provincial American burg, with a mediocre newspaper and dull, self-regarding civic worries. It's distinctive, though, in a few ways. For one thing, the corridor between here and Denver, the larger city 90 minutes' drive north, has become thoroughly "Californicated": marred by sprawling, soulless prefab suburban neighbourhoods and shopping centres. It's also home to the national Air Force Academy and an Army base.

Connected to both Californication and the military presence is the city's emergence as a hub of aggressive evangelical Christianity. Whenever I'm here I steer clear of such people -- it helps that they dominate the north side of the city, and my parents live south of town - but they're here, and they're influential both locally and nationally. Just how influential came home to me when I read Soldiers of Christ by Jeff Sharlet, a profile of the huge New Life Church and World Prayer Center here, in the May issue of Harper's magazine. The church's leader, Pastor Ted Haggard, speaks to the White House every Monday and believes in "free-market" religion -- whatever that is. He also believes in war. "My fear is that my children will grow up in an Islamic state," he told Sharlet. "... I teach a strong ideology of the use of power, of military might as a public service. The Bible's bloody."

It would be comforting to mock or ignore such distasteful people, if the stakes were not so high. Even secular Americans fear and despise Pastor Ted's counterparts in the Islamic world -- and who can blame them? I usually have little time for the right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer, but last week -- in a nationally syndicated piece printed in the Colorado Springs Gazette -- he asked: "Where are the fatwas issued against Osama bin Laden? Where are the denunciations of the very idea of suicide bombing? Europeans must demand this of all their Muslim leaders. They must also dismantle and destroy all 'known' Islamist cells before trains and buses are blown up."

In their willful ignorance, Pastor Ted's followers conflate "free-market" capitalism, American nationalism and Christianity as they misunderstand it. Perhaps the deeper problem is less a "clash of civilisations" than the demographic fact that everywhere there exist more ignorant and desperate than thoughtful and well-read people. Demagogues know and exploit this. Sharlet reports that as many as 70,000 people at a time join the online World Prayer Team prayers that scroll across screens at the New Life Church.

"Individual Focus Requests" are okay for the general public, but "Worldwide Focus" -- that is, political -- prayers are written only by the World Prayer Center staff. Here are a few: "Despite the efforts of the news media, believing soldiers and others testify to the effective preaching of the Gospel [in Iraq], and the openness of so many to hear of Jesus. Pray for continued success! ... 900,000 Bibles in the Arabic language distributed by Christians in Iraq. ... Baghdad -- God, press back the enemy."

Last week, Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo made a stir by suggesting that bombing Mecca might be called for in retaliation for future attacks on the U.S., if those were determined to be the work of extremist Muslims. Tancredo's words were intemperate and ill-judged. But could terrorists please stop bombing London, where I'll be from next week?

Tancredo represents a district in Colorado. I prefer to believe that my father, who is an Episcopal priest, is more representative of Coloradans, Americans and Christians. On July 3, he gave a sermon that was controversial with some members of his Colorado Springs church. It included these words:
"Do we want to be free enough, as persons and as a nation, that we can choose not to respond to every threat with force? Do we want to be free enough that we can afford open borders as well as open markets? Do we want to be free enough that we can choose the freedom Jesus himself will commend to us at tomorrow's mass on Independence Day -- the freedom to give to those who ask of us, the freedom to love not only our neighbours, but our enemies as well? Do we want to be free enough to use our strength not to dominate, but to offer succor and support, free enough to value the lives of others as much as we value our own, free enough to move beyond conspicuous consumption to conspicuous compassion?
"Do we want to be free enough ... to recognise that, while we are as good a people as any, we in the United States do not have a unique claim to God's love or a direct line to God's will for his world?"
Ethan Casey's book Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time is available in Pakistan and India.
Email: pecasey@mindspring.com.

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