LETTER: Tolerance of religious beliefs

To the Editor: There is no salvation or Heaven but for those who believe in Jesus, although that is very hard to swallow in a society where it is more popular to believe in Eastern religions, cosmic religions and basically any religion that has nothing to do with Christ. Moreover, it is commonly held that Christianity is a finger-pointer religion, where rules exist to extinguish any fun we're supposed to have during our short lives on this planet. This is truly disheartening. What a shame that more people don't think twice about eternity (that is forever) and look more closely at Jesus (not at Christians, because they are only human and are bound to disappoint). Hope is not lost. The reason this world still exists is because God wants the flock to come to Him, but he will not force them. The Bible does not teach brain-washing or deceitful recruitment. It's merely the Truth, and it encourages us all (Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and all others) to seek and find, ask and receive. Christians preach because they want everyone to know the Good News, not because they want another number for their side. Marc Aneed College '99 All SAS depts. are valuable To the Editor: Interim SAS Dean Walter Wales, a distinguished colleague in the Physics Department, has been reported in the 10/16 issue of the DP to have admonished Cati Coe and a group of other graduate student in the Folklore Department. Both apparently worry that the University might be divining ways in which to quietly snuff their department, to buck up and smell the roses, ("Folklore Department struggles to survive amid faculty losses," DP, 10/16/97). The article quotes him as saying, "All departments are not equally valuable to SAS. The Department of English, for example, is much more essential to the school's educational mission than are many of the other humanities departments." I would like to believe that this reflects either a slip of the tongue by Wales or, better yet, of the pen on the part of the DP. I would equally like to believe that any dean of SAS, whether prospective, acting, active, lame-duck, or retired and out to pasture, would accept it as one of his or her multifarious responsibilities to defend rather than to denigrate, at least in their public utterances, the wide diversity of curriculum offerings entrusted to their cure. As a member of a smallish department and an even smaller graduate groups I too, like Coe and company, am concerned that this University not narrow its fields of study to what only the "valuable" departments can offer. Or else, who knows, we could all end up teaching "Business English" and sending our students to Drexel for physics. Donald White Classical Studies Professor Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World Curator, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology