SALT, the strategic arms limitation talks between the United States and the Soviet Union, has been formally in progress since 1969, spanning the administrations of three American presidents. The often understated emphasis has been on maintaining strategic stability through quantitative limits and qualitative shaping of forces, present and future, and through formally agreed-upon ceilings rather than on the reduction of existing systems or inventories.

Russia's Aesop, Ivan Krylov, said: “You can be sure the puppy is strong, because it barks at the elephant.”; The Russian bear is much more powerful than a puppy, but it stands on feet of clay. The United States is not an elephant, but it is by far the world's strongest economic and military force, striking both respect and fear in Soviet leaders, from Lenin through Brezhnev.

The U.S. economy is more than twice the size of the Soviet and much more dynamic. Our strategic arsenal also overshadows Moscow's. According to Defense Secretary Harold Brown, the United States today has nearly 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads aboard our land-and sea-based missiles and bombers, compared to 5,000 for the Soviets. These power realities help explain Kremlin complexes about Moscow's persistent Avis posture in world affairs.

That theology is more interesting than politics is one impression gained in talking to Christians from abroad during a six-month stay in Jerusalem during the first part of 1979. Their political opinions, like those of other inhabitants of this city, are for the most part too passionately partisan and polarized to carry much weight. Pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians tend to cancel each other, at least for someone like myself who has been trying to talk to both sides. One longs for other viewpoints that might restore balance and perspective. In Jerusalem masses of information are available, but there are few political ideas that transcend the present fronts.

The law is not like life. Therein lies its utility and even its majesty. The law is not like life. Therein lies its weakness and even its danger. To be sure, the law is part of life; it is part of that communal experience we call history, including this present moment. Law itself, as we shall emphasize, has a history. And yet, when we speak of "the law," we imply that it is something distinct from ordinary experience. It has a normative status by which we order, remedy, and judge the interactions that make up what we call "life."

When the word "law" is juxtaposed with the word "religion," an American lawyer today is apt to think immediately of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution with its double protection against any governmental interference in "the free exercise" of religion on the one hand and against any governmental "establishment" of religion on the other. From the standpoint of contemporary American constitutional law, religion has become the personal and private affair of individual citizens or groups of citizens. Indeed, in recent decades our courts, in interpreting the "free exercise" clause, have gone far toward immunizing individual and group activities from governmental control, whether federal or state, whenever they are considered by the persons engaging in them to be of a religious character; and at the same time, under the "establishment" clause the courts have struck down most forms even of indirect governmental support of religion, whether federal or state.