Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Southern Baptist Convention President: The spiritual state of our union. Questions Worth Asking . I love America and believe each citizen needs to be involved in charting the future of our nation . Our churches have compartmentalized faith and kept it from influencing our nation for far too long, just as most of America's leaders compartmentalize their faith from their politics . Today, our nation has become a product of this sad reality . We need to return to the conviction that a faith worth believing in is a faith worth dying for . Our faith cannot be checked at the door like a piece of luggage at an airport . The Time is Now . The time is now for our nation to recognize that we cannot fix ourselves . The signs of our brokenness are glistening in our dark world . The blatant destruction of the family, the killing of unborn children, the continuing racial tension, the rebellion against authority, the ongoing reality of poverty, the rising threat of our security, the clear attacks against religious liberty and, of all things, the arrogance to believe the highest court in our land can rule on what the Bible says is genuine marriage testify to just how broken we really are . Where Do We Go From Here? 1 \. We need to repent . Repentance occurs when we have a change of mind . This change of mind changes our behavior . As a nation, we need to personally and collectively repent of our sins . We need to ask God for His free gift of forgiveness for the sins we have committed, resulting in change from that point forward . 2 \. We need to return to God . America is a nation that was built on a deep belief in God . A desire for religious liberty was the catalyst for the beginning of our nation . While we have gone through ups and downs in our history , God has been very merciful and gracious toward us . It is time to return to God . It is time to stop making every issue about ourselves, posturing to ensure we get our way . God's way is the only way . There is no other . Anything less than God's way diminishes our happiness, our fulfillment and even our liberty . 3 \. We need our churches to wake up . Churches all over our nation need to wake up from the slumber we find ourselves in as a whole . We need pastors to return to their spiritual calling, be rekindled by the fire of God and declare the hope we have in the Lord . As a pastor goes, so goes the church . As our churches go, so goes our nation . The evidence is overwhelming of just how broken we are as a nation . This is the greatest hour for our churches to rise up . Never more has America needed our churches to lead the way forward , serving and influencing our communities with compassion and hope . 4 \. We need a spiritual awakening . In our history, there have been seasons of spiritual awakening that have influenced the spiritual state of our nation dramatically . Lives were changed and subcultures became different . Spiritual awakening is our greatest need in America today . There are many who have probably never even thought about this need . Others may feel we have gone too far . But I want to assure you : God can do more in a moment than we can ever do in a lifetime . Wherever you are in life, would you just stop for one moment and pray something like this:"God, would you please bring spiritual awakening to America? It is our greatest need."? America's greatest need is the next great move of God . This is our hope .
Churches all over our nation need to wake up from the slumber we find ourselves in as a whole We need pastors to return to their spiritual calling, be rekindled by the fire of God and declare the hope we have in the Lord

The hostage rescue dilemma. Saturday's failed hostage rescue mission in Yemen was indeed tragic . While the official details as to exactly what happened have not yet been released , it appears Luke Somers, an American journalist, and Pierre Korkie, a South African teacher, were killed by their captors during a night-time rescue attempt carried out by US Navy SEALs . Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had been holding Somers and Korkie captive for over a year . It was the second such attempt to rescue Somers in two weeks . On November 25, a SEALs team hit what they thought was the compound holding Somers , who, as it turns out, had been moved from there just hours before . In Saturday's operation, the SEALs knew Somers' exact location . To maintain stealth, they landed by V-22 Osprey several kilometres away, and then made the trek overland to the compound where Somers and Korkie were being held captive . But something went terribly wrong in the final approach . Perhaps it was a barking dog or some other noise , but the SEALs came under fire as they approached the compound's main entrance . The element of surprise, which is so critical to rescue operations, was lost , and a fierce firefight ensued . Within 30 minutes, the SEALs had secured the compound and put Somers and Korkie, who were both still alive on a V-22 that had a surgical team standing by . Unfortunately, medics were unable to save them . Plainly necessary . For Somers, Saturday's rescue mission was as urgent as it was plainly necessary . Late last week AQAP released a video stating he would be killed in 72 hours unless unspecified demands were met . Those demands have not been made public, but likely involved payment of a ransom or release of AQAP captives, something the US is prohibited by law from doing . For Korkie, the sense of urgency in attempting the rescue operation is more controversial . According to the South African charity Gift of the Giving, a deal had been made with AQAP to release Korkie in just a matter of days, suggesting to many that it would have been better to wait . Maybe there was a deal that would have gone through in the end . Maybe there wasn't . But in rescue operations, hope is not figured into the equation , where planners and decision makers have to weigh the risks of action against the consequences of inaction . By their very nature, hostage rescue operations are among the most difficult and risky military missions to carry out . With little margin for error, either in intelligence or the operation itself, they demand highly trained and equipped special operations units that only a handful of countries have . Are they dangerous and uncertain? Absolutely . Are they impossible? No . In 2012, US Navy SEALs rescued Jessica Buchanan, an American aid worker, and Poul Hagen Thisted, a Danish aid worker , who had been held hostage by Somali pirates for 93 days . The pirates were demanding a $45m ransom for their release . In this particular case, precise intelligence as to their exact location, along with concerns about Buchanan's rapidly declining health, were major factors in moving forward with the rescue mission . Under the cover of darkness, the SEAL Team parachuted 19km from where they were being held, and then moved cross-country to conduct the rescue . Nine pirates were killed during the operation , and Buchanan and Thisted were unharmed . In 2009, US Navy SEAL snipers ended the hostage ordeal of American Richard Phillips, captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama , which had been hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean five days earlier . Talks with the pirates ended when they threw the phone used to communicate with negotiators into the ocean . When one of the pirates pointed his rifle at Captain Phillips' back , snipers shot and killed all three in near simultaneous fashion . Captain Phillips was unharmed . Heartbreaking failures . In 2005, US Delta Force operators rescued Roy Hallums, an American civilian contractor kidnapped by an al-Qaeda cell in Iraq, after 311 days in captivity . Again , the intelligence as to Hallums' location was exact - pull up the kitchen carpet and open the faux cement trap door leading into his one room cell . Hallums was unharmed in the operation . But , as was all too evident on Saturday, there are heartbreaking failures, too . This past July, US special operations forces attempted to rescue James Foley in Syria . Unfortunately, the intelligence as to where he was being held was incorrect . Foley was brutally murdered by ISIL just a few weeks later , the videotape of which was released on the internet for the world to see . In 2010, the US special operations team attempting to rescue her in Afghanistan accidentally killed Linda Norgrove, a British citizen . There are other failures, all tragic, as well . But there are also other successes , where hostages like Jessica Buchanan, Poul Thisted, Captain Phillips and Roy Hallums, all of whom faced indefinite captivity or even death, are home with their families because decisions were made to rescue them based on calculated risks . No guessing, no maybes, no "let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best" . Rescue missions are risky, both for the hostages and for the operators who carry them out . Lives are at stake , and it's never an easy choice to give the "green light" . But given the circumstances, particularly when dealing with terrorist organisations, leaders can't always sit back and wait to see what happens . Sometimes, it's less risky to act than not to . And in the case of a hostage rescue operation, I'd place my life in the hands of men dedicated to the task before taking my chances with the likes of a terrorist in the hope that maybe they'll let me go .
Saturday's failed hostage rescue mission in Yemen was indeed tragic

What the Quran says about the mighty pen. Muslims - in theory - have traditions that value the power of the pen . Islam was revealed to save people from bloodshed and misuse of the sword . That is a paraphrasing of the cardinal's line in one of the Acts of Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1839 play "Richelieu" . The origin of the timeless adage is thought to have originated in Assyrian wisdom - like Islam, moral and value systems of Middle Eastern descent . However ,  the moral, intellectual and ethical systems of that region - including those carried through dialogue with Hellenic ideas in the first three centuries of Islam - have all been subjected to obscurantist and literalist interpretations of revelation . Islam's first command to the Prophet Muhammad was to "read" ; "Read in the name of thy Lord." Chapter 68 in the Quran is named "Al-Qalam" (the pen) . It opens up with the verse:"By the pen and what they inscribe." In Chapter 96 of the Quran one finds another reference to the high value placed on the might of the pen ; "Who taught by the pen. Taught mankind that which he knew not"(96:4-5) . So it should be natural for Muslims today to feel total empathy towards fellow writers and journalists and the families of other victims in France . Especially in solidarity against the cowardly slaying of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists . Reading and writing belong to the "genus" of cross-disciplinary activities Islam insists upon repeatedly . Reading, writing and reasoning are all part and parcel of the way of life Islam is all about . In Chapter 55 we find "Allah - Most Gracious! It is He Who has taught the Quran. He has created man. He has taught him eloquence [intelligence]" (55:1-4) . The didactic ethos of numerous Quranic injunctions on the pen, knowing and reasoning, seem to be lost today in the heap of ignorance and obscurantism that is consuming many a Muslim land . Lands where scholars of Islam underwrite political power at the expense of freedom of speech and a rational interpreting of the Quran that delivers Muslims from the yoke of oppression that is consuming Muslim youth and pleads the case of social justice, freedom of thought and tolerance . The sad state of the violence that today engulfs Muslim cities, pitting Muslim against Muslim, is in no small measure the result of the over-politicisation and over-securitisation of Islam . Whole states are disintegrating , and religious and sectarian intolerance is ushering in a horrible era of annihilation and self-destruction . Islam never began with jihad (a holy war) . The miracle of the Prophet Muhammad is that he knew when to retreat(via Hijra or emigration) to build values of solidarity, peaceful coexistence with all kinds of "otherness" (such as in Medina and hostile Arab tribes), create know-how, and voluntarism in faith and membership of community, along with moderation ("wasatiyya") . Quran is the word for "reading" . Those Muslims who, in cold blood, killed French journalists and cartoonists, supposedly to "avenge the prophet" miss the point about the prophet's ways . That includes the injunctions that "Verily, this Quran guides [human beings] to that which is most just"(17:9), and"If anyone took a life unless it be for murder and spreading injustice in the land, it would be as if he killed mankind entirely" (5:32) . Satire, criticism, and cartoons will never caricature the grand stature of the prophet nor diminish the sacredness of the Quran to Muslims and billions of tolerant human beings who share countries, ideologies or friendships with hundreds of millions of Muslims . Denigration comes from the savagery of heinous violence and Manichean ways many self-professed learned scholars of Islam or self-serving politicians knowingly and unknowingly are pushing trusting Muslim youth and entire nations towards the abyss . France has historically accommodated millions of Muslims who fled poverty, marginalisation and even oppression . Many of those come from North Africa where Maghreb countries have benefited not only from remittances, but also from a vast shared space in which Muslims, Christians and Jews have learnt the art of toleration of differences . What the murder of innocents in Paris has done is inflame inter-communal trust , and like the 9/11 attacks in the US 14 years ago, it has placed Muslims in the awkward position of being either unwelcome among host communities or defending Islam . This is because of the insane acts of co-religionists whose Islam is fixated on the "sword" and has little to do with the might of the "pen" that over millennia Muslim luminaries used to connect with others, and spread knowledge - not sow death .

Islam was revealed to save people from bloodshed and misuse of the sword

