I re-read “Federalist Ten” the other day -- easily the best known of the “Federalist Papers.” James Madison singles out religious faith as the kind of thing that produces the “factions” that, without an effective government, could easily destroy the social fabric. The “zeal for different opinions concerning religion,” he observed, is one of the leading forces that have “divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.”

Madison’s account certainly rings true today. And I don’t blame him for thinking there is no cure from within religion itself. There is too much evidence for the harmful effects of a “zeal for different opinions concerning religion” to deny that there is a problem.

In looking for a cure for the bad effects of religious zeal, however, the one thing I will not settle for is doing away with the “zeal” as such. To be sure, the Bible often portrays zeal as a defective trait. In his Epistle to the Romans, for example, the Apostle Paul describes people who “have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened” (Romans 10:2). But just two chapters later he tells his Christian readers: “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord (12:11). So there is bad zeal, the kind that is “unenlightened.” But there is also a good kind of zeal, the kind that we put on display when we “serve the Lord” with a steadiness of spirit.

The challenge, then, is how to nurture the right kind of zeal: the kind that sees the integrity of the social fabric as something worth preserving. And that does not mean holding zeal as such in tension with something else -- something like civility or toleration. The New Testament writers won’t allow for that. Certainly not Peter: it is by “doing right,” he says, that we can “silence the ignorance of the foolish”—and this means showing “honor” to all human beings (I Peter 2: 15-17). But it is Titus who addresses the topic of “zeal” directly in this regard: Jesus, he says, “gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2: 14).

Maybe it’s time to be preaching some sermons on the importance of the right kind of godly “zeal.”

Richard J. Mouw is president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California and author, most recently, of "Praying at Burger King" (Eerdmans).