Islam has
certainly been getting plenty of polarizing press, political and pulpit
attention lately. Accusations of islamophobia and naïve Islam-sympathy are
hurled across these divides. I have no illusions of writing something potent
enough to heal these rifts. I am definitely not an expert or scholar versed in
Islam and its variety of expressions. However, I do consider myself a
reasonably intelligent and insightful observer of the times in which I live and
have made some effort toward an informed understanding. As I often do, I write
to clarify my own thinking with some hope of stimulating fresh thinking and
dialog for others.
As with many
controversial issues, perspective and presuppositions are formative in what
follows, though recognizing our own assumptions and where they come from is as
difficult as identifying them in those with whom we disagree, often making
impasse inevitable. I’m sure my own self-awareness is as cloudy and incomplete
as anyone else’s, but I want to be clear about my own fundamental starting point.
I aspire to deal with the rise of Islam in my time as a disciple of Jesus who
wants to follow him as fully and passionately as possible.
I believe
discerning the antecedent of the pronoun “we” in discussions about Islam (among
any number of other issues) is essential. In public discourse, such as the
daily news and political campaigns, the antecedent of “we” is typically
intended to be understood as the “American people.” Often that use of “we”
implies excluding those who don’t match the speaker’s/writer’s image. Whether
“liberals,” “conservatives,” “minorities,” “foreigners,” immigrants,” or yes
“Muslims” are relegated to being the “other” and “they.” This ambiguity seems
to me to be particularly problematic for Christians who use “we” in ways that blur
the distinction between the people of this country and people who trust and
follow Jesus.
Yes, I am a
U.S. citizen. Yes, I care deeply about the quality of life in this country. But
for me, my identity as a disciple of Jesus is of far higher priority, significance
and importance than being an American. I could and hope I would be as much a
disciple of Jesus anywhere else in the world as I am in the U.S. Of course, I
would have to live it out in the realities of a different setting, which might
be far more challenging than here. I have neither the expertise nor standing
for suggesting how the U.S. – or any other nation – should conduct its
domestic, foreign or military policy. However, I will make a few modest
observations about that toward the end of this excursus.
I have no right
or intention to speak on behalf of others, so I will endeavor to refrain from
use of a presumptive “we” and speak specifically for myself. Since I desire
that my primary and definitive self-identification is as a disciple of Jesus, I
will be drawing on how I understand and use the Bible and Christian theology
and church history. I will purposely refrain from arguing with those who work
from different presuppositions in these areas, though I am open (and I hope
receptive) to learning from others who see things differently than I do.
The pattern of
the Book of Judges that seems to extend through ancient Hebrew history, is that
when the Israelites wandered too far from faithfulness to The Lord (translator’s frequent shorthand
for God’s personal name in the Hebrew scriptures – YHWH), an adversary would rise up and oppress them until they
appealed for The Lord to rescue
them. A season of spiritual renewal would follow but inevitably lead into
another round of complacency, oppression, renewal.
My hypothesis
is that seen in broad strokes, the Church and Islam have interacted in parallel
ways for the past 1400 years. I will explore that further in the body of this
text, but I am proposing that the challenge of Islam for the Church in our day
(note that I did not say for the U.S. or the West) is as a symptom of spiritual
weakness. As one who has received and offered classical spiritual direction, I
have often asked and answered the question, “Where can you discern the voice of
God in this?” As I ask that question about the rise of Islam in my time, I
believe I hear a wake-up call from God to get serious about Christian
discipleship and spiritual vitality.
Though I am
writing from my own personal perspective and presuppositions, they do have a
communal dimension. My interpretation of why Islam has grown so rapidly in my
own lifetime is that those of us who follow Jesus have not presented a
compelling alternative to the bankruptcy of secular materialism. Both Marxist
and capitalist approaches are inherently materialist. Yes, capitalism can
tolerate subservient religion better than Marxism, but both fail to be deeply
spiritually satisfying. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left a
disillusioned generation, and interestingly seemed to open the door to a great
revival in the Russian Orthodox Church. Yes, the mingling of Russian
nationalism with its church confuses and dilutes this, and it has left many
spiritual refugees looking for an alternative, and Islam welcomes them. When I
write of Islam, I am thinking of a 1400 year old religious and political
movement and distinguish that from the Islamist terrorism and violence that
occupies so much attention today. Both are important but should not be confused,
equated or interchanged.
The political
and economic chaos of the U.S. and Europe in the twenty-first century also
leaves disillusioned refugees in need of spiritual wholeness but most do not
find it. My view of the rise of Islam is not about its threat to the secular
democracies of the West or the oligarchies of the former communist sphere, but
that Islam and the Church are competing with each other for the souls of the
refugees from the spiritual hollowness of both capitalist and communist secular
materialism. I am afraid that the identification of Christianity with Western
democracy, perhaps not all that different than the mingling of Russian
nationalism and the Russian Orthodox Church, seriously blunts the appeal of the
Gospel of Jesus for those hungry for satisfying spiritual reality.
Historical Sketch
While I am not
a credentialed historical expert, I do know that nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything
develops out of an antecedent that shapes and propels it. However, I am neither
a determinist nor a fatalist. Humans, as individuals and societies, make decisions
for which they are morally responsible, but these determinations are formed in
the context of the times in which they live. As the saying goes, a fish will
never discover water, so most people live within the culture of their times
unaware of its powerful influence on them and all around them, but in every
generation a few have the insight and courage to cut across the grain or go
against the flow and call for another way of approaching reality. They are
often scorned in their own times but may be revered after their deaths. I
believe that Jesus was just such a person at the culmination of the line of the
Hebrew prophets.
My historical
sketch that follows is neither comprehensive nor have I assembled primary
source documentation to support my observations. I readily acknowledge that I
have focused on a few turning points that seem to me to be formative for my
understanding of the rise of Islam in my time, and that these are my personal
observations, insights and interpretations with which others who may be more expert
than I will dispute. I am not interested in debate, only dialog, awareness and
clarifying my own thinking.
Jesus lived in
the Jewish communities of Galilee and Judea which were under the domination of
the Roman Empire. His teaching and ministry challenged and threatened the
leadership of the Jewish religious establishment. His style was often oblique,
but he did not retreat from direct confrontation if he thought their approach
was injurious to the weak, poor and humble. Though Jesus was crucified as a
capital criminal under the law of the Roman Empire, he did not rally his
followers for an insurrection against the occupying forces. Though he welcomed
some people of means and position, Jesus primarily identified with people who
were suffering and struggling and not the power elites of either his own Jewish
community or the occupiers of the Roman Empire. That they both could be so
threatened by him suggests that he had power, but it was not a power that could
be suppressed by political or military force, which is why they found him so
dangerous.
The Church that
grew out of the Jewish community after Jesus’ resurrection and spread across
the Roman Empire was definitively outside of both Jewish and Roman established
institutions. Responses to the spread of the Church ranged from indifference to
hostility but never assimilation. I remember the docent at the Pantheon on my
visit to Rome in 2004 explaining the Roman Empire’s conquest strategy of adding
the idol gods of conquered people to the Pantheon as a way of saying “you’re
one of us now.” They didn’t know quite what to do with the Jew’s invisible God
and were outright offended that the Christians worshiped Jesus who had been
crucified by the Empire for sedition. Through its first three centuries, the
Church made various appeals to the Roman Empire to be accepted as responsible
citizens, but they were never willing to surrender to Caesar their ultimate and
exclusive allegiance to Jesus as Lord. I know everything was not perfect in the
pre-Constantinian Church. They were fallible, finite people too. In a
pre-printing world, they had limited access to written Scripture. They dealt
with different issues than arose when the Church had been coopted by the
Empire, but when declaring yourself a disciple of Jesus automatically made you
an outsider, you needed to be sure you really wanted to do that. You needed to
stay in spiritual shape to persevere.
These
conditions began to change in 313 AD when the Emperor Constantine had a vision
of either a cross (
)
or a chi rho (
) accompanied by a voice saying,
“In this sign conquer.” Constantine took that as an opportunity to coopt the
rising religion of Christianity in the cause of the expansion of the Roman
Empire by military might. He had his soldiers baptized in mass, informing them
they were now Christians who would fight for Caesar and Christ. Personal belief
or faith was irrelevant to the Emperor’s order. In 346 AD Constantine made
Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
)
or a chi rho () accompanied by a voice saying,
“In this sign conquer.” Constantine took that as an opportunity to coopt the
rising religion of Christianity in the cause of the expansion of the Roman
Empire by military might. He had his soldiers baptized in mass, informing them
they were now Christians who would fight for Caesar and Christ. Personal belief
or faith was irrelevant to the Emperor’s order. In 346 AD Constantine made
Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
This cultural
shift prompted some very different ethical issues for theological
consideration. Christians had not participated in the military much before
Constantine. For example, Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier when he came to
faith in Christ and tried for some time to serve Christ in that role, but
eventually he concluded he could not be a faithful soldier of Christ and of the
Roman Empire simultaneously. But now that the Empire’s soldiers were
presumptively “Christians,” a rationale for this change was needed. The result
was the just war ethic which was probably best articulated by Augustine of
Hippo (354-430) and drew on classic Greek philosophy and paralleled Deuteronomy
20. The classic Christian just war ethic was not only supposed to guide
political and military leaders but made individual Christian soldiers responsible
to discern whether or not they could participate in a given war or act of war.
Though the conscience of Christian soldiers who objected was supposed to be
respected, nations do not allow their citizens selective conscientious objection
to war.
Still three
centuries before Mohamed, I believe that the absorption of Christianity into
the Roman Empire set in motion conditions that spawned Islam. Constantine’s own
understanding of Christianity was at best distorted by his pagan and political
presuppositions. Those who were now made “Christians” by the Emperor’s decree
had even less grasp of what trusting and following Jesus was about. Precipitous
spiritual decline was almost immediate. I think the cycles of decline and
renewal in ancient Hebrew history offer a helpful way of interpreting the
post-Constantinian Church. In this spiritual catastrophe, a remnant hungered
for renewal and authenticity, for direct immediacy in relationship with God
through Jesus. Many began to go into the deserts seeking spiritual reality. We
know them today as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Yes, some of them were
strange and even ignorant of scripture, but the movement was built on authentic
faith in Jesus and spiritual vitality that spread well beyond the desert
hermitages. Today we’d call it a revival.
As important as this was, it did not bring a
complete spiritual transformation to the Church. With Empire and ecclesiastical
hierarchy wielding power together, the monasteries were often pressured into
compromising their spiritual goals. By the sixth century, the hub of the Church
structure in Rome was thoroughly corrupt. In disgust, Benedict of Nursia felt
God’s call to seek renewal and began walking until he was stopped by the cliffs
of Subiaco where he lived in caves praying for three years. When he emerged, he
was confident God had called him to bring renewal to the Church by reviving,
refining, organizing and spreading the monasteries. The movement flourished.
Benedict wrote his Rule, which was
actually a guide for pastoral leadership and spiritual formation led by the
Abbots (“father,” leader) of these communities. Though some of it would seem
out of line today (beating stubborn monks with a stick), on the whole I
consider it one of the very best guides to pastoral leadership I have ever
read. Benedict’s sister Scholastica led a parallel movement for women.
Benedictine communities and spirituality continue to thrive today, not just for
Roman Catholics but among Protestants as well.
The Qur’an came
to Muhammed between 610 and 632, less than a century after Benedict wrote his Rule. Muhammed had encountered the same
spiritual decay and corruption in the Church that had sent Benedict on his
three year prayer vigil. But Muhammed lived in an idolatrous culture farther
away from biblical source material and Christian mentors than Benedict. He was
a military and political leader and saw those as tools for religious
purification, not of the Church but of the culture. Though probably not
directly informed by Constantine’s approach three centuries earlier, he adopted
a similar method of religious renewal by conquest. For him, the Qur’an was a
corrective revelation to what he saw as the corruption of Scripture, worship
and service of God (Allah is the Arabic word for God) in both Jewish and
Christian communities. Christendom lacked both the military/political power and
spiritual strength to resist the rise of Islam and was soon caught in the
pincers of the advance from both east and west.
The era of the
crusades (from roughly 1000 to the mid-1300s) was a prolonged and complex
series of military confrontations between Christendom (the heir of
Constantine’s coopting of Christianity for the expansion of the Roman Empire)
and Islam. Reclaiming “Christian” territory that had fallen under Muslim
control in Spain and Eastern Europe was one important impetus for the crusades.
This expanded to reclaim the holy sites from Muslim control in the Holy Land.
Military and political ambitions also propelled “Christian” forces into
fighting each other. The classic Christian just war ethic was not adequate or applicable
to wars of invasion (all just wars were supposed to be defensive and not for
conquest). As the impetus to expel the Muslims from “Christian” territory and
holy sites grew so did a theology of holy war that was largely in place before
the formal start of the crusades. Now warfare became a “Christian” virtue if
not responsibility. Warfare became a path to religious advancement and merit.
Martyrdom became not just a virtue but in some cases even a goal. While not
identical with or drawn directly from, “Christian” holy war theology does have
some parallels with Muslim jihad. Non-Muslims should understand that many
modern Muslims to not understand jihad as military or violent warfare but
personal struggle (the actual meaning of the Arabic word) for holiness.
A legend with
historic roots tells how Francis of Assisi passed through the battle lines to
seek and receive an audience with the Sultan of Egypt, Malik al-Kamil, in 1219
during the Fifth Crusade. Francis intended to preach the Gospel to the Sultan
and either convince him to become a Christian or be martyred trying. The story
is that Francis preached with such compelling eloquence that the Sultan heard
him out and ordered safe passage for him to return to the “Christian” side of
the battle lines. After Francis departed, the Sultan is reputed to have said
that if all Christians were like Francis, he would consider becoming one. Though
he himself had been a soldier as a young man, after his spiritual awakening
Francis preached against the “Christian” feudal princes of Europe deploying
their soldiers to fight each other and objected to the warfare of the crusades
against Muslims, whom he considered to be brother humans even if not kin in
faith.
Unlike Benedict
who believed God had called him to bring spiritual renewal to the Church in a
time of spiritual decline, Francis had no vision of starting a movement and
would be at least embarrassed that a monastic order still bears his name today.
Francis’ vision was simply to follow Jesus himself the best he could. In a time
of spiritual hunger, that example was magnetic and many people followed
Francis, some as monks and others in their lay vocations. God used Francis to
spark an authentic spiritual renewal in the midst of the darkness of the era of
the crusades. In 1208 Francis sought authorization for his small monastic order
from Pope Innocent III. The story is that Pope Innocent had a dream in which
the Basilica of Sts. John Lateran (then the headquarters of the Pope before St.
Peter’s was built on Vatican Hill 1506-1626 as a more militarily defensible
location) was sliding off its foundations and collapsing. The “little monk”
Francis held it up with his shoulder, which is pictured in a fresco by Giotto
in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Pope Innocent III interpreted his
dream as a sign that Francis was God’s agent to save the Church from spiritual
collapse, and he authorized Francis and his movement. That did not stop the
moral disaster of the crusades, but it did spark a spiritual renewal that
continues today as both Roman Catholics and Protestants are inspired and guided
by Francis’ passionate vision to follow Jesus.
By the time of the Protestant Reformation, the
crusades had ceased. The “Christian” territory of Europe had largely been
reclaimed but the Holy Land had fallen back into Muslim hands, though
non-military pilgrimages, many of which collected relics reputed to be
associated with Jesus or pre-Constantinian saints, were possible. Spiritual
decline was again precipitous and the power elites of both Church and
Christendom were enriching and empowering themselves on the backs and at the
expense of the humble people of the realm. Spiritual teaching was abysmally
deficient. Fear and ignorance reigned among ordinary folk. Hatred and
oppressing was largely aimed at Europe’s Jews with Muslims more contained a
distance from Europe. Both were viewed with considerable hostility.
Except for the
Anabaptist minorities, the Christendom model prevailed among Protestants as
well as Roman Catholics. Following the Reformation, the Thirty Years War was
fought to determine militarily which parts of Europe would be Roman Catholic
and which would be Protestant. The structures of feudalism meant that the
prince determined the faith of those in his realm. So if your convictions were
different than your prince’s, you either converted or moved. Just as happened
in the era of the crusades, political and military ambitions confused this
already chaotic time with some Catholic princes at war with each other, and
some Protestant princes at war with each other. Though not with much clarity,
both just war and holy war theologies were invoked to justify Christians killing
Christians, which was tragically experienced in World War I when pastors on
both sides preached that the other side was a threat to Christian civilization.
Some German pastors were especially adamant that democracy was a threat to
God’s appointed authorities (Romans 13:1-7) in language similar to the
preaching against Godless communism during the Cold War.
In some sense
reminiscent of the crusades, the Western democracies and the Muslim world in
our time have some sense of being at war with one another in which only one
side can survive. In another sense, not unlike the Thirty Years War following
the Reformation, most of the violence in the Muslim world is in the rivalries
between Muslim sects, primarily but not limited to Sunni and Shiite. A number
of both Western and Muslim observers have suggested that Islam is at the same
place Christendom was 500 years ago. Some have even said that this is logical
as Islam is roughly 500 years younger than Christianity. These observers also
suggest that what is going on is a struggle for the soul of Islam in our time
even more than a conflict with the non-Muslim world. Will Islam find a way to
live in the global diversity of our world? Will Islam find a way to live in
diverse, democratic societies? This has some profound theological implications
I will explore a bit later. To listen to some of the current political rhetoric
in the U.S., one might think some Christians are also uncomfortable living in a
diverse, democratic society. The alternative for Islam is to become a movement
anchored permanently in the seventh century either by living in isolation or by
global domination.
Parallels in the Abrahamic Faiths
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all trace their roots to God’s calling of Abraham.
Certainly they have significant differences and are not simply interchangeable
cultural artifacts of the religious impetus of all humans. Nevertheless, I do
believe acknowledging and understanding some parallels between them is
important for dialog and response.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam are all religions of revelation. They proclaim that God
has spoken to people, and that revelation has a written expression: Torah,
Bible, Qur’an. This contrasts with any number of other world religions which I
think of as religions of discovery or enlightenment. In those religions people
follow paths of discipline and exploration in which they recognize the divine
within themselves or the universe or both. Without denigrating the religions of
enlightenment, Judaism, Christianity and Islam proclaim in one fashion or
another that God is known because God has chosen to be revealed to people. This
indicates God’s compassion and interest not only in humans but in being known by
humans.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all teach God has given an objective morality that is a
reliable way to living in full humanity. Yes, each tradition has a spectrum of
how much moral flexibility is available. At one end are what might be called
the “strict constructionists” who consider specific rules, laws and commands as
binding in all times, places and cultures. At the other end are those who
believe God grants titanic freedom to humans to live the principles of justice
and righteousness which underlie these laws in ways that work in varied and
changing cultural and historic contexts. Nevertheless, human behavior is
expected to express and conform to God’s righteous and just character.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all advocate justice, compassion and generosity for the
poor and oppressed as expected religious duties or disciplines. Almsgiving is
one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Deuteronomy 15:11 says, “Since there will
never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open
your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” In Galatians
2:10 the Apostle Paul wrote his response to the Jerusalem Church’s approval of
his ministry among the Gentiles, “They asked only one thing, that we
remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.” These
specifics only indicate a deep and pervasive theme shared by Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. Again, that the followers of these faiths have been
uneven at best in care for the poor in no way diminishes the importance and
centrality of care for the poor on the path of righteousness in each of them.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all claim to be universal faiths available to the whole
of humanity bringing racial and ethnic unity and harmony. To be identified as a
fellow believer was expected to create an identity and bond that superseded
nationality, ethnicity, class, language, politics, economics. You were a
follower of God first and foremost and only secondarily a citizen of your
nation or member of some other group. That followers of all three traditions
have failed spectacularly to live this out does not diminish the centrality of aspiring
to realize it.
Just a word
about Judaism that has a strong ethnic association in our time. Genesis 12:3
records God’s promise to Abraham that all the families of the earth would be
blessed through him. The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with non-Israelites
following and being blessed by the God of Israel. That Rahab and Ruth play
important roles in the Davidic line is just one such remarkable instance. The
New Testament Gospels and Book of Acts record any number of Gentiles who did
not convert to Judaism but were attracted by the faith of the Jewish community
and became known as “God fearers.”
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all offer a community of primary relationship to their
followers. By identifying with and participating in a community of faith,
support is available for all of the exigencies of life from making pivotal life
decisions to coping with crises. While that will primarily be experienced in the
local community with which one is associated, it is also a universal community.
When traveling, moving or displaced, one may seek out a community of those who
share one’s faith and expect to be welcomed. Again, all too often, sectarian
rivalries in all three traditions do interfere with this ideal.
Judaism, Christianity
and Islam all call their followers to a costly commitment. Embracing the faith
implies releasing things that other people consider ordinary and even valuable.
In return, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all teach their followers that they
are important to God and can make a significant contribution to God’s purposes
in the world. You matter because you are part of something far bigger than
yourself. I believe this is what attracts people to each of these traditions,
whether in healthy benevolent or harmful, violent modes.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam are all what I would call missionary religions. I
recognize “missionary” is word with particular Christian overtones, but all
three traditions have a message they consider to be hope and truth that they
proclaim to non-believers.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam offer their followers a distinct identity that defines
“who I am.” This has a strong appeal to those who are confused about their
identity, often having been victims of abuse, bullying or rejection.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam offer a means of integrating all of life into a coherent
whole. None of them allow for compartmentalization into “religious” and
“ordinary” part of myself or my life. It is true that our pluralistic, secular
society insists on compartmentalization, making religion private and out of
bounds for public conversation. However, that breeds personal fragmentation
that undermines emotional health. Islam not only draws on the Qur’an but also
the life of the Prophet to guide every detail of life from the most mundane to
the most eloquent. Faithful Jews seek to follow the 613 commandments of the
Torah to organize their lives. Christians aspire to live in the presence of
Jesus in every setting of life. The slogan “What would Jesus do?” trivialized
this several years ago, but it does express the Christian teaching that nothing
is beyond the Lordship of Christ.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all think of history having a direction and purpose, and
each person as having a God given destiny. They envision a climax and
culmination of human history in which God’s purposes are accomplished. They do
not see history as cycles repeating themselves endlessly. Nor do they see
history as pointless, random interactions of unrelated events and phenomena.
Such a view of history enables Judaism, Christianity and Islam to put tragic
and even evil events in a context in which God’s ultimate purposes cannot be
frustrated, so humans have a way to proceed through deep difficulties with
hope.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam all offer some form of personal hope for life beyond
this life. The Hebrew Scriptures say less than the New Testament or the Qur’an
and are vague and cryptic, but they do hint at a reality beyond our daily
experiences of mortality. Jesus and the rest of the New Testament point
emphatically to the resurrection to eternal life, though its nature is deeply
mysterious. Islam holds out a promise of reward for righteousness in this life
in a paradise of pleasure and delight. All of these are in sharp contrast with
the very popular concept of the immortality of the soul, which came from pagan
Greek thought that regards matter and our physical bodies as either evil or
unreal. In one way or another Judaism, Christianity and Islam all affirm the
goodness of our physical existence in a good physical universe. They all reject
the idea that at death our good souls escape the bad prisons of our bodies.
Finessing this more finely would be a suitable compare and contrast study of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but my point here is simply that they all
offer some form of personal hope beyond this life.
I have already
indicated that I do not think these parallels make Judaism, Christianity and
Islam equivalent or interchangeable. Very important and defining contrasts and
differences distinguish Judaism, Christianity and Islam from each other. I want
to highlight a few that I believe are pivotal. I readily acknowledge that I do
this with Christian presuppositions and perspectives. I would hope that Muslims
reading this would think my simple summaries are fair, but I am not trying to
argue with them as much as to help myself and my fellow Christians understand
both where Christianity and Islam converge and where they diverge.
Christology
For me the
sharpest and most critical divergence is how Jesus is perceived. The most
concise expression of Jesus’ identity in the New Testament may be Peter’s
confession in Matthew 16:16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God.” John the Baptist called Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world!” (John 1:29) From the days of the Apostles, Christian
theologians have wrestled with how to understand and articulate what this
means, but Jesus as Christ, Son of God and Savior is the fulcrum of Christian
faith.
The Qur’an
speaks respectfully of Jesus as a prophet and in Sura 19 “Mary” seems to affirm
Jesus’ virgin birth and resurrection.
She said: “How shall I have a
son, when man has never touched me? And I am not unchaste.”
He said: “So shall it be. The
Lord hath said, ‘Easy is this with me;’ and “We will make him a sign to
mankind, and a mercy from Us. For it is a thing decreed.’”
A bit farther
down in that Sura, the child Jesus said from his cradle:
The peace of God was on me the
day I was born, and will be the day I shall die, and the day I shall be raised
to life.
In Sura 5 “The
Table” a witness affirms Jesus healings when he says to Jesus
Thou didst heal the blind and the
leper, by My leave; and when by My leave, thou didst bring forth the dead.
Sura 5 also
seems to suggest Jesus’ institution of the communion meal as he prayed
Oh God, our Lord! Send down a
table to us out of heaven, that it may become a recurring festival to us, to
the first of us and to the last of us, and a sign from Thee; and do thou
nourish us, for Thou art the best nourishment.
But Sura 19 is
clear that Jesus is not the son of God.
It beseemeth not God to beget a
son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He only saith to it, “Be,” and
it is.
Not only does
Islam not see Jesus as son of God, it does not address God as father, as that
would seem to diminish God wholly otherness of being. The Hebrew Scriptures do not
address God as father, but they do use a number of both father and mother
images to communicate God’s character, particularly God's compassionate care and
protection. Jesus regularly called God "Father" and taught his disciples and us
to do the same. Christians have grown so accustomed to this that we miss its
radical impact and praying to Our Heavenly Father too easily becomes cliché.
When I was in
grammar school in the 50s I distinctly remember observing National Brotherhood
Week the third week in February with the slogan “The Fatherhood of God and the
Brotherhood of Man.” Brotherhood Week was started in 1934 by the National
Conference for Christians and Jews for combating bigotry and bias by helping us
see what we all had in common regardless of race or religion. It sounds vaguely
quaint and sexist today, but at a deeper level, speaking of the Fatherhood of
God has a distinctly Judeo-Christian flavor that Muslim theology rejects and might
even consider blasphemous. I am neither criticizing the past nor regretting its
loss. I am only observing how as times and conditions change, what originally
had one intent (unity, tolerance, respect) takes on a different significance
(division, conflict, insult).
Scripture
The Hebrew
Scriptures and the New Testament are a different sort of literature than the Qur’an
and came into existence in different ways, which affect how each is understood
and used by its own adherents and why comparing quote to quote is difficult at
best.
The Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament are
commonly referred to in ordinary usage and by Christians as The Bible. Depending
on how specific scholarly information is understood, these Scriptures were
written over a period of perhaps ten to fifteen centuries. Many different
people wrote them in widely varying circumstances and even cultures. The word
“bible” means library, and truly The Bible is not a single book but a
collection of many books in a variety of literary forms. They were written by
people in the midst of their daily experiences both individually and
communally. Very little of the material is presented as having been dictated
directly by God. Christians vary considerably in how they understand and convey
God’s role in the production of what we have come to know as the Bible. I often
say that I consider the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament books to be
inspired, reliable and authoritative. I know some of my fellow Christians
consider that too loose and others too restrictive.
By way of
contrast, the Qur’an came to one person, Muhammad, in about 22 years of his
lifetime. He dictated what he believed he had received from God to scribes who
wrote it down on various media. When the Qur’an was compiled, it was not
organized by chronology or theological theme but the length of the Suras. Much
of the material reads like direct instruction from God or proverbial aphorisms
to guide wise and holy living. Compared to the Bible, it has little historic
material. Orthodox Islam teaches that when the Qur’an is read aloud in Arabic
(its original language) the voice of God is heard. Thus devout Muslims study
Arabic so they can participate in these holy readings and prayers. Strictly
speaking, a translation of the Qur’an is not the Qur’an itself but should be
identified as a translation.
Just a quick
note on language and the Bible. The Hebrew Scriptures were basically written in
Hebrew, with a few snatches of Chaldee where the story intersects with Babylon.
Jews today still use Hebrew in their worship as part of their communal
identity. They have translated the Hebrew Scriptures into various languages
when they have settled in the diaspora.
The New
Testament was written in Greek with some smattering or Aramaic. Aramaic is a
cognate language to Hebrew commonly spoken in Galilee and Judea in Jesus’ time.
It was the language of Jesus and his disciples. But as the Christian Gospel
spread through the multi-lingual Mediterranean world, the letters and books
that became the New Testament were written in Greek as that was the lingua franca
of the region so people everywhere could read and understand. This means that
when we read Jesus’ words in our Gospels, we are reading translations of Greek
into English that were already translations of Aramaic into Greek.
Interestingly, the Greek used by the New Testament writers was not scholarly
Greek but the common language used by ordinary people to conduct the affairs of
their lives. In time Latin replaced Greek as the lingua franca and the Bible
was translated into Latin. In time only scholarly people in ecclesiastical
roles knew Latin and restricting the Bible to Latin became a tool for
restricting access by common people, and church services in Latin came to have
a magical aura. One of the fruits of the Protestant Reformation and the
invention of printing was to have the Bible translated again in the languages
people actually spoke, wrote and read. Even though the ecclesiastical hierarchy
of the Medieval Catholic Church resisted translating and printing the Bible for
common people to read, in our day, Roman Catholics have access to good
translations (even using some done by Protestants) and encourage personal and
informal group Bible reading and study.
Foundations
Jesus and Muhammad founded (that may not be an
appropriate word for either of them) Christianity and Islam in contrasting
contexts that shaped their histories and still influence their paths.
As I have
already mentioned, Jesus was an outsider to both the Jewish and Roman
establishments who largely regarded him as powerless. Yet they feared both him and
his followers who were not easily coerced or threatened into cooperation. Even
though Constantine co-opted a distorted Christianity for the purposes of empire
conquest, the spiritual revivals that followed generally returned to some form
of outsider status.
In Muhammad’s
time, Arabia was made up of a number of separate tribes and towns, often in
conflict with each other, each with its own gods and goddesses. Muhammad used
political, military and religious tools to unite them. He was a public
official, a soldier and a prophet. He was the leader of society, army and
religion. Islam replaced pagan polytheism which Muhammad proclaimed to be a
purifying return to the monotheism of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the other
prophets. What he knew of Christianity came from contacts and military
conflicts with Christendom at a time of its profound spiritual weakness and
corruption. The word “Islam” means “submission” meaning total submission to
God, which was not only a personal religion but the character of all society
and a mission to bring the totality of human culture into submission to God.
The Christendom
model is in some sense similar in that it assumes or insists on government and
society being congruent with Christianity, even if Christianity has to be
distorted to accomplish this. Law and sometimes even violence are presumed to
be legitimate tools for this purpose. Though Benedict’s renewal was underway in
Muhammad’s time, it was pretty much limited to Europe and its spiritual power
unknown to Muhammad and his followers. Muhammad was reacting to the corrupt
Christianity of Christendom. Much of the history of the interaction between
Christianity and Islam has been characterized by these military and political
clashes, each invoking its own religious vision. Christians dare not dismiss
this history as irrelevant to contemporary issues.
We in the
democratic West place a high value on individual rights and personal identity.
The idea that each individual has a faith relationship with God through Jesus
works well within that context. Yet, the collapse of the Christendom consensus
in our time does often leave many Christians uncomfortable and even threatened
by a pluralistic, secular society that does not overtly prefer Christianity
either legally or by social consensus. However, as an increasing number of Muslim
folk come to live in the pluralism of the West, they struggle to figure out how
to be fully submitted to God when few of their neighbors are and the social
consensus does not support this. Many if not most Muslims who come to the West accept with
some gratitude the freedom to practice their faith without some of the
oppressive measures they left behind in Muslim societies.
But for others,
the awareness of this pluralism undermines their own sense of being faithful
Muslims. Some of them respond to this by preaching and teaching Islam to their
non-Muslim neighbors. Indeed, the growth of Islam is not just by immigration
but also considerable conversion. Some Muslims (especially
disaffected converts) find this response inadequate and are drawn toward
radical Islamist violence and terrorism. I have personally concluded that
neither Christians (as individuals or as the Church) nor Western democracies
will respond effectively to radical Islamist violence and terrorism until we
understand the theology behind it and recognize why something that seems
reprehensible to most of us seems reasonable and even righteous to them.
This contrast
in how religion and society are viewed contributes to some of the misunderstandings
that confuse interactions between people who live in Muslim societies where
everything is supposed to be submitted to God and the democratic West where
religion is distinct from both government and public life. After the first Gulf
War, the U.S. military pulled out, leaving both infrastructure and garbage
dumps behind. Wanting to view their presence as liberators, there was
considerable shock at some of the hostile reactions. I saw one TV news
interview with a woman who was going through a dump to seek things she could
recycle and reuse for her family. She was irate that the U.S. military dump had
exposed her children to the “Christian magazine Playboy” with its female nudes. Plenty of Christians in the West
are also unhappy with such publications (not to mention the Internet), but
since the concept of a Muslim country does not make the distinction between
private and public that pluralistic democracies do, by presenting the U.S. as a
“Christian” country, people in Muslim countries may perceive what Christians in
the West also find immoral to be “Christian.” Rhetoric insisting on identifying
the U.S. as a Christian nation feeds this distorted misunderstanding in Muslim
societies. I submit that it is not their job to understand us; it is our job to
understand them if we hope for any productive dialog.
Total Integration of Faith and Life
All three
Abrahamic religions share a theology of faith integrating with, defining and
directing all of life, but each does that in its own way.
Since the
Babylonian Exile and through the Diaspora, Judaism had taught the keeping of
the 613 commandments of the Torah and the associated traditions as the way to
maintain and nourish Jewish identity in a wide variety of non-Jewish cultures,
often in the face of severe persecution. God’s assurance to Elijah in 1 Kings
19:18 that there were still 7,000 in Israel whose knees had not bowed to Baal
illustrated the pervasive theme of a faithful remnant who do not succumb to
spiritual corruption and decline. The post-Exilic Hebrew Scriptures and what
Christians call the Apocrypha all implore, encourage and instruct in faithfully
maintaining and passing on these signs of Jewish identity as aliens who live in
non-Jewish communities.
For the
Church’s first three centuries, Christians were outsiders to both Jewish and
Roman communities. After Constantine and the rise of Christendom, Christian
renewal movements were regarded by themselves and those around them as
outsiders, even by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Christian theology of
faith integrating, defining and directing all of life has always been about
personal discipleship. This typically has a communal dimension in
congregations, monastic orders and small groups, but one’s discipleship is not
dependent on the faithfulness of one’s neighbors or town or nation, or even
church organization.
On the other
hand, the way Islam developed in Arabia and with repeated clashes with
Christendom, faithfulness was expected of the whole community and all are
responsible for the practice of their neighbors. The thinking is that since
everything in my life is to be submitted to God, my neighbors, town and nation
also need to be submitted to God for me to be fully submitted to God, which is
only possible in a Muslim society.
Having
acknowledged this historic and theological distinction between Islam and the
Judeo-Christian tradition, Muslim countries practice it in different ways. For
example Turkey and Indonesia are very different from Saudi Arabia and or Iran.
Historically, many Muslim communities have lived peacefully alongside Jewish,
Christian and other non-Muslim communities for centuries, whether Muslims were
the majority or minority. As might be expected, tensions between these
communities do occur even while generally peaceful cooperation has prevailed.
However, the increasing global hostilities by and against Muslims in our time
had disrupted many of these long-time peaceful co-existences in places as
different as the former Yugoslavia and the Philippines.
The rapid immigration,
biological and conversion growth of Islam in the democratic West has become a
flashpoint for these tensions. While the craving for power seems to drive much
of radical Islamist violence, it draws on and exploits this theology of total
submission to God that requires establishing Muslim society if one is to be a
fully faithful Muslim. In many ways, the conflict is not so much between Islam
and the democratic West as within Islam between those who seek a global
Caliphate and those who want to practice Islam in the global diversity of the
twenty-first century. The question may boil down to whether the historic
examples of peaceful co-existence and cooperation can be applied in the present
realities and whether that thinking can prevail in global Islam.
As a Christian
I am compelled by God’s love for all people to pray for my Muslim neighbors and
for Muslim people around the world. My first prayer is that as they read about
Jesus (and his mother Mary) in the Qur’an, the Holy Spirit will stir in them a
curiosity about Jesus that will prompt them to read about him in the New
Testament (as difficult and dangerous as reading the New Testament is in some
Muslim societies), and that the Holy Spirit will draw them into trusting Jesus.
My second prayer is that Muslim people will meet Christians who represent Jesus
so well that they will be able to have conversation about and be pointed to
him. Perhaps to be the kind of Christian that Francis of Assisi was who
prompted the Sultan to say that if more Christians were like Francis, he would
consider becoming one. My third prayer is that as the sovereign God
superintends human history, the historic examples of peaceful co-existence and
cooperation will prevail in global Islam and supplant radical Islamist
violence.
I want to
briefly illustrate my second prayer with a personal experience. At a community
event in which a church I was serving participated, a man from a Muslim country
came to me as a Christian pastor and asked for an appointment. When we talked
he told me that since coming to this country he had met Christians whose lives
impressed him as superior to his Muslim life. He asked me to tell him how to
get to know about Jesus, and I pointed him to the Gospels. We had further
conversations in which he shared with me his journey to trusting Jesus and his
anxiety for his safety and that of his family in his country of origin should
his investigation of Jesus become known. I have purposely omitted any details
that could identify or endanger him or his family, but these conversations
challenged me to aspire to be the kind of disciple of Jesus who would attract
people (Muslim or not) to Jesus and to pray for people like this man and the
Christians whom they will meet. I am convinced that these opportunities can
flourish in an atmosphere of peaceful co-existence and cooperation. While I
pray for it among Muslims, I am responsible to live it as a Christian.
Same God?
From the
earliest days of Islam’s challenge to Christianity, many Christians (and Jews
for that matter) have argued that Islam worships a different God than do Jews
and Christians. In the present contentious environment, a number of prominent
Christian preachers have vehemently charged Islam with worshipping a different
God. This received a lot of public attention with the recent suspension of a
professor at Wheaton College for suggesting Christians, Jews and Muslims all
worship the same God, only Muslims not in the right way. I am not going to
attempt to resolve that directly but come at this question from a different
angle.
Some Christians
have suggested Muhammad invented “Allah” (do remember that this is only the
Arabic word for God) at Satan’s prompting to deceive, and that Satan was the
source of Muhammad’s revelations that became the Qur’an. Others have suggested
that “Allah” was a demon that possessed Muhammad (Islamic folklore does
recognize lesser spiritual creatures, some good some evil – jinn). Others have
suggested that Muhammad started with the worship of the moon god that was
common in Arabian polytheism and transformed it into “Allah” to unite the
tribes of Arabia, hence the symbol of the crescent moon. Needless to say,
Muslims find all of these quite offensive and consider them evidence of
ignorance or attack by Christians.
I do see some
parallel in this discussion to Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at
the well in John 4:20. There the debate does not seem to be whether the Jews
and Samaritans worship different Gods, but who worships the one true God in the
right way. Jesus dismisses the issue of the right place to worship with his
universal call to worship in spirit and in truth (4:21,24) but asserts with
blunt clarity that salvation is from the Jews and the Samaritans do not know
what they worship (4:22). I am not
suggesting some rigid application of this encounter to today’s divide between
the Judeo-Christian understanding of God and Islam. However, I do think Jesus
gives some clue about starting with the presentation of the question and moving
toward a fresh clarity.
Some Christians
seem to fear that acknowledging the Islam worships the same God as Jews and
Christians will make the religions interchangeable as though it makes no
difference as long as people believe in God. I have already identified
essential theological differences between Christianity and Islam. I do not
consider them interchangeable (neither would a faithful Muslim), though I have
also acknowledged a number of qualities they do share in common. The following
is not an apology for Islam; what I hope for is a way of understanding the
divergence by recognizing a common starting point.
Judaism,
Christianity and Islam are commonly referred to as the three Abrahamic
Monotheisms. Though historically most recent, Islam traces its roots to Abraham
and claims to worship the God of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the prophets
(whom they consider to be Muslims who were submitted to God). For them,
Muhammad is the final prophet whom God sent to correct the errors introduced by
Jews and especially Christians. So the standard Muslim assertion is that
Muslims, Christians and Jews do worship the same God, but Islam is the right
way to do it.
Typically,
Muslims trace to Abraham through Ishmael and not Isaac. So where Jews and
Christians identify their God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exodus
3:6,15,16; 4:5; 1 Kings 18:36; 1 Chronicles 29:18; 2 Chronicles 30:6). The
New Testament also claims the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matthew 22:32;
Mark 12:26; Luke 20:37; Acts 3:13; 7:32) The God Muslims worship might be
identified as the God of Abraham and Ishmael (though they don’t use that
specific designation). While not the same covenant promise made to Isaac and
Jacob, God did make great promises to Ishmael. (Genesis 16:12; 21:13,18,20) Though
not occupying the same position as Ishmael, in the convoluted descent of the
peoples who have lived and striven together in the Holy Land, Esau also
represents those who have a place in God’s plan but not in the covenant through
Jacob. His father Isaac did speak of his destiny in Genesis 27:39-40 and his
brother Jacob did reconcile with him in Genesis 33:4-16. The distinction that
separates Islam from Judaism and Christianity stems from the divergence from
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
I have already
examined the radical difference between how Islam respects Jesus as a prophet
and how Christianity actually worships Jesus as the Son of God. Of course,
Judaism also disagrees with Christianity on this point. But the New Testament
makes that part of the way God is identified. Paul and Peter both wrote of the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 15:6; 2 Corinthians 1:3; 11:31;
Ephesians 1:3; 1 Peter 1:3). So while Muslims readily say they worship the God
of Abraham, whom Jews and Christians also worship, they would never accept the
God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and certainly never worship Jesus as
deity. When it comes to worshipping Jesus, Muslims and Christians agree they
are worshipping different Gods (though still both tracing to Abraham).
Galatians 3 is emphatic that faith in Jesus makes one an heir of Abraham. “If
you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to
the promise.” (3:29)
So I would
suggest that Jews, Christians and Muslims can claim to worship the God of
Abraham. But the divergence comes quickly when Jews and Christians affirm they
worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And the divergence is sharpened
when Christians assert they worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Violence in Text
Western
politicians, imams and ordinary Muslims make vocal declarations that Islam is a
religion of peace that is being hijacked and distorted by violent Islamist
terrorists have violent quotes from the Qur’an hurled back at them. They are
accused of either being disingenuous or dishonest or unfaithful Muslims. Condemnations
of violence and terrorism by Muslim leaders and groups of Muslim people,
especially in the West, get the same accusation if they are not just unreported
in the press or dismissed as not being genuine or coming from the right source.
I am not a
Quranic scholar and am in no position to exegete or interpret these sayings, so
I will not address these specific verses but acknowledge they are in the Qur’an.
I do think this question of the nature of Islam and how to read the Qur’an is
at the heart of the battle for the future of Islam that is going on in our
time. The “fundamentalist” Muslims argue for a rigid, literal interpretation
and application of not only the Qur’an but also an effort to live out the
patterns from the foundation 1400 years later. And it strikes me as a little
odd to apply the term “fundamentalist” that has been used for a Christian
theological movement for the divisions within Islam, which may make sorting out
the nuances more difficult.
This issue is
well illustrated by the interview with Jonathan Brown in the November 25, 2015
issue of the Christian Century (pp.
26-29). He is professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University. He said,
“The meaning of the Qur’an is never the literal meaning of the Qur’an. Its
interpretation is always based on a larger body of evidence: the Sunna of the
prophet, the work of scholars after generations of interpretation, and other
parts of the Qur’an. If you think about the Qur’an as a pretty strange book
whose meaning is not evident on the surface, then you can understand why this
broader interpretive context is necessary. Understandings of the Qur’an are
inherently problematic. There are four schools of law in Sunni Islam and two in
Shi’a Islam and many theological schools.”
He illustrates
with a verse from the Qur’an that states that if a wife is guilty of extreme
disrespect, then her husband should “encounter, admonish, leave her alone in
her bed, and then strike her.” He offers these alternate ways of
interpretation. “Many people hold that this is an example of the Qur’an saying
wife-beating is acceptable, and this creates a lot of problems for modern
people. The verse is not a Hadith, so you can’t say, ‘It is not reliable.’ If
Muslims start saying the Qur’an is not reliable, then they are not Muslims
anymore. At that point you cease to be a part of the conversation. Within that
limit, one option is to say, ‘God knows better than I do, so even though my
reason fights against this, I have to go with what God says.’ That leaves you
with the idea that wife-beating is acceptable in Islam. Another option is to
say, ‘This was a verse given to a certain people in a certain time, and as
societies develop, it is no longer applicable.’ That’s fine, but then you have
the problem of where else in the Qur’an this is the case. … A better direction
is to seek the proper meaning of the text within the interpretative community,
within the Sunna of the prophet, and within the work of generations of Muslim scholars
seeking faithful interpretation. There one learns that from early on in the
tradition, scholars did not think it permissible for a man to beat his wife.
Muslim scholars and judges are the ultimate authority of interpretation, and
they have always said that a man striking his wife is not allowed.”
To non-Muslims,
especially those anxious about the violent verses in the Qur’an, this
interpretive pattern may seem like an evasion of the obvious literal meaning of
the text. And some Muslims certainly reject this sort of thinking in favor of a
rigidly literal interpretation of the violent verses and believe that they
justify the terrorism directed against infidels. I am not going to analyze or
evaluate Jonathan Brown’s explanation of Quranic interpretation. I include it
to illustrate how some of these difficult passages are being addressed in the
Muslim community.
I have already
made clear that I do not consider Christianity and Islam or the Bible and the
Qur’an to be interchangeable. Nevertheless, contemporary Christians approach
interpretative issues in somewhat similar ways. Some Christians take the Bible
literally in what strikes me as a simplistic, wooden way. They insist on a
young earth created in seven 24 hour days based on Genesis. They preach against
all divorce and do not allow divorced people to serve in leadership among other
specific ethics restrictions. They conflate Daniel and Revelation to create
eschatological timelines on which they overlay whatever current events are in
the news. At the other end of this spectrum are Christians who question the
authenticity of much of what is in the Bible and interpret it as pointing to a
general lifestyle of love and mercy. Sometimes Christians who hold to contrary
interpretative principles attack each other and suggest that those who disagree
with them are not authentic Christians. Between these ends are many Christians,
including serious scholars, who wrestle with the biblical texts to understand
what they tell us about faith and life in our own time.
I am not
suggesting that interpretive problems and principles are the same for
Christianity and Islam, only that there are some parallels. That the Qur’an
came to one person during a relatively short period of time and claims to be by
God’s dictation, in one way makes interpretation simpler but handling some of
these difficult passages more challenging than the Bible. Of course, the way
some Christians understand the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible comes
off almost like divine dictation which restricts the interpretive
possibilities. However, since the Bible is a library of writings in a variety
of literary genres by many different writers over the course of centuries in
many different contexts, interpretation is by necessity more flexible but also
more complex than would be typical of the Qur’an.
I am not going
to attempt any more detailed analysis of Quranic and biblical hermeneutics
except to observe that interpreting difficult passages is an important task for
both. I have no credibility for instructing Muslims in how to interpret the
Qur’an. Jonathan Brown will have to suffice as illustrative but not
comprehensive of Islamic hermeneutics. But I will attempt to address in
overview how Christian interpretation of the Bible relates to the violent
material it contains. Most of the troublesome references to violence are in the
Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). My sense is that most Christians are not
troubled by them because they are ignorant of them, knowing only simplistic,
sanitized Sunday school stories of assorted heroes and heroines. Those who do
have a vague but broader awareness of the violence in the Bible tend to ignore
it rather than wrestle with it.
One way
Christians deal with the violence in the Hebrew Scriptures is by saying it is
superseded by the New Testament. Sometimes this comes as a casual write off
that treats this as history that has been left behind. Dispensationalists have
developed a systematic theology of God relating to people in different ways in
different dispensations. A less extreme but similar approach posits that God
related to people in ways that worked in their world, especially in terms of
establishing the Hebrew nation in a hostile environment to fulfill the
redemptive promise of blessing all of humanity through the promise to Abraham’s
descendants. One part of that is a view of God’s sovereignty over human
history, working through the freely chosen, often evil, acts of fallen people.
The prophecy of Habakkuk is clear about this as the prophet complains to God about
the wickedness of the people of Judah, to which God says the Chaldeans
(Babylonians) will bring judgment on them. Habakkuk retorts that the Chaldeans
are even worse than the Israelites, to which God says that someone else will
come and judge them. So while evil seems to reign in human affairs, God
sovereignly moves history toward justice and redemption. With this
understanding, the violence is still evil but the evil is not greater than
God’s purposes.
From Moses to David, Israel is being formed
with a great concern about the dangers of being spiritually contaminated by the
idolatry of their pagan neighbors. Penalties were harsh. Such as stoning to
death a blasphemer in Leviticus 24:13-16.
The Lord said
to Moses, saying: Take the
blasphemer outside the camp; and let all who were within hearing lay their
hands on his head, and let the whole congregation stone him. And speak to the people of Israel,
saying: Anyone who curses God shall bear the sin. One who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall
be put to death; the whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer. Aliens as
well as citizens, when they blaspheme the Name, shall be put to death.
When Israel
occupied Canaan, they were instructed to drive out all of the inhabitants and
destroy all of their idols and high places of idol worship. This was an issue
from the time Joshua took them into the land until the Babylonian captivity,
which was interpreted as judgment for falling prey to pagan idolatry. The work
of the “good kings” of Judah and the Hebrew prophets revolved around
eliminating persistent idolatry. By modern standards, we would consider these
things to be ethnic cleansing and destruction of cultural antiquities. The
references to this are myriad, but Numbers 33:50-53 records this mandate.
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelites, and say to them: When you cross over
the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from
before you, destroy all their figured stones, destroy all their cast images,
and demolish all their high places. You shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I
have given you the land to possess.
One
interpretative approach for understanding the justification for driving the
peoples from Canaan is the heinous nature of their idolatry which included
promiscuous temple prostitution and human sacrifice by burning babies alive.
Thus Israel was God’s tool of justice for them, just as Babylon would be God’s
tool of justice for Judah. This seems to be set in place in Genesis 15:16 when
God promised Abraham that though his descendants would be aliens in a foreign
land (Egypt) for centuries, they would eventually return to Canaan. The delay
was because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete,”
suggesting even the possibility of God’s patience giving every opportunity for
repentance. Psalm 106-34-39 articulates this understanding of driving out the
Canaanites.
They
did not destroy the peoples, as the Lord commanded them, but they
mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their
idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their
daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their
sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land
was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and
prostituted themselves in their doings.
The stories of Melchizedek
in Genesis 14, Balaam in Numbers 22 and Rahab in Joshua 2,6 suggest that God
had prophets and righteous people in Canaan to call them to repentance. This
pursuit of spiritual purity takes on ethnic dimensions so that when Judah
returned from Babylon, the Jewish men were commanded to send away their foreign
wives (Ezra 10:3,11)
This line of
thinking does not easily brush aside the great difficulties of the violence
ancient Israel and Judah perpetrated on their enemies and even on their
neighbors, seemingly with God’s consent if not at God’s command. We dare not
brush all of this aside with easy answers. Furthermore, in our time with the
challenges from violent Islamist terrorism and the connection between it and
the violent passages of the Qur’an (both by adherents and critics), we
Christians must be honest about the violence in the Bible and not brush it
aside too easily but find a certain kinship with our Muslim neighbors as we
both wrestle with how to understand and apply our scriptures in the world in
which we live.
The imprecatory
Psalms bring a radically personal dimension to the violence in the Bible. These
are Psalms of praying evil against or cursing an enemy. Popularly, Christians
today know and focus on the “nice” Psalms, but of the 150 Psalms, fully 100
(2/3) are laments and complaints. While the imprecatory Psalms are not grouped
all together or specifically labeled, these are the ones typically so
identified: 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, 35, 37, 40, 52, 59, 56, 58, 59, 69, 70, 79,
83, 109, 129, 137, 139, 140, 143. Psalm 109:6-16 illustrates this dramatically.
Appoint
a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand on his right. When he is tried,
let him be found guilty; let his prayer be counted as sin. May his days be few;
may another seize his position. May his children be orphans, and his wife a
widow. May his children wander about and beg; may they be driven out of the
ruins they inhabit. May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers
plunder the fruits of his toil. May there be no one to do him a kindness, nor
anyone to pity his orphaned children. May his posterity be cut off; may his
name be blotted out in the second generation. May the iniquity of his father be
remembered before the Lord, and do not let the sin of his
mother be blotted out. Let them be before the Lord continually, and may his memory be cut off from the
earth.
Taking a cue
from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, these may be understood as God’s legitimate anger at
evil cast in the deep emotions of the victims of evil, most notably Jesus and
the hostility toward him that ultimately put him on the cross. As one who has
prayed through the Psalms monthly for 45+ years, I see these Psalms as giving
me a voice for some of the emotions I feel when I see evil directed against the
innocent and weak. I can express that emotion honestly to God and then
relinquish it to God, trusting God to take appropriate action in the course of
human affairs. Again, I caution against treating that too lightly. Part of the
appeal of the Psalms is their raw honesty in expressing all human emotions and
experiences (good and bad) and doing so directly to God. They are tools for
wrestling with not for dismissing the difficult.
Historic and Contemporaneous Violence
In the current
political environment, the loud voices of many non-Muslims have hurled blatant
assertions that Islam is or is not a religion of peace. Besides being
presumptuous and arrogant to speak on behalf of a religion you barely
understand if at all, this misses the reality that Islam is not monolithic and
the divisions between Muslims are substantial. As I have already observed, any
number of Muslim and non-Muslim analysists have suggested that the great
division between Muslims in our time is about how to follow Islam in the
modern, pluralistic, secular world, though certainly sectarian, ethnic and
nationalistic divisions are also volatile.
I have no right
to speak as an authority on Islam much less on behalf of Muslims. Nevertheless,
I do think that a bit of reflection on the history not only of Islam but of the
relationship between Islam and Christendom does shed some light on current
trends and issues. I don’t think there is any debate that Muhammad was a soldier
and military power was an important factor in the spread of Islam radiating
west and east from Arabia, coming into Europe through Spain and Turkey.
On the other
hand, Jesus was outside both the Jewish and Roman power structures of his time
and did not foment or participate in the insurrections that did occur. For the
Church’s first three centuries, the Gospel was propagated by preaching and
charity and avoided political, military and even ecclesiastical power. While
there is some debate over Jesus driving the money changers from the Temple and
his disciples bringing swords to the Garden of Gethsemane, the use of violence
was certainly not characteristic of Jesus, and even these were clearly not
lethal or military force.
I’ve already
explored how the Emperor Constantine appropriated Christianity for the purposes
of empire and conquest. The resulting Christendom is what has repeatedly
conflicted with Islam for the past 1400 years. Given the Muslim understanding
of the complete identification of religion and culture, it is not at all
surprising that many Muslims in the past and today see Christianity and Islam
as being at war in which only one can survive. My sense is that Christians feed
that thinking when they call for the removal of all Muslims from Western
countries and identify the United States as a “Christian nation.” Radical,
violent Islamists build their agenda and recruiting around such thinking.
Many people in
the West, Christians and non-Christians, understandably call for Muslims to
renounce violence and terrorism. Unfortunately, such renunciations are underreported
in the press, ignored, dismissed or denied. As much as I sympathize with the
desire for Muslims to broadly denounce violence and terrorism, I must recognize
that is something that can only be addressed by Muslims. Non-Muslims have only
a minimal voice, just as Muslims have little if any influence on what
Christians say, teach and do.
My own
conviction is that the most powerful way I can encourage self-examination among
Muslims, is by practicing and encouraging self-examination by Christians of our
own history. Because the Church started with no ambition whatsoever for
establishing “Christian” countries, and because trusting and following Jesus
often separated a person from their nation, culture, religion and even family,
individual faith and decisions have always been important to the Christian
mission. This is difficult for people in societies with strongly enforced
cultural norms to grasp. But it is not so far from the Christian roots in the
US. At the time Baptist Roger Williams founded Rhode Island as a colony with no
state church, voices in Puritan Massachusetts labeled them the “insane asylum
of the colonies” and predicted disaster if everyone was allowed to choose their
own church.
The Christian
principle of personal faith informed many of the founders of the United States
and is evident in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution
(though the Constitution makes no reference to God and certainly not to
Christ). The Enlightenment took individualism even further and also informed
the Deists whose influence was profoundly formative of the United States. In
the two plus centuries since the framing of the U.S. Constitution, the
trajectory of autonomous individualism has become dominant in common life as
well as law and government and makes identifying and contributing to the common
good a difficult challenge in our time. As Christians we respect and value
individual conscience. As a society, the United States places high priority on
individual freedom, which is evident from popular music to the whole spectrum
of political agendas. My sense is that people coming to the West from socially
constrained cultures have a difficult time grasping and living such
individualism.
This rampant
individualism interferes with our ability as Christians in the West to address
the failings of the history to which we are heirs. We tend to dismiss the need
for repudiating much less repenting of things that happened before our time or
when we were not personally present. If we expect Muslims to reject their
militaristic past, we can set the example by the way we treat our own history.
For me, that has meant recognizing and rejecting the appropriation of Christianity
for empire and conquest, not just by Constantine but by one generation of
Christians after another.
Growing up in
an evangelical, Protestant church context, I heard often about the Protestant
martyrs who were victims of Roman Catholic violence. On a pilgrimage to Rome in
2004 (led by the Presbyterian Pittsburgh Theological Seminary), I saw the bones
of Jesuit martyrs killed by Protestants in a glass case under the altar of
Chiesa Jesu. I saw a huge painting in the Vatican Museum of Dutch Protestants hanging
Franciscan monks from the rafters of a barn. Part of my spiritual journey on
this pilgrimage was realizing that I could not blithely distance myself from this
history but needed to repent of seeing Protestants as the good-guys and
Catholics as the bad-guys of the Reformation. I needed to reject the arguments
of “they did it too, only worse.” I needed to mourn that my spiritual
forbearers brutally tortured and killed fellow disciples of Jesus.
I learned about
the Christmas Truce of 1914 – the first Christmas of World War I – as an adult
watching a movie about it for a Christmas intergenerational Sunday school. It
was presented in a rather romantic, sentimental way suggesting how wonderful
Christmas was when soldiers from both sides came out of their trenches to
celebrate Christmas together. That they went back to killing each other was
glossed over, as was that the commanders on both sides issued strict orders and
made other provisions so that it would not be repeated in subsequent years of
the war. The 2005 movie Joyeux Noël gave a more sober presentation. Since
this was informal and unofficial, I know there has been debate about what
actually happened. But for me, even the romanticized movie I saw triggered a
profound grief that those who celebrated the birth of their savior could so
quickly return to killing each other. Pastors on both sides in World War I
prayed and preached a blessing on the guns as though the soldiers on their side
were God’s instruments. I am old enough to have known people who fought in that
war and informed enough to know how the injustices of the settlement of that
war set the stage for World War II. My fearful prayer as a pastor is that I not
even inadvertently guide or affirm such harm at odds with the way of Christ. To
do that, I must have a repentant and vulnerable attitude about this history
that led to the world in which I live.
Though the Nazis tried to coopt the church
in their cause and create a specifically German Church, their spiritual roots
were in Teutonic paganism, which was not shared in the same way by the Fascists
of Italy and Spain, who formed unholy alliances with the Catholic Church, or
the empire ambitions of Japan rooted in Shinto thought. Taking a cue from the
prophet Habakkuk, I have wondered if World War II was not in part God’s
judgment for Christians taking up arms against each other through the centuries
of feudalism through World War I. I already mentioned the blatant Christians killing
Christians over theological loyalties that drove the Thirty Years War after the
Reformation. Please understand, this is a speculation not an assertion.
Military clashes between Christendom and Islam
are not limited to the Crusades but have gone on from Muhammad’s time. The
Crusades were not a single event or movement, but they have come to represent
Christian violence against Muslims. I would contend that neither side has
higher ground to stand on. Neither side can say, “They did it too and were worse
than we were.” I also believe that dismissing it as being too far in the past
to matter anymore is moral evasion. No, none of us were there. No, few people
at that time brought the sensitivities we have today. However, there were
those, such as Francis of Assisi, who not only objected but attempted to bring
peace at great risk to themselves. Of course we can’t undo the Crusades and the
damage they did to Christian conscience, but I do believe that acknowledging
they are a blight on the Church’s reputation and pleading for God’s mercy even
after all these years is important, not just for better relations with Muslims
but for the spiritual health of Christian who earnestly desire to follow Jesus.
This is not a
question of comparative blame or guilt. It’s not even about wallowing in the
negatives. Certainly Christians through the centuries have been at the
forefront of compassion and justice, conscience and ethics, protection of the
weak and poor. Not that Christians haven’t contributed in these other areas, but
Muslims have made significant contributions to mathematics and art, engineering
and literature. All I am suggesting is an honest look at our own history to
which we are heirs and responding with biblical penitence. I suggest a careful
look at Psalm 106 for a model of how to approach this. It’s topic sentence is
in verse 6: “Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed
iniquity.” Daniel’s prayer in chapter 9 is also profoundly helpful as he
confessed the sins of Israel and Judah in which he had no part. Daniel was
carried into captivity (and probably castrated to protect the king’s harem since
he was a eunuch in palace service) though no sin is charged against him
personally.
In December 1990,
just a year after the Berlin Wall came down, I went with a group of college
students from First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Holly, NJ to InterVarsity’s
Urbana Missionary Convention. Regardless of the official theme, the central
idea was that world communism is collapsing and the Church is going to have to
deal with Islam as its principal competition. This paradigm shift was beyond
the comprehension of many, especially those who had built their ministries on
an anti-communist model. With 25 years of retrospect, that message seems to
have been prophetic.
My analysis is
that Islam has not replaced communism as the opponent of Western democratic
capitalism that had been conflated with an innocuous generic Christianity.
Rather, my interpretation is that Islam (in all its forms) and authentic
Christian discipleship are competing for the disaffected refugees from both
failed communism and capitalism. This is not an East-West, economic, political
struggle but one of spiritual values against secular materialism.
The Cold War
gave a lot of impetus to casting the U.S. as a generic “Christian” (or at least
Judeo-Christian) country that values freedom for all religions as opposed to atheistic
communism. Thus the U.S. added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and “In
God We Trust” to money (that did have a small earlier presence). Despite all of
the quasi-Christian sloganeering this seems to me to be clinging to a Christian
America that never existed, the Western democracies are definitively secular
and materialistic. Progress is measured in terms of standard of living. In
terms of what life is about, this is not particularly distinct from communism
that has now failed on a global scale.
During the Cold
War years, the rhetoric of the West proclaimed that democracy and capitalism
necessarily went together. Post-Soviet Russia and China are now rampantly
capitalist but no more democratic. While monitored in different ways in Russia
and China, religion is now allowed more operating room as long as it does not
threaten government or business powers. I gather there have been genuine
Christian revivals in both countries, even in the Russian Orthodox Church that
the government still manipulates closely. With the rise of Islam in the West, the
foundations of religious freedom are being questioned. Democratic governments
are generally more hospitable to religion than are totalitarian regimes, but
they too are suspicious of and threatened by religious movements that owe
loyalty to a higher authority. Nothing is more frightening to government
authorities than Peter’s words in Acts 5:29 “We must obey God rather than
any human authority.” Before the time of Constantine, when Christians in
the Roman Empire were greeted with “Caesar is lord,” the reply, “Jesus is Lord,”
was considered treason. When Christians has complete confidence that Jesus was
ultimately bringing the Kingdom of God, they were immune to threats to property
and even life because they knew they were part of something far bigger, far
more enduring, far more significant than any human government.
Part of the
fear of Islam, especially Sharia Law, is that it too claims an allegiance that supersedes
temporal human government and institutions. The pre-Constantinian Church never
expected to impose some version of Christian law (or Hebrew Law for that matter)
on the pagan societies in which they lived. But they did believe they had not
only a power and authority but also a responsibility to judge among themselves.
The Apostle Paul wrote pointedly and radically about this in 1 Corinthians
6:1-8.
When
any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court
before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world
is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge
angels—to say nothing of ordinary matters? If you have ordinary cases, then, do you appoint as judges
those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one
among you wise enough to decide between one believer and another, but a believer goes to court against a
believer—and before unbelievers at that? In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already
a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud—and
believers at that.
Based on this
principle, most denominations have some form of church courts for addressing
conflicts and misconduct, especially involving ordained leaders. The Catholic
Church has a well-developed system of Canon Law. Many congregations, local
church associations and denominations offer various forums for mediation of disputes
with the idea of not only keeping conflicts between Christians out of the
public courts, but also in the interest of more just and merciful settlements
for all involved. One congregation I served used to have such a monthly
opportunity we called “Elders’ Chat.” People could make appointments to seek
guidance in making personal decisions or settling disagreements. Occasionally,
the elders would invite people to come to Elders’ Chat when an unaddressed
problem became public. These were all advisory and never binding, but they were
well received as a way of getting the wisdom of the Church and its respected
leaders.
Muslim groups
are also offering similar settings that may or may not be based on Sharia Law. I
fully recognize that the U.S. government will not and cannot accept any
religious alternative to the established law of the land, whether Muslim or
Christian. And I readily acknowledge that churches have too often used the
courts of the church to shield its own people from criminal prosecution. The
scandalous sexual abuse of minors and protecting Catholic priests from criminal
prosecution is a classic example of the misuse of ecclesiastical power. My own
personal experience tells me (without statistical support) that such abuses are
just as common among Protestants, both evangelicals and mainliners. My caution
here is that in a fear driven effort to preclude Sharia Law, the U.S. not also
make Christian mediation services and courts of the church illegal.
The Rise of Islam Calls Me to Heightened Christian Discipleship
I know I have
explored my responses to the rise of Islam in my time in tedious detail. I am
not expecting to convince anyone that I am right or debate anyone about this.
If I have prompted anyone to think through their own responses, I am thankful.
My thesis in all of this is that the rise of Islam in our time is a symptom of
spiritual weakness in the Church. If I have prompted anyone to attend more
closely to their relationship with Christ and their spiritual journey with
Jesus I am thankful. But my real purpose here is to examine my own spiritual
vigor and renew my spiritual intentionality.
In 2008 I
posted my own rule of life at http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-rule-of-life.html.
It remains in place, though I have made modifications to fit moving into
ministry as an interim pastor and in the last seven months driving funeral
cars. If anyone is interested I have posted about various milestones on that
journey at http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspot.com/.
Any healthy Christian spiritual journey will include in-depth absorption of Scripture,
a lifestyle in intimate prayer and engagement and service with people in the
name of Jesus in both Church and community.
For me the priority
of my response to the rise of Islam in my time is my own spiritual health and
the spiritual health of other disciples of Jesus with whom I have contact
through serving specific congregations and in other ways. The potential
influence I would have Muslim folk who cross my path is secondary though still
important. (yes, I do and have had such contacts, not just is passing in
stores, etc.) My prayer is that the quality of my own relationship with Jesus
would be so winsome, attractive and compelling that as people get to know me
they would want to know Jesus. I’m not suggesting arguing theology with them
but living, perhaps like Francis of Assisi, so that people (not just Muslims)
would say to themselves, “With how I see Jesus in Norm, I might even want to
follow Jesus myself.”
I must say that
the Muslim folk with whom I have had interaction are trying to fit into the
same society in which I live and be faithful to their faith. Mutual curiosity makes
for healthy conversation. I haven’t met a Muslim person who was rude or
threatening to me as a Christian. I know that such people are in the community
around me, and someday one of them may confront me. I pray I may be able to
respond with courteous grace but also confident conviction in Jesus’ relationship
with me. I do also know that though the odds are minute, it is not impossible
that I could be the victim of some terrorist violence. Of course, I want to be
as wise as possible about such threats. I do want my government to be alert to
identify and head off such threats. But should I or someone in my family or
among my friends be hurt or even killed, I pray for a spirit of love and grace
from Jesus, knowing that to be absent from the body here is to be present with
the Lord.
An Afterword about Government Response to Islam
I have
specifically avoided addressing domestic, foreign or military policy for the
U.S. or other Western nations, in part because I do not have the expertise in
these areas. I would hope for compassionate justice for law-abiding Muslim
people in the U.S. and the other Western democracies. I know this presents
great challenges of both security and providing for those fleeing violence in
their own countries.
I do expect the
governments of the Western democracies to work together to be alert for threats
and intervene to prevent or interrupt them. One of the challenges with this is
that one or a small group of people who operate out of sight with nefarious
intent can be very difficult to detect in advance. This applies as much to
racist anti-government groups and mentally ill people as to Islamist
terrorists. When mass shootings and bombings are in the news – whether in the
name of Islam or Christianity or anti-government rhetoric or as an expression
of mental illness – I readily acknowledge that I use the imprecatory Psalms to
help me pray in these incomprehensible situations.
One of the
difficulties on the global stage is that violent Islamist terrorists have a
world view that assumes the “Christian” West is in a death struggle with Islam,
and only one can survive. Thus, not to respond to movements and organizations
such as ISIL and al-Qaeda is to give them free reign to wreak havoc on
the world. But to respond with military force and anti-Muslim rhetoric
reinforces their vision of the West being at war with Islam. I have no solution
to propose for this dilemma, but as a disciple of Jesus, I am praying for the
leaders of all the world’s governments (both friendly and hostile to the U.S.),
praying for Muslim people around me that they may meet people who know Jesus in
a winsome way, and praying for the leaders of global Islam (all varieties) to
seek the path of peace. Most of all I pray to recognize the hand of God in the
convoluted flow of human affairs.
