Christians And Muslims Share Common View of Secular Society

Date Published: 06/19/2009

The Berlin Wall was still standing, and the death throes of Soviet communism were just off the horizon. I was in Urbana, Illinois in December 1987 for InterVarsity’s student missionary conference. The relentless theme that unsettled not only the students but the veteran missionaries and pastors who were there was that Marxism had been bankrupted and was no longer a compelling competitor to Christianity. Rather, global Islam was emerging with the moral power to attract spiritually hungry people in the dawning generation. What seemed remote just 22 years ago is an inescapable present, daily reality.

On Sunday, June 14, 2009 I heard Christopher Caldwell interviewed on KERA for “To the Best of Our Knowledge.” His book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West” explores European particular challenges devout Muslims pose for the largely secular European societies as their native populations age and decline. I was especially intrigued by observations about the greater difficulties Muslims are having in Europe than in the United States. He went on to say that many Muslims in Europe feel they have more in common with those in Europe who openly identify themselves as practicing Christians than they do with the majority secular population of Europe. Christopher Caldwell went on to say that both Islam and Christianity impart to their adherents a value system totally foreign and incomprehensible to secular Europeans.

Christopher Caldwell did not elaborate with much specificity, but he did hint at what I am convinced that secular people find both incomprehensible and dangerously threatening. That is a God who has an objective presence independent of and beyond human intelligence and experience. God calls for loyalty and a vision of righteousness that supersedes human institutions, including nations. Islam and Christianity both offer an identity as humans and people of faith that is more powerful and binding than race, ethnicity, language, politics or nationality. Both Islam and Christianity envision a future that transcends mortality.

Though Christopher Caldwell was comparing and contrasting the experience of Muslims in Europe with those in the United States, he prompted me to ask about the trends in the culture of the United States. Do not Christians and Muslims in the United States have more in common with each other than either has with their secular neighbors? By virtue of being long term residents through a long evolution of culture, we Christians have become comfortable with the secular tenor of our society, putting a thin veneer of cultural Christianity over the secular. In a church saturated city like Dallas, we may be somewhat removed from the much more overtly secular environments of other parts of the country, especially on the coasts. But even here, beneath a tough and persistent veneer of cultural Christianity, secular thinking prevails and is spreading. Being more recent arrivals, our Muslim neighbors don’t have this comfort and may confuse Christian and secular Americans.

I’m not at all suggesting that Islam and Christianity are interchangeably equivalent. Rather, I am asking if our response to Islam is primarily as Americans, do we not dilute the power and appeal of faith in the living Christ? Just as Soviet style communism eventually bankrupted, so secular pluralism cannot instill hope in the spiritually hungry. I would suggest that when as Christians we recognize that we have more in common with our Muslim neighbors than with our secular neighbors, we will be more effective inviting the outcasts, victims and refugees of secularism to a living faith in Jesus.