The Imam And The Pastor

Date Published: 02/09/2010

Recently I had a fascinating conversation with a Muslim Imam. He commented on the cultural diversity of his immigrant congregation. He came from Turkey and observed that the Muslim community here includes people from Pakistan and Palestine, Indonesia and the Arabian peninsula, Iraq and Iran. Though they share a common faith, they do not understand their diverse cultures and how those cultures influence the ways they practice that faith. By way of contrast, he said that they perceive Christianity and the culture of the United States as continuous, homogeneous and inseparable. As an Imam, he described his task as teaching the people of his congregation how to find their identity in their shared faith rather than in their various cultures, and how to live their faith in yet a different culture that doesn’t understand Islam very well. He is concerned to teach the next generation who are born here how to be Muslims in the United States and not lose their faith in a culture different than that of their parents.

I said that my task as a pastor was not too different. I have to teach people to find their identity in Jesus and to see that being a Christian and being an American are different. I would hope that most of the time people could be both good Christians and good Americans, just as he wants his people to be both good Muslims and good Americans. But when faith and culture inevitably come into conflict, I hope to have taught people that following Jesus always takes priority. And like the Imam, as a pastor I am trying to teach the people of my congregation how to live their faith in a culture that really doesn’t know or understand Jesus, the Bible or Christianity very well – all too often what people think they know is incomplete, badly distorted and just plain wrong. As a pastor I, too, am concerned to teach the next generation how to trust and follow Jesus in an increasingly secular, pluralistic United States that has lost it veneer of generic, cultural Christianity.