Thinking of that conversation with Sri (see my last post) made me reflect on a brief address I made to a gathering of 300 people — Baptist, Muslim, Jewish, Unitarian, and a few secularists… who had gather for a “Conversation on Islam: Faith, Fear, and our Future Together.” We hosted this conversation because of the nationwide backlash from a proposed “mosque” (actually it was a Muslim Community Center), planned near the site of “ground zero” in New York City. I believe in peace. And I think it will come (only come) through dialogue…
Address to that “Conversation on Islam and America”:
Not too long after the tragedy, which we now just call “9/11,” my phone rang. I recognized the number from a small town in South Carolina. My brother, Philip, is a year younger and 5 inches taller than I. He has a master’s degree in education and has spent a career in that field, currently serving as the principal of an elementary school. He is the father of three boys and the youngest son of the same Southern Baptist Pastor who taught me to love Jesus, and to read the Bible for ethical instruction and devotional practice. Phillip needed a few minutes to talk to the only member of his immediate family who had ventured outside Laurens County to raise a family and find his employment – that is, he needed to talk to his brother, one of the pastors of Park Road “This Is Not Our Fathers’” Baptist Church, in Charlotte!
In Sunday school the prior weekend, the topic had (again) turned to Islam and 9-1-1… Islam and America… Islam and Christianity… His teacher had commented, a little too casually for my brother’s sensibilities, that all Muslims are going to hell. He’d even been almost apologetic about it, Phillip said. There was no venom in his voice, but, you know, “the Bible says…” And my college and graduate-school educated Southern Baptist brother, living in small town America was frustrated and concerned by this comment, but, honestly, he was a little clueless how to respond, because Phillip was raised on the same proof-texting hermeneutic that his Sunday school teacher was – namely, that if you can point to a verse that says I am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the Father but by me (John 14.6)… then it is Gospel Truth. The problem was that something about that “truth” would not ring right in his mind… would not rest easy in his heart… would not resonate in my brother’s soul (see Mark 12.30).
But Phillip couldn’t offer another word, not in the face of “the Bible says,” because he’d never been offered any other way to see our sacred book. So on that Sunday, when a well-meaning, if misguided teacher had offered a blanket condemnation of Islam, my brother sat in painful silence. His is a silence that has been repeated thousands and thousands of times over in Christian Sunday school classes… in club houses… in office break rooms.
In the years since that phone call, however, many of the speaking voices have grown louder and louder until the shrill sounds of their fear and ignorance drown the sound of my brother’s equally loud silence.
My response to the recent backlash against Muslims in America and beyond comes out of this experience. It is a response of sadness, embarrassment, and a fear of my own. It is the sadness of knowing that too few of us, whose eyes have been opened to a new reading of sacred texts, too few of us have offered that reading in a compelling way. So my brother, a grown, educated man, living in an educated town, attending an educated church can virtually have no idea such a reading is even possible (or to know it well-enough to voice it clearly). It is the embarrassment of observing that the Christian Church has allowed its voice to be co-opted, too-much defined by a well-meaning but ignorant minority. I’m embarrassed that anyone could call Islam “evil” – condemning more than a billion of God’s children in one thoughtless sweep. So even members of my family can hesitantly embrace misguided statements, because they’ve never had the privilege of knowing a Muslim – the heart of whose faith is so much like their own. And it is fear, not of literal warfare, but the fear that as we devolve by a war of words, day by day we lose our essential humanity – because the talking heads and radio extremists, the paralyzed pulpits and polarized pundits, on left and right, have made it virtually impossible for Americans to dialogue any more.
So it does my Baptist heart good to see this crowd. I can’t imagine a more hopeful sight for America, nor a more beautiful picture of faith, than a Baptist church full of Muslims, and Jews, and Unitarians and Catholics… talking, respectfully together, of our common faith and our common fate.
It is a sight that would have pleased Roger Williams, who was exiled from the colonies in New England for his liberal, Baptist views. Baptists were born in dissent – and all true Baptists have that contrary but liberating seed in their heart. In 1655 America’s first Baptist penned these words that Baptists would do well to hear again. In a letter to the town of Providence, which had become his home after exile, Williams told a parable:
There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes, that both papists and protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm, that all the liberty of conscience, that ever I pleaded for, turns upon [this] – that none of the papists, protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship’s prayers of worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.
The founding father of all Baptists in America, for the sake of liberty of conscience, would have defended the right of Muslims in New York City, or Murfreesboro, TN or Charlotte, NC to build a center for education or a mosque for worship. And I believe he would have reminded us of that divine word that comes in scripture, virtually every time God and human beings interact: Do not be afraid! We would do well to live by the freedoms of both of those words.
Roger Williams ended his letter to Providence with these words: “I remain, studious of our common Peace and Liberty.” That end is a good beginning: Our common peace and liberty.
May it be so!
One Comment
Thank you Russ. I too have a southern brother who is sincere in his faith and eager to learn, but he stays comfortably within the confines of the conventional; I suppose because that is where he feels loved and hopeful. I believe, perhaps foolishly, in the basic goodness of most people I know, and I think most of us stay in that comfort, not just out of fear, but because it feels good and to a great extent, it works for us. I will admit I am one of those wayward souls who needs to venture outside the gates though. For instance, I have just finished John Spong’s latest book. I am fascinated by his courage and creativity to bring new definitions to old and sacred symbols. I think we all must embrace this kind of courage if we are to walk together into a future of peace and love with those of other systems of thought. Perhaps what really joins us together as humans is our experience of life and death, or what Buber would call our encounter. That is truly universal and I think our main hope in not allowing words to continue to separate and frighten us from one another. It is high time we stood up and refused to allow the misguided or malicious manipulations of others to stand un-challenged as assumed truth. But we must do this with a combination of passion and compassion. It is tricky business.