Jesus Christ, King and Caliph: The Writings of Glen Stassen and Our Middle Eastern Communities

Jesus Christ, King and Caliph: The Writings of Glen Stassen and Our Middle Eastern Communities
By Elie Haddad and Jesse Wheeler

Tt was by a providential intersection of interpersonal and geo-political factors that Glen Stassen’s witness has come to play such an important role in the institutional and academic life of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary (ABTS) in Beirut, Lebanon. His is a witness with profound impli­cations for our students, our Middle Eastern Christian communities, and our public witness within the Islamic context. Ultimately, it is his prophetic insistence upon the centrality and Lordship of Christ Jesus for both our personal and collective lives, a message ever prescient in the Middle Eastern context, that give Dr. Stassen’s teachings such power.

Glen Stassen and the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary

I [Elie Haddad] first met Glen Stassen at the International Baptist Theological Seminary (IBTS) in 2006 in Prague where I am pursuing my PhD studies. Glen was one of the professors invited to come to IBTS for the yearly research colloquia in January to teach and help provide guidance to research students. In addition, I [Jesse Wheeler] was deeply affected by Dr. Stassen’s scholarship as a result of my time as student, administrator and teaching and research assistant at Fuller Theological seminary between 2005 and 2012. I became immediately convinced of the relevance of Stassen’s work for the Middle Eastern context.

In fact, we at ABTS have been impressed and influenced by Glen from the beginning for many reasons. First, Glen kept drawing people to a “thick” Jesus. Glen took Jesus seri­ously as Lord of our whole lives. Jesus mattered, being not Lord of one compartment of our lives but Lord of all.¹ Second, Glen Stassen was a Baptist theologian who taught on Baptist Distinctives and always managed to place peacemaking at the center of Baptist thinking. Third, Glen very quickly became one of our favorite ethicists, primarily because he centered his ethics on the teachings of Jesus. More specifically, he brought life back to the Sermon on the Mount, a rather largely ignored piece of the teachings of Jesus. He made the Sermon relevant again and applicable to today’s challenges, particularly in the Middle East.²

We were not the only ones at ABTS (Arab Baptist Theological Seminary) who knew Glen. Martin Accad, the Director of ABTS’s Institute of Middle East Studies, was Glen’s colleague, serving as a part-time Associate Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Intercultural Studies. Martin was also impressed by Glen’s system of ethics and contributed a chapter entitled “Just Peacemaking in Light of Global Challenges Involving Islam and Muslims” to Glen’s recent book Formation for Life: Just Peacemaking and Twenty-First-Century Discipleship.³ Martin’s chapter proved how relevant Glen’s principles are to our context.

In 2008, our challenge was to find a biblical, Christ-centered perspective relevant to a contemporary Middle Eastern context. The decision was not difficult. We wanted our students to be exposed to Glen’s teachings on the ethics of Jesus and his ground-break­ing Kingdom Ethics became the main textbook for our course. Our language of instruction at ABTS is in Arabic, so we had to translate large pieces of this text to Arabic. Eventually, in 2012 we managed to publish Kingdom Ethics in Arabic for the benefit of the Arab readers. Because transla­tions of books such as Kingdom Ethics are expensive projects, and the sale

 of Arabic Christian books does not cover the cost of publishing, we had to raise funds for a project like this. It is noteworthy to mention that Glen used some of his own personal funds to support this project. He believed in the impact that this material would have on our context and was will­ing to invest in the publishing of the Arabic translation.

We invited Glen Stassen to ABTS in 2012 for a launching event for the translated version of Kingdom Ethics. Glen was also one of our main speakers at that year’s Middle East Conference, titled “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself: The Church and the Palestinian in Light of God’s Command for Justice and Compassion.” The Palestinian prob­lem continues to be a significant, defining political issue in the Middle East. However, the humanitarian and justice dimensions of the conflict remain largely ignored by our church­es. Glen Stassen’s voice was especially important in this conference, provok­ing and inspiring us as he brought with him a Kingdom perspective and a “thick” Jesus.

One of our main challenges as a seminary that teaches in the Arabic language is the lack of resources. Not enough Christian books are published in Arabic. Of the limited books pub­lished in Arabic, very few are written with an Arab context in mind. The majority are translated from English but not contextualized for our region. The main question therefore becomes: why would a Western book on ethics written by an American be relevant in a Middle Eastern context for an Arab reader? The simple answer is this: Glen’s ethical framework was not issues-driven. Rather, it was Jesus-centered, making it relevant anytime anywhere. And, Glen’s material has  proven to be very effective for our context and in our classroom.

“Prudent Practice”: The Ethical Challenges of Discipleship in Middle East

Different ethical challenges face var­ious communities around the world. Moral norms of a certain community are derived from their value system, from their worldview, and from inher­ited traditions and practices. As such, moral norms of one culture cannot be easily challenged by the moral norms of another. That would be ethnocen­tric behavior, not effective in motivat­ing change. This has precisely been the problem with many Christian eth­ical systems. They have been packaged with distinct cultural norms, usually of Western societies, making it easy to reject the whole package. The eth­ics of Jesus, however, stand in judg­ment over all ethical norms within all societies, providing correctives to the moral norms of all communities. Glen Stassen was able to distill his framework down to principles capable of challenging behaviors and attitudes cross-culturally, and herein lies its brilliance.

There are many similarities between the ethical challenges confronting the Arab world and universal challenges. However, some challenges are unique to, or particularly acute, in our region. We experience these challenges first hand in our admissions process at ABTS which requires candidates to complete a comprehensive applica­tion form that includes some ethically problematic case studies for candi­dates to reflect on and provide an answer. What we consistently find is that candidates do not have a problem providing ‘creative’ solutions to the ethical dilemmas presented. They are convinced that being clever in provid­ing solutions is the right thing to do. The following paragraphs highlight a number of ‘clever’ challenges especial­ly detrimental for Christian disciple­ship in our region.

For example, one of the major ethi­cal challenges in our region is a wide­spread lack of integrity. We live in societies plagued with corruption, and  we are governed by mostly corrupt regimes. Growing up in such a con­text, it is very easy for corruption to become part of one’s DNA. This kind of thinking and behavior can very easily infiltrate church communities as well. In highly corrupted societies, individuals learn not to trust. People learn not to trust governments, not to trust systems, and not to trust those in positions of power and authority. People develop a posture of defensive­ness, wanting to protect themselves from corrupt systems and people. As a result, breaking the rules becomes a successful defense mechanism. Disobeying corrupt laws becomes seen as a virtue and this filters down to everyday behavior. Cheating on taxes, for example, becomes a good thing. Why give money to a corrupt government when we can give it to church ministry? It becomes so easy to justify cheating, stealing, and lying for the sake of ministry. Of course, people do not label this behavior as cheating or stealing or lying. Instead, they call it cleverness, or prudence, and genu­inely believe that they are doing the right thing. In the words of Stassen, it becomes a vicious cycle.⁴ By ignoring the social consequences of our actions we simply perpetuate the very corrup­tion from which we seek respite.

Another factor that affects integrity is the honor-and-shame culture of the Middle East. Lack of integrity cannot be confronted head-on. People may not have a problem in cheating, but they will be highly offended if some­one calls them cheaters. They may have no problem stealing but they are not thieves. Image and reality are sometimes contradictory in honor-and-shame cultures where question­able behavior hides behind pious facades, because image and perception are of extreme importance.

Candidates applying to study at ABTS must provide references, usual­ly provided by local Christian leaders. It is interesting that in many com­munities these written references are virtually meaningless, since referees would never communicate anything negative in writing. If we want to hear  the truth about a certain candidate, we need to pick up the phone and talk to the referees directly. We have a much better chance of getting the real picture over the phone than in writing.

In an honor-and-shame culture people are reluctant to say something that shames either themselves or oth­ers, and under corrupt regimes people learn to fear retribution. It becomes natural for people growing up in this environment not to value transpar­ency. Hence, hypocrisy becomes a major challenge. Doing what looks good becomes much more important than doing what is right as people end up using teleological frameworks for their behavior. The end justifies the means. But not just that; fear justifies the means as well, fear of retribution and fear of being shamed. It all adds to the vicious cycle.

“Christ and the Caliph”: Challenges for Public Witness in Islamic Contexts

An additional, deep-seated ethi­cal challenge in our context is the lack of love towards others, those different from us. Christians in our region are brought up in a majority non-Christian context in the midst of inter-community conflict, with much hardship and sometimes hatred, bitterness and persecution. As a result, it is easy to develop a minority complex. We are the weak minority, continuously harassed by the prevail­ing majority. This attitude drives the church into survival mode, with the church developing a siege mentality as it withdraws from society to form small exclusive communities.

It therefore becomes natural for our communities to adopt an “us and them” mentality, with “us” being those like us and “them” being those not like us. It becomes easy to look at “them” as the enemy and not as our neighbors whom we are called to love and serve. As a result, it is easy for churched people to end up hat­ing their neighbors, or at least not caring for them enough to become witnesses for God’s love and grace. So, we grow up in our churches with ‘a love problem.’ We hate them and they hate us. This once again results in a vicious cycle whereby all ministry becomes congregational or self-care and the chief objective of the church is to serve itself. Unfortunately, this is also how the church loses its voice in the community, loses its impact, and loses its very purpose for its being. And, it is how the church contributes to its own marginalization, which in the worst of times can have genocidal consequences for its very existence. Yet, it is in these most difficult times that the church’s public witness to Christ’s saving Reign is needed now more than ever.

On June 30, 2014 Muhammad Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the group popularly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), declared the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate, accompanied by a considerable amount of bloodshed. While it is ultimately for Muslims themselves to determine the legitima­cy of Baghdadi’s tenuous claims, few can deny the power of the caliphate within Islamic discourse.

For it is important to be reminded that at their scriptural core both Islam and Christianity concern themselves with the Reign of God. The first pages of Kingdom Ethics open with this very proclamation, that the good news of God’s Kingdom has come. This is the heart our public witness. Yet Dudley Woodberry, Stassen’s col­league at Fuller, reminds us that “both Muhammad and Jesus preached a message of ‘Repent for the Kingdom is at hand.’”⁵ In other words, for both Christians and Muslims, God’s Reign has begun. God is King.

To say that God is King is a deeply political act for such a statement immediately relativizes any other claim to ultimate authority. In bibli­cal thought, God is King. Pharaoh is not. Christ is Lord. Caesar is not. Everything else flows from this central proclamation, such that in Christian and Muslim thought “both Jesus and Muhammad have become for their followers models for their [respec­tive] understandings of the Kingdom of God.”⁶ As such, when Christians

 and Muslims announce the Kingship of God they are ethically bound to strive towards seeing that vision actualized. Or, to borrow a bibli­cal phrase, to work towards “seeing [God’s] Kingdom come [and His] will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Of this, two questions immediately surface: What is God’s will? How does God’s Kingdom come?

As envisioned in Islam, God’s Reign on earth is ultimately dem­onstrated through the appropriation and application of God’s revealed law, or Sharia. Joseph Schacht describes Islamic law as “the epitome of Islamic thought, the most typical manifesta­tion of the Islamic way of life, the core and kernel of Islam itself.”⁷ And, as Woodberry writes, “The Kingdom of God can be realized by introducing the Law — which applies to all areas of life including political. As people get into the habit of following it, the Kingdom is actualized.”⁸

This is a holistic, public vision encompassing all domains of life, both individual and collective. And with Muhammad’s Medina as a model, the state and military apparatus is typi­cally understood to be an appropriate means for seeing this Kingdom vision realized. So, as political head of the Muslim community, the caliph ulti­mately oversees the implementation of God’s revealed Will and the Islamic government (however interpreted and applied) becomes therefore the lived expression of God’s will, of God’s just Reign on earth.

However, this was all called into question when Turkish president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the caliphate in 1923, sending shock waves throughout the Muslim world from which it has yet to recover. The ensuing epistemological crisis set the stage for the events of the 20th cen­tury, witnessing the growth of Islamic liberalism, Arab secularism and reformist Islamism with each offering a potential response. Al-Baghdadi’s response is to violently restore the caliphate to its former dominance by force.

 What then is the Christian response? We firmly believe Stassen helps provide an answer, and that answer is in the public affirmation of the Kingship of Jesus. Yet, accord­ing to historian of religion Hugh Goddard, “Among the many characterizations and sweeping generalizations which flourish in the realm of the study of the relationship between Islam and Christianity, one of the most persis­tent is [this]: Christianity is not essen­tially concerned with earthly matters like politics and the state but con­centrates rather on spiritual matters, while Islam on the other hand is inte­grally bound up with the affairs of this world, politics and state included.”⁹

With the above statement, Goddard describes the popular and wide­spread assumption that Islam and Christianity represent two distinct, even contradictory approaches to the question of faith and public life. Polemicists and apologists from both Muslim and Christian communi­ties have repeatedly built upon this assumption to attack the other, with arguments ranging from the “monas­tic and otherworldly worthlessness” of Christianity to the “bloody hands and this-worldly dirtiness” of Islam. Even well-meaning commentators, Christian and Muslim alike, build upon this assumption to develop their theological positions. In writing about Qur’anic interpreter Yusuf Ali, Woodberry writes,

“Yusuf Ali, in his notes on the Qur’an, contrasts Islam with what he considers the ‘monastic’ tendencies of the Sermon on the Mount with its emphasis on ‘the poor in spirit, those who mourn and the meek, noting that ‘Allah’s kingdom requires also courage, resistance to evil . . . firmness, law and discipline which will enhance justice.’ God does not mean that believers should have ‘gloomy lives!”¹⁰

And, in reference to the modern missionary movement, Goddard writes,

“Many missionaries [to the Muslim world] came from a Pietist back­ground, where it was indeed assumed