Religion and the Global Crisis
by William E. Hull
Research Professor
Samford University, Birmingham, AL
Endless media hype notwithstanding, a truly new millennium did not begin on January 1, 2000, 12:01 a.m., at Times Square in mid-Manhattan, but on September 11, 2001, 8:47 a.m., at the World Trade Center in lower-Manhattan. Suddenly, without warning or provocation, we were confronted with a civilizational clash of global proportions[i] that threatens to redefine our priorities for decades if not centuries to come. Gazing at ground zero, we came away with the deep intuition that nothing will ever be the same again.
Surprising as it may seem, religion was the defining characteristic of this monstrous eruption of violence. For here was no nation-state attacking our country in a military engagement such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Rather, what occurred was the openly declared launching of a "holy war" (jihad) by the worldwide "House of Islam" against "infidels" (kafir) believed to be dominated by that "Great Satan," the United States of America. But how could this happen if, as our President regularly reminds us, Islam`s "teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah"?[ii] Does a Texas Methodist who became personally interested in faith only in recent years really understand this ancient Middle Eastern religion better than Osama bin Laden, who has long belonged to the strict Wahhabi branch of Islam and can inflame the Muslim masses with his religious rhetoric?[iii]
The answer to that troubling question is complex because Islam is not a monolithic unity but a diverse cluster of what we are accustomed to call "denominations." Some are rational and others mystical, some pietistic and others legalistic, some tolerant and others violent. If we were to say, "Will the true Muslims please stand up," they would all rise and immediately begin arguing among themselves as to which is the best expression of Islam. But the same thing is true of Christianity with its Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelicals. Or of Judaism with its Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed. Sad to say, every religion has its gentle saints and fierce fanatics, its flexible progressives and rigid traditionalists, its coercive exclusivists and collaborative inclusivists. Thus, when we judge Osama bin Laden to be an extremist who has corrupted his faith, we are thereby judging the same extremism that would corrupt our own faith. Because September 11 throws into such bold relief how religion itself can become demonic, it serves as a wake-up call to all of us to examine the integrity and health of our own beliefs and practices.
Therefore, let us probe a few of the most important ways in which Islam has been degraded by those who would make it the driving force behind an obsession with senseless destruction. While such an analysis may contribute to our understanding of current events, few of us will have any opportunity to become reformers purifying a perverted Islam, hence I would like to go further and ask whether we need to guard our own religious traditions from contamination by similar tendencies. To those made uncomfortable by such a critique because they hold all religion to be sacred and thus exempt from censure, I would point out that at the very heart of the Old Testament is a prophetic protest leveled straight at the debasement of Israelite religion (e.g. Isa. 1:10-17; Amos 5:21-24; Jer. 3:19-25), and that Jesus repeatedly warned his Jewish contemporaries about the folly of fighting a religious war against Rome (Lk. 19:41-44). I know that it is politically correct to honor all religions in the name of tolerance, but perhaps we may escape the charge of judgmentalism if we apply the same rigorous standards to our own religion as we do to Islam.
Since a great deal has already been written about the historical, political, and military aspects of the present conflict,[iv] let us focus here on five religious issues that are at the heart of the civilizational clash which we now confront. In so doing, I shall consider, not the textbook Islam popularized by Western scholars, but the Taliban Islam that has openly supported a global strategy of terror which has now reached our shores.
Absolutism
The reactionary mentality so prevalent in parts of Islam highlights the dangers inherent in all forms of religious fanaticism. Here is a militant religious movement offering authoritarian opinions based on a literalistic interpretation of the original language of one ancient book to which zealous followers give unquestioning obedience. Quite simply, it is old-fashioned religious fundamentalism raised to the level of national and international policy.[v] The problem is not that Muslims have no right to their convictions, or that they are not entitled to base them on the Koran, or that they are wrong to urge them on others. The problem, rather, is that their views are both determined and delivered with finality, that there is no room for alternative viewpoints, that self-criticism has been overwhelmed by certainty. In a word, the root problem is that of religious absolutism, treating understandings that are human and therefore contingent as God`s decrees which are divine and therefore categorical. The Muslims who adopt this mindset leave no room for the life of dialogue, for an ongoing process of development both within their own lives and within Islam`s understanding of itself.
This rigid stance did not always characterize the religion of Mohammed. In its founding century (632-732 A.D.), it not only united the diverse tribes of the Arabian peninsula, but also fused whole regions as disparate as North Africa and Southeast Asia into the last great empire of the ancient world. By the Middle Ages, Islam virtually dominated world culture. George Sarton, the Harvard historian of science, has written that, in the tenth century, "The main task of mankind was accomplished by Moslems. The great philosopher . . . mathematicians . . . geographer and encyclopedist" were all Moslem.[vi] From Islam came the rediscovery of Aristotle and the first scientific astronomy and medicine since the Greeks. By the time Columbus discovered America, this desert faith was not only the largest religion in the world but, in some respects, its most universal.[vii] For as the Arab empire decolonized itself, vast stretches of the world`s great sunbelt were left "permanently caught in the light but unbreakable net of a common Islamic culture."[viii]
But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, dogmatic Islamic theologians shut down the philosophical schools in order to banish the heresy of liberal learning. As "the high culture lost its capaciousness and hence, its adaptability . . . reactionary features of Islamic society hardened,"[ix] leaving it intellectually stagnant, politically impotent, and economically exhausted by the opening of the twentieth century. Perhaps its low point came in 1924 when the caliphate, or dynastic rulership, was abolished by Kemal Ataturk in connection with the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. This move was part of a Herculean effort to modernize the archaic civilization of Islam by introducing Western ways of thinking hammered out by the scientific revolution and Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe. Because Westernization was accompanied by cultural values repugnant to the traditional Islamic faith, it was rejected in many parts of the Muslim world. For example, Taliban schools in Pakistan, from which the recent rulers of Afghanistan came, are staffed by religious scholars (ulema) who teach nothing from the modern era but only Islamic tradition that is memorized, not discussed.[x] Two assumptions are central to this system: first, there is only one route to reality, the religious one; and second, its content never changes, for its truth is both total and final.
Like early Islam, Judaism and Christianity were founded as developing religions. The Hebrew scriptures themselves reveal a dynamic growth from the Law through the Prophets to the Wisdom literature. But even before the Old Testament canon was completed, it stimulated ceaseless interpretations (Midrashim) which, when codified (Mishnah), became the object of further elaboration (Gemara) that was then gathered up into an encyclopedic repository (Talmud). Jesus enabled his followers to contribute to this ongoing quest for understanding by providing them with a twofold framework for their own creative appropriation of the past. First, he showed them patterns of "promise-and-fulfillment" according to which ancient truth could find fresh and finer expression in a new day (Mt. 5:17-20). Second, he promised them his living Spirit as a guide to the discovery of the truth that they could not possibly grasp during his brief earthly ministry (Jn. 16:12-15). What this remarkable openness to a never-ending adventure with truth is trying to tell us is that, if God`s thoughts are infinitely greater than our own (Isa. 55:8-9), should it not take us an eternity to comprehend fully what he is trying to reveal?
As we view the tragic consequences of a rigid Muslim mindset unfolding in the Middle East, it should warn us against some of the same symptoms that have emerged in American religious life. The "noise level" is rising in many pulpits as popular preachers bellow and scream with a stridency that says unmistakably, "Don`t talk back, I have declared the last word, take it or leave it!" A new zealotism among the masses welcomes this bombast as a way of verbalizing gut feelings of anger and frustration over the course of human events. One veteran participant in denominational life remarked after attending a highly publicized showcase of such preaching, "Anybody who brought his mind to this meeting wouldn`t know what to do with it." Whenever we allow others to do our thinking for us just because they rant and rave while waving a Bible in the air, we are starting down the same dangerous road that Islamic fundamentalists are now walking.
I suggest three ways to test whether this trend has made inroads into your own religious mentality and community. First, does a totalistic and literalistic doctrine of Scripture leave any room for growth in understanding both on the part of the writers of Scripture and on the part of its readers today? Look carefully to see whether those championing the inerrancy of the Book are really championing the inerrancy of their own interpretation of the Book! Second, does your religion have a robust doctrine of creation that encourages its adherents to celebrate the discoveries of science? To be sure, there are always those, like the tormentors of Galileo, who fear that such discoveries may undermine established doctrine and so upset the status quo, but new truth can never be a threat to the God who is the source of all truth! Third, does your religion actively support the kind of educational institutions that cultivate an appreciation of ambiguity in the face of ultimate mystery, with its components of irony, tragedy, and pathos? We are never as wise as when we know what it is that we do not know, or, as the Apostle Paul put it, when we realize that we hold the surpassing treasure of truth in the earthen vessels of our religious traditions "to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us" (2 Cor. 4:7).
Theocracy
A particular problem with the religious totalitarianism of the Taliban is that it is fused to the political ideal of a theocratic civilization. Throughout its history, Islam has steadfastly advocated the union, rather than the separation, of church and state. Remember that the movement was born in a vast desert where the lack of communication and mobility radically decentralized and thus fragmented public life. The great achievement of Mohammed was to unite warring clans and tribes by means of a common religion uniquely adapted to their circumstances, thereby giving them an identity and cohesiveness that they had never known before. As the movement rapidly spread until it stretched from the western shores of North Africa to the eastern islands of Indonesia, the linkage of religion and politics made it possible to develop a comprehensive civilization based on a common culture reinforced both by religious decree and by civil edict. The liability of this system was that it introduced an inescapable dimension of coercion and conformity into the life of the religious community.
Needless to say, in this regard Islam took its cue from the theocratic vision of the Christian civilization in Europe that came to a climax in the Holy Roman Empire. At this remove it would be hard to say whether more Christians or more Muslims were converted at the point of a sword, but it is important to note how different have been the responses to these tactics in the East and in the West. All of the fifty-seven Islamic nations, with the single exception of the TurkishRepublic, continue to be highly autocratic in governance and thus have no problem with coercive religion or politics. By contrast, Europe has spent the past five hundred years disestablishing the Constantinian church in order to include freedom of religion within its emerging definition of democracy. In fact, one of the main reasons why the scientific revolution in the West became increasingly "secular" was to protect its quest for truth from the disruptive effects of the religious wars that had convulsed Europe for a century (1556-1648). While some of the state churches of Europe still retain a few ceremonial prerogatives, the great lesson of this struggle for democracy in the West is that the awesome spiritual power of religion must never again be linked to the equally awesome temporal power of the state if any semblance of freedom is to survive.
Even though our country transplanted some of the traditional theocratic assumptions of Europe during the colonial period, after gaining independence we quickly divested ourselves of state churches with their troublesome alliances between ministers and magistrates. The insistence of Roger Williams on the centrality of religious freedom from government interference gave birth to the sacredness of the individual conscience which has remained at the center of American identity to this day.[xi] That is why we are, indeed, fighting a "religious war" with the likes of Osama bin Laden. Listen to the British Roman Catholic, Andrew Sullivan, who sees so clearly one central issue in this conflict:
[T]he question of religious fundamentalism . . . was the central question that led to America`s existence. The first American immigrants, after all, were refugees from the religious wars that engulfed England and that intensified under England`s Taliban, Oliver Cromwell. . . . Following [John] Locke, the founders established as a central element of the new American order a stark separation of church and state . . . [which] led to one of the most vibrantly religious civil societies on earth. . . . it is this achievement that the Taliban and bin Laden have now decided to challenge. . . . What is really at issue here is the simple but immensely difficult principle of the separation of politics and religion. . . . We are fighting for religion against one of the deepest strains in religion there is.[xii]
Despite the centrality of religious freedom to the American experience, the lure of theocracy is ever with us. For Jews, the Zionist impulse that led to the re-establishment of the nation of Israel has strong theocratic implications. For Roman Catholics, the waves of immigrants from countries such as Italy and Poland imported European notions of theocracy to our shores while, for Protestants, the resurgence of a neo-Calvinism has had a similar effect. Emerging from their fundamentalist rootage, evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have done much to keep the theocratic hope alive in that broad coalition called New Right Religion. Black church leaders of the civil rights movement learned to depend upon the federal government for relief when the white church establishment refused to challenge a segregationist culture. All about us the historic "wall of separation" between church and state is being eroded, especially in this anguished time when praying to God and rallying around the flag have become virtually indistinguishable.
Of the many problems raised by these theocratic trends, two may be mentioned here. The first is that democracy cannot grant a large measure of liberty to its citizens unless that freedom is guarded from the perversities of human nature by a strong system of checks-and-balances. This division of powers is not only necessary within government, as with the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, but also between government and other major forces in society, such as a free press in the public square, a free podium in the schools, and a free pulpit in the churches. Of course there are areas of mutual concern where voluntary cooperation is desirable between governmental entities and religious groups. President Bush is exploring such possibilities in his advocacy of "charitable choice" and "faith-based initiatives." But the primary relation between church and state ought to be one of complete independence, leaving each free to challenge the other with its finest vision of human betterment.
Second, in the present crisis it is important that Christianity not be perceived as an American religion or even as a Western religion but as a global religion not beholden to any country or culture. If our religious interests are no broader than our national interests, then they serve only to deepen the divisions that condemn the world to perpetual strife. Surely this is a time to concentrate on the commonalities that unite the three great Abrahamic faiths, chief of which is the monotheism that they all emphatically affirm.[xiii] For if there really is only one God, then this universal deity must be the God of us all, friend and foe alike. There is no place for tribalism or nativism in religion if God is truly one, but religion can never escape its cultural captivity unless it is free from the smothering embrace of the state.
Clericalism
Our third characteristic is the inevitable offspring of the first two features of Islam just discussed. Once a religion becomes fossilized, drawing its inspiration from the distant past as understood by centuries of tradition, it requires a cadre of experts to explain its meaning for today. In the case of Islam, everything is based on the Koran (Qur`an) that must be studied and recited in its seventh century Arabic text. Only those with long years of training in Muslim seminaries/mosques (madrassas) can attain this esoteric knowledge, limiting religious leadership to a tightly controlled guild of learned experts (mullahs) with enormous authority. Add to that the theocratic scope of Islam and it gives political as well as religious clout to the role of clergy in society.
That is why ayatollahs can issue edicts touching on every aspect of private and public life, from decisions of national diplomacy down to minute details of manners and morals. Again, the issue is not whether God`s will embraces the totality of life, or whether clerics may hold an opinion as to what God`s will might be on any particular point. The issue, rather, is whether expertise in the Koran, or in any other scripture, confers an omnicompetence-or, indeed, any special competence at all-in areas not related to religion. Do clerics have a monopoly on the full range of human wisdom, or does God guide laypersons into secular callings where they may become far more expert in the affairs of statecraft than scriptural specialists ever could?
To be sure, it would simplify things if we could put all of the problems of life into one basket and hand them over to a cleric for solution. But God does not offer any such shortcuts to building a better world. If politicians could find all of the answers by becoming experts in scripture and theology, they would all quickly line up to enroll in the nearest seminary! What the most sensitive and spiritually committed public officials have learned, on the contrary, is that true faith, far from conferring easy answers to complex problems, may actually intensify the difficulty of finding a just but workable solution. Issues of governance need to be discussed and decided on the basis of input from a wide range of viewpoints, with differing conclusions likely from equally sincere and dedicated citizens. To determine public policy by single-issue crusades which equate one position with the will of God for American life is to drift toward the very disaster which is unfolding in Islam.
When I was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Shreveport, U. S. Senator J. Bennett Johnston was a member of our church. As we discussed the pressures that converged on his office, he described how religious lobbyists would try to coerce his vote for special-interest legislation by threatening to oppose his reelection with funds raised from across the nation. The problem was not just how to counter such a reprisal orchestrated far beyond the boundaries of Louisiana but, even more important, how to represent those citizens with divergent opinions regarding the legislation in question. What Senator Johnston helped me see is that preachers make poor politicians. They deal so constantly with what they view as moral and spiritual absolutes that they lack the ability to reach accommodations involving trade-offs and compromises, not just with so-called "secularist" positions, but even with religious positions that differ from their own.
In a significant sense, the American experiment was a revolt, not only against the established church with its religious wars, but also against a clericalism that perpetuated authoritarian religion in the public square. Democracy represented a fundamental challenge to "authority from above." In shifting the locus of power from the "divine right of kings" to the inalienable rights of citizens, it implicitly encouraged the transfer of religious authority from the clergy to the laity. Out of that ferment, Free Church denominations began to emphasize concepts such as "the priesthood of the believer" and "the soul competency of the individual." Clergy were seen increasingly, not as an elite leadership with a subservient followship, but as a servant leadership empowering and enabling an egalitarian followship. Religious renewal seldom comes from professional clergy dependent on the approval of their fellow ministers for vocational success. Whether it be from an Amos, John the Baptist, or Stephen, the prophetic word of renewal usually emerges outside of ecclesiastical channels. A clergy-controlled religion that does not listen to and learn from its laity will never be compatible with the finest expressions of democracy on which our country was founded.
Hierarchy
What we have just sought to describe are the limitations of a clerical hierarchy to liberate the full potential of the laity. Now let us notice how this "top down" authoritarian mentality is applied to fully half of the human race in Islam`s refusal to grant gender equality to women. For example, when the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in 1996, they immediately issued a number of repressive edicts, the first of which ended all education for females at every level beginning with kindergarten. Women could not return to work or to school but became virtual prisoners in their own homes where music, dancing, television, the Internet, and western hairstyles were also banned. On the rare occasions when they appeared in public, they were to cover themselves from head to foot including the face and be accompanied by a close male relative or receive one hundred lashes. These strictures were imposed despite the fact that the Muslim nations of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkey have all been ruled by women in recent years.
The Harvard historian of economics, David S. Landes, has made a major study of poverty and wealth by nations and regions of the world.[xiv] In regard to Islamic societies, he has concluded that a key reason why they have fallen so far behind the West lies in their treatment of women. By forcing females to live such circumscribed lives, Islamic civilization denied itself the enormous human capital which they could provide.[xv] Imagine how completely the American economy would be wrecked if women were suddenly excluded from the work force. In Afghanistan, for example, this ban virtually destroyed the educational system in which seventy percent of the teachers were women. Because it extended to widows, as many as a million women were left with no recourse but to beg on the street. Imprisoned from head to toe in a shroud for the living called the burka, women suffer claustrophobia like caged animals, their hearing muffled and vision restricted, unable to look at, much less talk to, male strangers. Condemned to illiteracy and anonymity, they live out their lives in domestic servitude to a husband whom they did not choose, for all practical purposes not only invisible but nonexistent as well.
Even more disastrous is what this hideous system does to religion. Think of a spirituality devoid of any input or influence from those who participate most intimately in the central passages of life by giving birth to babies, nurturing children, feeding and clothing the family, caring for the sick and dying. A male dominated faith is one largely without tenderness and compassion for the vulnerable. More often than not, it is a religion that does not know how to love. The Taliban, for example, sponsored a so-called "Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" that, in the name of a fierce Islamic legalism, sent thugs out on the streets to beat women and children with lengths of steel cable for silly infractions like wearing white socks or shoes that "clicked" on the pavement. We shudder at how this sadistic use of religion conspired to obliterate the potential of women and girls simply because they were guilty of the crime of being born female. But we remember just enough of our own history of human slavery and segregation to realize the incalculable damage that such exploitation does to the souls of men made into ruthless tyrants by their supposed obedience to the will of God.
After endless delays spanning three centuries in the life of our nation, American women finally began to achieve a measure of equality in the twentieth century. First they gained access to political power as a result of the woman`s suffrage movement, then they gained access to equal employment opportunities by achieving a measure of control over their reproductive functions. Building on these two breakthroughs, they are making remarkable strides both in the workplace and in the church. Women now outnumber and outperform men in most areas of higher education, which means that it will be only a matter of time until they are able to express their full creative potential in every sector of American society. Less than a century ago, female students were excluded from almost all of our theological schools, but now they comprise more than thirty percent of the enrollment, with many of them moving into prestigious professorships where they will teach the religious leaders of tomorrow.
For all of these recent rapid advances, however, it is conspicuously evident that male-dominated American Christianity, far from being in the forefront, was downright resistant to giving women either the ballot or the pill. Furthermore, equal access to higher education has been prompted far more by federal legislation than by encouragement from the churches and the schools that they sponsor. Most noticeable is the "glass ceiling" within congregational life which public law is reluctant to challenge. Women continue to fill far more than their share of "subordinate" but significant roles as they care for the children, cook in the kitchen, and sing in the choir, but in most churches they have seen severely limited service in senior leadership positions, whether lay or clerical. For example, the two largest denominations in America have chosen to make gender discrimination a theological test of orthodoxy, thereby restricting pastoral and episcopal functions only to males. In such a system, even the meaning of a venerable female icon such as the Virgin Mary may be authoritatively interpreted only by a group of elderly celibate males! In practice, not only does this approach give the church a one-sided masculine mindset, but it also denies the majority of its members, who are women, the chance to see mature models of feminine spirituality at work in helping to shape the spirit and direction of the church.
Violence
The most perplexing feature of the present struggle to most Americans is the Islamic determination to fight a "Holy War" with the West. The roots of this resentment go back to 1683 when the second Turkish siege of Vienna ended in total failure followed by one defeat after another until one of the greatest empires in all of human history lay in ruins, dominated and exploited by the West for centuries. We travel as tourists to glimpse the monuments of the Crusades, but Arabs live with these galling reminders of their subservience on a daily basis. In their eyes, every time the United States mobilizes the Western world to intervene with massive military force, it is but the latest in a series of "crusades" against the Arab world. Moreover, they interpret this intervention as support for the oil sheiks who have invested untold billions of petrodollars in the West even as the Middle East, for all of its vast natural resources, sinks into economic squalor. On their understanding, Osama bin Laden wins even if he loses because he is fighting a holy war (jihad) for Islamic self determination, while the West is fighting only to protect an oil supply that feeds the voracious appetite of its insatiable consumerism.[xvi]
Seen in the context of the centuries, therefore, George Bush and Osama bin Laden are but human symbols of vast historical forces locked in mortal combat. That is why it is foolish to suppose that this crisis will vanish if only our latest antagonist is captured or assassinated. We know that bin Laden is but one of many political leaders in a vast terrorist network shrewdly exploiting the implacable opposition of Islam to Western "modernization." If we were to silence his voice today, other spokesmen would be drawn into the powerful political void which has existed in Islam since the abolition of empire and caliphate. After all, in thousands of mosque-based schools, especially in the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan near the Afghan border, "students" (Taliban) as young as seven years of age are being tutored in terror to defend Islam to the death. It is estimated that as many as 4.5 million future "holy warriors" (mujahedeen) are being groomed in these assembly-line incubators of jihad.
Once the problem is defined in this fashion, many Americans are left wondering why the Middle East should get so fanatical about defending itself against something as wonderful as "Western civilization." Does not this legacy bring with it all of the benefits of the scientific revolution? The great Islamist scholar Bernard Lewis answers plainly: "For vast numbers of Middle Easterners, Western style economic methods brought poverty, Western style political institutions brought tyranny, even Western style warfare brought defeat."[xvii] But that still does not bring us to the heart of the problem, which is: How could admittedly profound cultural differences cause these two civilizations to engage in such violent conflict? In particular, how could their religion condone the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians? How could the Islamic concept of jihad, meaning "struggle" or "exertion," which Mohammed interpreted as the individual`s lifelong struggle to resist temptation, be used to justify random acts of mass terror?
Before we fly into a rage of religious judgmentalism in answering such questions, let us remember a few sobering facts. The Christian scriptures of the Old Testament contain numerous references to "holy wars" which include the idea of herem, a Hebrew word meaning "anathema" or "separated," according to which the enemies of Israel were to be utterly destroyed without mercy (Dt. 7:1 2; 20:16 18), including men, women, children, infants, and animals (1 Sam. 15:3). Even those Israelite towns that compromised the faith were to be torched "as a whole burnt offering to the Lord" that would become "a heap forever" never to be rebuilt (Dt. 13:12 18). This kind of extreme militancy has surfaced repeatedly in Christian history, notably in the medieval Crusades (1096 1396) that provided papal armies with abundant opportunities to ravage and plunder Muslim lands. Thus when bin Laden ignited anti American passions in 1998 by issuing a fatwa, or religious ruling, declaring it to be "the individual duty" of every Muslim "to kill Americans and their Allies-civilians and military . . . in any country in which it is possible,"[xviii] he was merely borrowing an old religious idea from some of his Abrahamic cousins.
The only way to counter and cleanse this bitter legacy is to categorically reject the use of violence to fight any kind of "holy wars" in the name of God. In all three Abrahamic faiths-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-a small but noisy minority would use their scriptures to sanction slaughter as a religious act. But the Scriptures of all three religions contain more mature truths that make for peace. Measured by the highest witness of the Abrahamic faiths, the use of indiscriminate violence to fight "holy wars" has no place in the will of God for his people. We as Christians cannot invite Islam to join us in that understanding unless we first put our own house in order. How may that be done?
To rid the world of the hydra headed monster of religious violence, American Christians will need to help our nation develop a new mindset. Before September 11, all that we could talk about was how to cut taxes, reduce government spending, and prop up an economy that was in danger of falling below the double digit yields to which we had become accustomed. In the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, our global responsibility as a nation was hardly discussed by either candidate because the polls showed that voters couldn`t care less. If September 11 has taught us anything, it is that the richest nation in the world cannot spend all of its time and energy becoming even richer and let the rest of the world "go to hell in a handbasket." If we try that approach long enough, the embittered whom we ignore will bring their hell to our shores in a suicidal frenzy of wanton destruction.
So we are tutored by tragedy in the lessons of noblesse oblige, that privilege imposes obligations. The time has come to set aside our consuming greed for extravagance and relearn the disciplines of compassion for those homeless and starving millions living on the outer edge of human subsistence. It will not be easy to show the world that we care for others as much as we care for ourselves. Indeed, it may prove easier to win the war against terrorism than to win the peace against that desperation which makes it possible. But we do not have to look far to find models of selfless global commitment that is our overriding need in the present crisis. They are called missionaries. Our religion has been sending them out for twenty centuries as agents of a universal faith intent on uniting the entire human race in a fellowship of life and love regardless of political loyalties.
While we need Christian missionaries as never before to help overcome the cleavages caused by our inherited religious animosities, we also need missionaries of the American way of life at its best: travelers, entrepreneurs, teachers, social workers, agriculturalists, engineers, and a host of others willing to go and give, willing to listen and learn, willing to save and share that a broken world might be rebuilt on the basis of mutual tolerance and respect. The task will not be easy nor will it be brief. There is little hope of changing the entrenched attitudes of those long infested with the virus of violence, but we can begin to lay the foundations of a new world order in which the moderating forces of justice and compassion in all of our religions will have a chance to gain the upper hand.
The place to start is here at home by insuring that our own religion not become a westernized version of Taliban Christianity like the Taliban Islam that has become such an implacable foe of those democratic values which lie at the bedrock of the American experiment. Sad to say, any religion can be hijacked by a fanatical minority intent on making it an instrument of obscurantist repression. So let us be vigilant to guard Christianity from the troubling tendencies that have befallen Islam by insisting that ours be a dynamic, developing faith under the guidance of God`s Spirit; that it refuse to co-opt government to do by force what it will not do by faith; that its clergy exist to enable and empower the laity; that its women become full partners with men in the quest for spiritual fulfillment; and that it function as a universal faith not beholden to any country or culture. The best way for bad religion to be defeated is for good religion to take its place. Let us offer the Islamic world that witness with a prayer that all the spiritual heirs of Abraham may learn to dwell together in peace.
Footnotes
[i] The thesis that geopolitics is entering a new phase in which conflict will be primarily cultural rather than national was advanced by Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, Summer, 1993, 22-49; subsequently expanded into a book, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). On the discussion generated, with a response by Huntington, see The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate. A Foreign Affairs Reader (New York: Foreign Affairs, 1993). On the author`s academic career that undergirds this seminal work, see Robert D. Kaplan, "Looking the World in the Eye," The Atlantic Monthly, December, 2001, 68-82. On attitudes toward Huntington`s thesis since September 11, 2001, see James M. Wall, "Civilization Clash?," Christian Century, November 7, 2001, 37.
[ii]George W. Bush, address to a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C., September 20, 2001.
[iii]On David Forte as "W.`s unreliable adviser on Islam" see Franklin Foer, "Blind Faith," The New Republic, October 22, 2001, 12-14. On bin Laden`s religion see Neil MacFarquhar, "Bin Laden and His Followers Adhere To an Austere, Stringent Form of Islam," New York Times, October 7, 2001, B-7. On the estimate of Daniel Pipes "that bin Laden enjoys the emotional support of half the Muslim world," see Peter Beinart, "New Faith," The New Republic, December 3, 2001, 8.
[iv]For a summary see William E. Hull, "Religion and The World Crisis," Christian Ethics Today, December, 2001, 6-10.
[v]On Islamic fundamentalism in a global context see the encyclopedic work edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991-1995), 5 volumes. For a description of Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab world and South Asia, see volume I, Fundamentalisms Observed, 345-530. On its views of science and technology, family and interpersonal relations, as well as education and media, see volume II, Fundamentalisms and Society, 73-125, 151-213, 341-73. On its political, economic, and militancy views, see volume III, Fundamentalisms and the State, 88-232, 302-41, 491-556. On its dynamics as a movement, see volume IV, Accounting for Fundamentalisms, 359-588. On its similarities and differences with other fundamentalist movements across various traditions and cultures, see volume V, Fundamentalisms Comprehended, 71-95, 115-52, 179-230, 277-87.
[vi]Quoted in Time, April 16, 1965, 73.
[vii]For a comparison of the Islamic and Christian religions and civilizations in 1492 see Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Age of Discovery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5-26.
[viii]Peter Brown, "Understanding Islam," The New York Review of Books, February 22, 1979, 30.
[ix]David S. Landes and Richard A. Landes, "Girl Power," The New Republic, October 8, 2001, 20.
[x]Daniel Del Castillo, "Pakistan`s Islamic Colleges Provide the Taliban`s Spiritual Fire," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 28, 2001, A19, A21.
[xi]Robert N. Bellah, "Is There a Common American Culture?,@ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol 66, no. 3, Fall, 1998, 617-22.
[xii]Andrew Sullivan, "This Is a Religious War," The New York Times Magazine, October 7, 2001, 53.
[xiii]This is an enormously challenging agenda for trilateral coversations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims because monotheism, depending on how it is understood, can be either a powerfully unifying or a powerfully alienating force in competing religions. On a typology of "elective" versus Ametaphysical" monotheism, see Martin S. Jaffee, "One God, One Revelation, One People: On the Symbolic Structure of Elective Monotheism," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 69, no. 4, December, 2001, 763-75. For a disturbing treatment of monotheism and identity politics, see Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
[xiv]David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: Norton, 1998).
[xv]David S. Landes and Richard A. Landes, 20, 22.
[xvi]For a detailed study of Islamic opposition to Western economic imperialism, see Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995), especially 205-16.
[xvii]Bernard Lewis, "Western Civilization: A View From the East,@ The Jefferson Lecture for 1990, cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9, 1990, A4.
[xviii]Cited in U. S. News & World Report, September 24, 2001, 56.
