Christianity and Islam

“The question to be asked, then, is whether, face to face with Islam, Christians will be able to sustain, rebuild, and create strong and resilient communities that provide institutional anchorage for the faith to endure and flourish. Will they have the imagination to form the spiritual architecture of the societies of which they are a part? This is a task for which Christianity is particularly well suited. It has a much longer lineage than Islam, it has taken many different cultural forms in the course of its history, and it has passed through the fires of modernity. It has a deeper and more coherent relation to its own tradition, including the cultural patrimony of classical antiquity. And it commands the intellectual resources to understand and engage other religious traditions as well as to provide moral inspiration for secular societies.

“Unlike Islam, Christianity began as a community distinct from the body politic, and for three hundred years it existed independently of political authority. This early history has never been forgotten. Even in the time of Christian hegemony in the West, during the age of Charlemagne, Abbot Wala of Corbie insisted that the Church constituted a parallel sovereignty. The king, he said, should have public properties for the maintenance of his army, and the Church should have ‘church properties, almost like a second public domain.’

“Augustine’s metaphor for the new life in Christ was not that of an individual’s being born again but that of becoming part of a city with its own form of governance. ‘Happy the people whose God us the Lord,’ wrote the psalmist. Though some may eschew the term, in the decades to come the great challenge for Christians will be to fashion, within the cultural and political conditions of the twenty-first century, a new kind of Christendom.”

-Robert Louis Wilken, “Christianity Face to Face with Islam,” First Things (Jan 2009), 26.

New Year, Old Year
We like to believe that January 1 brings new opportunities. So we make resolutions, or treat them as a game at New Year’s Eve gatherings. Most of us know, however, that there is nothing new under the sun, that the struggle to discard old burdens and create space for newness in 2008 will continue in 2009, and that we will likely fail, again. That too is old news for the Christian; dying to sin and rising to newness of life is our daily bread as Christ’s disciples.

As the years roll by, however, socio-political events and cultural undertows create patterns of thought and action that warrant change. Will any of the following resolutions find themselves on your list?

1. Ask for kneeling benches to be attached to the pews, if your church is redesigning its worship area.

2. Practice honest prayer through John Baillie’s A Litany of Daily Prayer in March and September.

3. Support or recommend one person for a position because she or he is qualified. Resist politically correct reasoning.

4. When leading the congregation in prayer, begin, “Let us pray,” not, “Please join ME in prayer.”

5. Read one book or article about Islam. Suggestions: Sinclair Lewis, What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (Perennial, 2002), or Robert Louis Wilken, “Christianity Face to Face with Islam,” First Things (Jan 2009), 19-26.

6. Practice Lent during Advent.

7. Answer the question: Can a post-modern, missional theology prepare the church to engage Islam?

8. Befriend a marginalized person in your church or community.

Please add your own suggestions in the comments.
ACL