Christians and Muslims

Over recent months, I've received an email several times about an Islamic prayer day scheduled for Washington DC in September 2009. The email, like much of the Internet rhetoric theses days, seems to border on hysteria, is based on very little fact, and seems more intended to discredit the faith and beliefs of the current President of the United States than anything else. My bottom line opinion about the event -- much ado about nothing. I've visited their website and to date they have 3 sponsors; all of them are from the local New Jersey area. I suspect this will look a lot like the Million Man March held some years back and will be sparsely attended. That said, there are some things about this that do concern me both from a religious and constitutional perspective.

What concerns me the most is the attitude so many Christians have taken toward people that need to hear about Jesus and eternal salvation offered through him. As a Christian nation we are ignoring the opportunity afforded us to witness to the Islamic nation. Rather than seeing these people as lost souls eternally separated from God, we are choosing to polarize along political boundaries, alienate them as a nation and as a people, essentially consigning them hell without regard to our commission to spread the gospel to all the world.

Further, there seems to be a tendency on the part of conservative Christians to shy away from and in some cases run from people of Muslim faith in fear. By so doing we essentially undermine the power we claim to have through Christ to overcome false teachings. I have dear friends from my days in academia that are Muslim who have witnessed my life as a Christian and commented on it. I've used that opportunity to open a small portal through which they might learn the truth. To shy away or rebuke them for what they have believed is wrong and counter to life's illustration given us by Jesus in dealing with the Samaritan woman at the well. Among perhaps my strongest beliefs to develop over the past years is this: we will never hate someone (including Muslims) to the cross and I affirm that without reservation or hesitancy.

The other significant concern has to do with how much of the Constitution we are willing to discard. While we were a nation founded primarily by groups seeking religious freedom from the Anglican Church of England, that is often oversimplified. It is important to note Roger Miller, one of our Baptist founders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_(theologian), was so much at odds with other religious group he had to move to Rhode Island to find a place to worship as he saw appropriate. Additionally, the framers of the Constitution were so concerned that any religion should rise to a level where it became the 'official' church of the government, they provided for the separation of the two entities. If we, as Christians, expect to be free to exercise our faith without governmental oversight, then we are compelled to allow others to do the same.

For me, it comes to this, I want the freedom to speak the truth about Christ. If doing so allows another to speak against Him, then so be it; ultimately, through the power of Christ, my truth will prevail over their fallacies.