Posts Tagged ‘ Christian ’

After 9/11, four tasks for religion

September 12, 2011
By

Eric Yoffie, Washington Post, Sep.10, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/after-sept-11-four-tasks-for-religion/2011/09/10/gIQA9h4kHK_blog.html

Ten years ago this weekend, a terror attack changed the world and changed America forever. It left Americans frightened and dismayed, and filled American hearts with bewilderment and enduring rage.

We stand here today as representatives of America’s great religious traditions. What has been our role in healing our nation?

I suggest that we have had, and still have, four major tasks.

Our first task is to help America remember the victims and to offer their families comfort and healing.  Our second task is to educate about the meaning of 9/11.  Our third task is to resist with all of our might the view that the extremist fringe that carried out and supported this violent act is the voice of Islam in America or in the world.   And  our fourth and final task is to offer hope, and faith.

So I end with the hope – that is our common hope – that Muslims, Jews, and Christians will not permit fanaticism to grow or prejudice to harden; that as the sacred day of 9/11 approaches, we will honor the memory of those who died by teaching our children to honor life; and that here, in America, as seekers of God and children of Abraham, we will refuse to grant a victory to those who work to divide us; that here in America, we will reclaim our common heritage and find a common path.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie is president of the Union for Reform Judaism.

Read the complete article here.

Christian-Muslim tensions simmer in Malaysia

September 12, 2011
By

Razak Ahmad, Reuters, Sep.12, in.reuters.com/article/2011/09/12/idINIndia-59282520110912

A raid on a church by Muslim authorities has raised religious tension in Malaysia and could cost Prime Minister Najib Razak votes in an election set for 2013 but which many expect to come much earlier.

The raid has sparked an angry verbal battle between Christians and the majority Muslims, forcing Najib to seek what may be an elusive peace between the ethnic Malays and minorities, both of which believe the government isn’t doing enough to safeguard their rights.

Conservative Muslims want the government to crack down on what they say is growing boldness by Christians to try to convert Muslims, which is an offence in Malaysia, while ethnic minorities worry their rights are being eroded.

Read the complete article here.

Ten Years After 9/11: Has Religion Driven Us Apart or Drawn Us Together?

September 12, 2011
By

Paul Brandeis Rauschenbush, Huffington Post, Sep. 6, www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/911-religion_b_949688.html

Two religious responses from the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11 demonstrate how religion has been both a divisive and unifying force in America over the last ten years.

The first was from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who assigned blame for the attacks to God who, they explained, was angry at America because of Gays, Feminists and the ACLU, among others. While fires still smoldered at Ground Zero, Falwell and company were ironically fanning the flames of discord and division by blaming God and liberals instead of religious extremism.

The second response was different. As soon as reports made clear that the terrorists claimed allegiance to the fundamentalist Islam of Osama bin Laden, many feared violence might be directed toward the American Muslim population. Yet in the days after 9/11, reports came from all across the country that Christians, Jews, and other people of faith had called local mosques to offer support and solidarity. Instead of turning against Muslims, the religious community rallied for their fellow Americans of a different faith tradition.

These two examples show the simultaneous yet divergent directions that religious practice and thought has taken in America in the last ten years. 9/11 made it clear that religion, which had been ignored in global political calculations and overlooked by the media for decades, was still a force, and perhaps the force in people’s personal and communal lives.

Read the complete article here.

In Indonesia, church runs afoul of Islamic street name

September 12, 2011
By

David Crampton, ENInews, Sep.6, www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5129

In a test case of religious intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, an Indonesian mayor is defying court rulings by pushing for a decree to block Christians from opening churches on streets with Islamic names.

Members of the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church in the West Java town of Bogor are, after three years, still forced to worship on the sidewalk outside their building, protected by police. Although a verdict from Indonesia’s highest court in December, backed by the National Ombudsman Commission, favoured the church, Bogor has defied the order.

Read the complete article here.

Christian-Jewish relations still a source of debate

September 12, 2011
By

Philip A. Cunningham and Eric J. Greenberg — ENInews/RNS, Sep.1,  www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5122

A fascinating exchange recently took place in the pages of the Vatican’s newspaper between the chief rabbi of Rome and the Vatican’s chief representative to the Jewish people. Their conversation reflected just how far we’ve come in Christian-Jewish relations — but also how far we have yet to go, Religion News Service reports.

It started when L’Osservatore Romano published an article by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Writing about the upcoming interfaith gathering at Assisi, Italy, on 27 October, Koch noted two key changes since the first Assisi summit 25 years ago: the collapse of communism and the rise in terrorism.

After arguing that “peace is the common effort of all religions,” Koch concluded that from a Christian perspective, “the cross of Jesus erases any desire for vengeance and calls everyone to reconciliation, it rises above us as the permanent and universal Yom Kippur,” referring to the Jewish Day of Atonement.

The cross is “not an obstacle to interreligious dialogue,” he wrote, “but rather, it indicates the decisive way that especially Jews and Christians, but also Muslims and followers of other religions, should welcome with a deep inner reconciliation, becoming the leaven of peace and justice in the world.”

Read the complete article here.

Did 9/11 Make Us Morally ‘Better’?

September 12, 2011
By

Mirislav Volf, Huffington Post, Sep.7, www.huffingtonpost.com/miroslav-volf/christianity-911_b_944153.html

When the first plane smashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center I was in the delegates’ dining room of the United Nations finishing a talk at the Annual International Prayer Breakfast. My theme was reconciliation.

Only hours later, New York was a ghost city, abandoned in a hurry by people in shock. The whole nation, wounded and humiliated, was soon gripped by fear, which gave birth to anger and determination to “kick some ass” internationally, as one of our eloquent political leaders put it. That was then, immediately after the attack. Where are we today, 10 years later?

Read the complete article here.

Imam Feisal: The Future of Muslim and Christian Relations in the West

September 12, 2011
By

Vimeo, Sep.7, vimeo.com/28716668

Tensions between Muslims and Christians have skyrocketed in recent months. A Florida pastor is accused of inciting violence after he publicly burned a Quran, and CNN aired a special report on Murfreesboro, Tennessee Muslims who clashed with residents over plans to expand their Islamic Center. In a moment of such tension, misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians run rampant and caricatures abound. How can the world’s two largest religions co-exist and even cooperate in such a contentious time? Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative and Gabe Lyons discuss the future for faith relations in the West.

Watch the video here.

 

Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

August 26, 2011
By

Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang , Scott Keyes & Faiz Shakir, Centre for American Progress, Aug. 26, www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/08/islamophobia.html

According to extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in the US:

  • Donors Capital Fund
  • Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
  • Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
  • Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
  • Russell Berrie Foundation
  • Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
  • Fairbrook Foundation

Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.

And what does this money fund? Well, here’s one of many cases in point: Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Gingrich went on to claim that “Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.”

Sharia, or Muslim religious code, includes practices such as charitable giving, prayer, and honoring one’s parents—precepts virtually identical to those of Christianity and Judaism. But Gingrich and other conservatives promote alarmist notions about a nearly 1,500-year-old religion for a variety of sinister political, financial, and ideological motives. In his remarks that day, Gingrich mimicked the language of conservative analyst Andrew McCarthy, who co-wrote a report calling Sharia “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Such similarities in language are no accident. Look no further than the organization that released McCarthy’s anti-Sharia report: the aforementioned Center for Security Policy, which is a central hub of the anti-Muslim network and an active promoter of anti- Sharia messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Read the complete article here.

Muslims, Modernity, and the Prospects of Christian-Muslim Dialogue

August 25, 2011
By

Robert Hunt, Inter-religious Dialogue, Aug.15, irdialogue.org/journal/muslims-modernity-and-the-prospects-of-christian-muslim-dialogue-by-robert-hunt/

This paper seeks to understand contemporary Islam in such a way as to suggest new approaches to Christian-Muslim dialogue. However, the general approach it offers is equally useful in the pursuit of other forms of engagement with Muslims and the Muslim community. It is the thesis of this paper that understanding Muslim (and Christian) identity in terms of narrative will provide a more illuminating and fruitful basis for engaging in interfaith dialogue, or at least a better understanding of those with whom we as Christians are in dialogue. A focus on Muslim narratives will also provide an alternative taxonomy of Islamic movements in the hope that this will provide indications of how future dialogue most usefully can be pursued.

Read the complete paper as a pdf  here.

Karen Leslie Hernandez (Wanted: More than Dialogue), Kari Aanestad (I am so much more than Lutheran) and Benjamin B DeVan (Dialogue Hard?) have written papers responding to Hunt’s original paper.

Faiths challenged to face the reality of violence inside and out

August 25, 2011
By

Ekklesia, Aug.25, www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/15288

The historic religions are ambivalent in implementing a respect for life, and ambiguous about survival versus broader moral instincts, says a leading commentator.

Oliver McTernan, a former Roman Catholic priest and broadcaster, and author of Violence in God’s Name, was speaking at the 2011 Festival of Spirituality and Peace in Edinburgh, in conversation with historian Owen Dudley Edwards and church historian Lesley Orr.

He noted that for a century and a half in its early history, Christianity was uncompromising in its rejection of violence and war. But with Constantine and the Edict of Milan, the desire to protect a growing religiously-based empire overcame the previous pacifistic impulses.

But the majority traditions had often been permissive towards war and violence, said McTernan, who also pointed to parallel contradictions and problems within other faiths, including Hinduism and Islam.

Dr Orr amplified the theme by speaking about her research into the global phenomenon of violence against women, domestic and structural – including religiously sanctioned or permitted abuse.

Dr Dudley Edwards pointed towards Quakers as an embodiment of an alternative Christian tradition that rejects violence – and includes many Anabaptists and others.

Jesus statement that he came “not to bring peace, but a sword” was a clear reference to the social conflict leading to his violent death, not a justification of the sword, Edwards said. Indeed, the founder of the Christian movement’s last statement before his crucifixion was a demand that his followers “put away your sword”.

Read the complete article here.