Christians and Islam...

Tonight - in less that two hours - we start a summertime study organized by the Sojourners Community called: Christians and Islam. This builds on our Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools study groups and the recent "Three Cups of Tea Silent Auction" which raised over $2,000 for Greg Mortenson's ministry of building schools throughout Pakistan and Afghanistan that must be at least 50% girls. These schools must also refuse to use hate literature and emphasize the true core of Islam rather than the extremist Wahabism that inflames fear and violence.

Our series begins with this insight from the discussion guide: For centuries, Christians and Muslims have lived in peace as neighbors. But religious differences are always fertile ground for fanning the fires of political and economic gain - and both Christians and Muslims have waged "holy wars." In our own time, both Muslims and Christians are dealing with extremists in our midst who distort the true character of belief. Significant, intelligent dialogue and the development of authentic friendships across religious lines are key to deepening our mutual faith...

Tonight we will talk about: apocalypticsm, the nuances of history, authentic interfaith cooperation and the legacy of holy wars. (All in 60 minutes!)

Next week we'll look more closely at some of the core theological insights of Islam. And then close the series by considering "The American Face of Islam." I look forward to seeing where the Spirit leads us as we open our hearts and minds... I trust it will include something like these words from Richard Rodriquez as he writes in I Kneel to a Desert God.

After Sept. 11, I suddenly realized that maybe I was being drawn to the desert because I’m a Christian. I’d read so much of my Christian past through Europe. I’m a Roman Catholic; I was raised in an Irish Catholic church; I was schooled in religious controversies that had to do with Geneva, or Zurich, or Zwingli, or Calvin, or Luther. When I went to Union Theological Seminary for two years, it was all European theological drama. It didn’t engage this ecological question, that we are people of the desert. Christianity is a desert religion, a Middle Eastern religion.

This interested me because that’s how we think of Muslims, basically, as a desert people. I had never gone to the desert looking for Christ. I’d never gone to the desert expecting to find Muhammad. And I’d never gone to the desert expecting to hear the voice of God. But that’s precisely what I’m doing now. I have a Palestinian driver who imitates Elvis Presley, and we drive around the Middle East, and I’m enchanted by the desert. I’ve never felt so close to God as I do there.

I’m asking questions about how the desert protected Jesus, protected Muhammad, protected Moses. How they hid themselves in the desert. How the city—Mecca, Jerusalem—was often at odds with these prophets, these holy people, and how the desert took them in, and how God appears in the desert. The drama of mirage and the drama of dryness.

The first story of Abraham that we read in Genesis is a desert story: The desert God has come to a dry old man and told him that he will be fertile, that his wife is going to bear him a son. Overhearing this—I always imagine her as [the actress] Rhea Perlman—she laughs; the whole idea of becoming a mother is ludicrous to her. God says to her, do you think that there are things that God cannot do, that this is impossible for God? And suddenly there is this notion of fertility in the desert, that God will make the dry woman fertile.

And these two children, Isaac and Ishmael, the legitimate son and the illegitimate son: Abraham, who is this George Burns character, casts away his Egyptian servant when Rhea Perlman says “I won’t have her around.” She goes out to the desert and almost dies there with her son, until they are rescued by God, who promises them that they will have a race as numerous as the stars.

So what am I doing in the desert? I’m looking for that God. The God who is promising a world of fertility in this dryness. The desert, by the way, is the fastest growing ecology in the world right now. There are dust storms in Beijing. The desert is the most implacable, most demanding ecology, and it keeps advancing.