A Standing or a Running Broad Jump?

A standing broad jump begins where we are now and moves forward. A running broad jump starts back of the take off point and only then moves forward. This image from the late Jaroslav Pelikan points out the importance of tradition for Christians and Muslims, and for Christian-Muslim dialogue. We Christians and Muslims ignore our mutual pasts to our own peril.

The first three essays in this issue were originally delivered at a conference in 2006 to inaugurate LSTC’s Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice. They point out the urgency of this new center and the difficulties faced by Christians and Muslims as we attempt to move toward a more just and more peaceful future. The final two essays provide additional resources for those who will preach or listen to sermons based on Matthew’s Gospel in Lectionary Year A.

Willem Bijleteld points out that recent polls have shown a significant rise in negative feelings toward Islam and in the view that Islam encourages violence. The public press has widely ignored Muslim scholars who sharply distance themselves from this view. Kenneth Cragg’s The Call of the Minaret has led numerous Christians to a sincere appreciation of the Muslim heritage. All through history there have been Christians who affirm that the God of Islam and Christianity are one, although not without significant dissenters. Another point of contention for Christians is the question whether the Qur’an is the word of God. A third issue is the attempt of many Christians to assign Islam a place in the history of revelation. Many Muslims suspect that Christian-Muslim dialogue is a new and subtle form of Christian mission. Dialogue can begin not on the basis of a religious bond, but on the basis of common humanity since we all are children of Eve and Adam. Common action for the sake of the common good is another starting point for dialogue. A third aspect of interfaith dialogue is dialogue for the sake of better mutual understanding, including beliefs and doctrine. Natural catastrophes raise the question of God’s omnipotence and of history’s independence from God for both Muslims and Christians. A fourth dimension of inter-religious dialogue is an intuitive recognition of a shared experience of the Transcendent Reality. While tensions between Christians and Muslims are growing in some places, in Chicago and at other places there are encouraging new initiatives for a better mutual understanding. There is a great need to counteract the impact of one-sided and distorted images of Islam. We Christians and Muslims cannot give up finding each other as fellow pilgrims on our way to God.

Vincent J. Cornell observes that Islamic traditionalism is giving Islam a bad name all over the globe. Outside of the Muslim world, the belief that Muslims are violent arch-traditionalists is most responsible for Islam’s bad name. But the religious, social, and ethical disjunctures between the values of the present and the past are challenges for all contemporary societies, not just for Islam. Prejudices that developed in the Islamic past are perpetuated and accentuated by the tendency to equate the loss of traditions with a loss of faith. The idea of reciprocity that leads to social ethics is an important corollary to the Five Pillars of Islam. The Prophets of Islam are the bearers of the divine message and reminders to countries and peoples of humanity’s obligations to God and to each other. Muslims share with Christians a reverence for Jesus and John the Baptist, who are not recognized in Jewish Scriptures. Part of the crisis of tradition that Muslims face today is that they are unable to admit openly to the innovations of tradition that they make every day in nearly every context. The task of the constructive theologian in today’s Islam is to engage critically with the legacy of tradition as it impacts the experience of Muslims in the modern world. Perhaps the real crisis in Islam is the loss of that spirituality that makes Islam not just a tradition or an identity, but a true submission to the will of God.

Robert Schreiter notes the recent effects of globalization (disparate economic growth and migration from poorer countries to wealthier ones) and a resurgence of religion in many parts of the world. Dialogue between religious traditions has assumed new urgency in this context. Painful memories of the past can preclude any resolution of past differences or finding new ways of living together. The first part of the article deals with the role of traumatic memories, such as the Armenian Massacre of 1914-1915, the Jewish Holocaust in the World War II, and the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, in social formations. Somehow these memories must be embedded in new narratives that do not continue to generate negative emotion. The second part of the article offers a case history of the ways in which memory has complicated current realities in the Balkans, the area of the former state of Yugoslavia. The establishment of an interfaith council there hopes to separate religion from national politics and to build on the resources of peace in the various religious traditions that are part of that council. The third part of the article identifies some general lessons about building peace and reconciliation and how these goals relate to the processes of inter-religious dialogue.

Edgar Krentz shows that the year of Matthew invites us to stress in preaching our rootedness in the Scriptures and our traditions, our concern for justice and the marginalized, our character as a community of forgiveness, and our need to make disciples through baptism and teaching. Matthew’s gospel provides the themes for that teaching and reminds us that Jesus is and will be with us as we live the life he describes. One needs to interpret each Sunday’s gospel within the overarching theological and social concerns of Matthew. Matthew wrote his gospel to help his Jewish Christian community understand who they were after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and what his audience should be doing in the identity crisis they faced.

Thomas Haverly reviews the findings of several recent polls that indicate that the posture of many Christians toward issues like terrorism and torture falls far short of what we should expect. Also American civil religion and individualism offer little inhibition against a tolerance of torture and attacks on civilians. Investigation of a series of recurring phrases in Matthew’s gospel provides a prophetic framework for reading the Sermon on the Mount. Both John the Baptist and Jesus have prophetic characteristics in Matthew. Doing the will of the One in heaven is both less and also far more than prophecy and deeds of power. The bearing of good fruit is best characterized by an active love of neighbor and also by a love of the enemy as well. The call to discipleship within the pungent expressions of the Sermon on the Mount is a call to a deeper engagement with the realm of the God who subverts our world and in the subversion restores it.
Tradition, Pelikan insisted, is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Both Christians and Muslims face the challenge: Do we bank on tradition or traditionalism? Do we recognize and honor and lament our past? Or do we sail blindly into the future? What resources do our Sacred Texts offer? How are we doing so far in the year of St. Matthew?

Ralph W. Klein
Editor

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