Sunday, October 25, 2015

The Muslim Stranger: A Good Neighbor or a Threat?

 By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

            Muslims are considered strangers in Europe and the U.S., and the refugee crisis has raised the question of whether Muslims can be good neighbors or are a threat to non-Muslims. 
           
            Judaism, Christianity and Islam all consider the greatest commandment to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself (Mark 12:28-33) to be a moral imperative of their faith.  The difficult question is, Who is my neighbor?  In Mosaic Law a neighbor is “one of your people” (Leviticus 19:18) as well as the stranger or alien (Leviticus 19:33,34; Deuteronomy 10:19).  Jesus was a Jew who answered the question with the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), in which an apostate Samaritan was a good neighbor to a wounded Jew while other Jews passed him by.  While the Qur’an does not include the greatest commandment, Islamic scholars have affirmed it as a common word of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

            The perception of Muslims as good neighbors among Jews and Christians in the U.S. and Europe has deteriorated, perhaps because of continued violence against non-Muslims and the enforcement of apostasy and blasphemy laws in Islamic cultures.  It seems that most Muslims in Islamic cultures do not consider Jews and Christians as good neighbors but as unbelievers who are condemned by God as a threat to Islam, this in spite of the assertion of Islamic scholars that the greatest commandment is a common word of faith.  The result is that today fewer Jews and Christians consider Muslims to be good neighbors than they did five years ago.

            The refugee crisis in Europe has exacerbated the fear that Muslims are a threat to Western libertarian values and cultural standards, if not basic security, and right-wing politicians in Europe and the U.S. are stoking those fears to promote their own interests.  The best way to counter such suspicion and fear is by developing personal relationships between Jews, Christians and Muslims, and interfaith dialogue groups provide a means to do that.

            Synagogues and churches should promote interfaith dialogue groups, but few do, perhaps because most are exclusivist religious institutions that promote their religion as the one true faith and ignore the moral imperative of the greatest commandment to love their unbelieving neighbors, or strangers, as they love themselves.  Most Muslims are also exclusivists who consider it their evangelical duty to convert those of other faiths to Islam.  One of the first rules of an interfaith dialogue group is to respect those of other religions and not try to convert them.

            The trend toward religious polarization needs to be reversed before it enables radical Islamism to claim victory in the first phase of its Jihad, with Jews and Christians seeing Muslims as a threat rather than as good neighbors, and vice-versa.  With the forces of globalism creating more religious pluralism, religious reconciliation is essential to world peace.  While no one religion can dominate the world, it only takes one religion to bring war to the world if other religions do not resist religious polarization by seeking reconciliation.  Religious polarization has led to wars in the past, but it should not be allowed to happen again.

            No matter how bad things seem to be in Islamic cultures overseas, the freedoms of religion and speech in the libertarian democracies of the West should prevent religious violence.  When Jews, Christians and Muslims can come together and get to know one another, and no one seeks to convert any others, religious differences can be discussed and better understood without those of a minority religion being threatened by those of a dominant religion.  That is what good neighbors are expected to do, and in a world of increasing religious plurality, people of different religions must consider those of others religions as good neighbors rather than threats.

            Believers must resist the contentious political and religious rhetoric used by political and religious leaders to polarize their constituencies and promote their power with the fear of the stranger among them.  Jews, Christians and Muslims must all remember that to love God they must love their neighbors as themselves, and that includes their unbelieving neighbors.           
    

Notes and References to Resources:           

Previous blogs on related topics are: Religion and New Beginnings: Salvation and Reconciliation into the Family of God, January 4, 2015; The Greatest Commandment, January 11, 2015; Love over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is There a Common Word of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today? January 25, 2015; Promoting Religion Through Evangelism: Bringing Light or Darkness, February 8, 2015;  A Fundamental Problem with Religion, May 3, 2015; Religion, Human Rights and National Security, May 10, 2015; The Future of Religion: In Decline and Growing, June 7, 2015; Christians Meet Muslims Today, June 14, 2015; Fear and Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; Legitimacy as a Context and Paradigm to Resolve Religious Conflict, August 23, 2015; The European Refugee Crisis and Radical Islam, September 6, 2015; and Politics and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015.


A model for an interfaith dialogue group is provided in the Resources to the J&M Book at  http://media.wix.com/ugd/a8edf7_1502053c58a4441197ed1acade7287bd.pdf.

Some evangelical Christians in the U.S. are working with Muslims to oppose religious bigotry.  See http://www.religionnews.com/2015/10/23/fighting-perceptions-evangelicals-muslims-commit-oppose-religious-bigotry/.

David Brooks has noted the lack of traditional values that once governed U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, and the decreasing influence of religion in shaping those values.  See http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/syndicated-columnists/article40497270.html.
   
Michael Gerson has argued that in the Middle East and America religion has become more dysfunctional and sectarian and lost its primary value of helping those in need, regardless of their religion.  He asks, “Is the Christian faith merely a cover for tribalism?  Or will it demonstrate its essence in service to the refugees of another faith who did nothing to deserve their fate?”  See 


Sunday, October 18, 2015

God, Money and Politics

 Rudy Barnes, Jr.

            Jesus said, No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money. (Matthew 6:24)  If loving God requires that we love our neighbors as ourselves, especially the poor and weak, then we cannot love God and love the money and worldly power that exploits the poor and weak.  That is a principle of faith common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

            It is a stretch to describe the U.S. as a Godly nation given its materialism and hedonism.  And the consummate love of wealth, pleasure and power is not unique to the U.S.  It is prevalent wherever humankind has the freedom to choose between the love of God and money.  If the two are considered competing masters for our souls, then most people seem to have put the love of money and the pleasures and power it can buy over the love of God.

            Does God Bless America?  We hear that mantra from politicians as they campaign for money and votes, but it is an offense to God to claim blessings for a nation that worships money, pleasure and power.  Some young Muslims have been so offended by the decadent values of libertarian democracies that they have left them for the oppressive idealism of ISIS.  And many people of faith and reason in the U.S. also seem to be losing faith in the capitalistic and political structures that control the nation’s wealth and power. 

            The unlikely popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as presidential candidates is evidence of widespread public dissatisfaction with the political status quo.  They are at opposite ends of the political and economic spectrum: Trump personifies Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy that sanctifies unrestrained greed and self-satisfaction at the expense of the public welfare, while Sanders represents the socialist ideal of government as our brothers’ keeper.  Rand’s objectivism sacrifices altruism in free enterprise for vulture capitalism, while socialism sacrifices individual freedom for an unrealistic altruistic political ideal.

            The U.S. is at a crossroads of religion and politics, with freedom and democracy at risk.  The evolution of U.S. democracy has resulted in an emphasis on individual rights and wants at the expense of providing for the common good.  Plato predicted as much, favoring a benevolent dictator over self-rule since the majority of people could not be expected to act in their own best interests; and Edmund Burke warned Americans that in a democracy we forge our own shackles.  Pogo affirmed them both, observing that we have met the enemy, and it is us.       

            Libertarians have long warned of the dangers of big government to freedom, but today neo-libertarians condemn big government and ignore the greater dangers to freedom represented by the big banks and businesses of Wall Street, whose insatiable appetites for cheap money are fed by the Federal Reserve.  Those capitalists who control the wealth and power of Wall Street are Rand objectivists, and government seems either unwilling or unable to stem their power.       
             
            A healthy democracy depends on a strong middle class, and in the U.S. the middle class has been exploited more by Wall Street and the easy money policies of the Federal Reserve than by big government.  But most conservative Americans have not seemed to notice and consider the welfare programs of big government the main enemy of the middle class, even though most of those welfare programs are Social Security and Medicare entitlements that benefit a shrinking middle class rather than the poor and needy.

            The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has made health care a government entitlement, and has come to illustrate the conflict between socialism and capitalism.  When campaigning for President, Obama promised to provide for cost controls for health care before making it a universal right, but that never happened.  As a result, vulture capitalism has corrupted public health care, as evidenced by astronomical increases in pharmaceuticals, demonstrating the need for cost controls in government entitlement programs.            

            To protect the U.S. middle class from further erosion, Americans must acknowledge that big business can be as much of a threat to the middle class as big government.  Both are part of the problem and both must be part of the solution, and that will require political initiatives that provide a viable balance between individual freedom, free enterprise and providing for the common good.  Neither Trump’s objectivism nor Sanders’ socialism can succeed in America, but something in between must be done to prevent further erosion of the middle class by the rich and powerful vulture capitalists—otherwise, individual rights and democracy will be at risk. 

            A healthy democracy requires balancing individual rights with providing for the common good, and that requires regulating the big banks and corporations of Wall Street that have been flourishing while the rest of the economy (Main Street) has been languishing.  The problem is not free enterprise but the unrestrained greed of vulture capitalism that limits competition rather than encouraging it, and the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve and the lack of regulation of the banking industry since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that have favored the rich and powerful conglomerates of Wall Street over the smaller businesses of Main Street.

            A strong middle class must be sustained by a form of free enterprise free of the vulture capitalism that exploits the weak to benefit the rich and powerful.  That is an imperative of faith taught by Moses, Jesus and Muhammad that is summed up in the greatest commandment to love God and neighbor.  It is ironic that most neo-libertarians claim to be evangelical Christians but do not see how the love of money and power is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus. 

            Our faith is in what we love most.  If we love God more than money then we must put the value of God’s love over the value of money, and that should be reflected in the priorities of our politics and our pocketbooks.  People who love God share God’s love with others, while people who love money exploit others to promote their selfish interests.  In politics the love of God requires that we find a middle ground between the extremes of Trump’s objectivism and Sander’s socialism, balancing our individual freedom with providing for the common good.


Notes and References to Resources:

Previous blogs on related topics are Faith and Freedom, December 15, 2014; The Greatest Commandment, January 11, 2015; Wealth, Politics and Religion, March 8, 2015; The Power of Humility and the Arrogance of Power, March 22, 2015; Liberation from Economic Oppression, May 31, 2015; Balancing Individual Rights with Collective Responsibilities, August 9, 2015; and Religion, the Pope, and Politics in the Real World, September 27, 2015.

For commentary on Matthew 6:24, see Faith God and Money at pages 117-119 of the J&M Book; also Lesson #8, Riches and salvation (Mark 10:17-27) and Lesson #9, the Widow’s mite (Mark 12:41-44), at pages 45-50; and Treasures and the heart(Luke 12:33-34) at pages 235-238.   





On how the Glass-Steagall Act effectively regulated banks from 1933 to 1999, see http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/repeal-of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis.

On why the Federal Reserve and other central banks can no longer save the world with easy money, see http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/10/us-imf-cenbank-idUSKCN0S40VE20151010.

On Ayn Rand’s self-centered objectivism, see  https://www.aynrand.org/ideas/overview.


Sunday, October 11, 2015

Seeking, Being and Doing on Our Journey of Faith

 By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

            Our journey of faith is a search for God’s truth.  It is a search motivated by doubts—doubts as to the truth of religious doctrines and dogmas that should not be discouraged by the boundaries of orthodox religion.  Beyond those boundaries there are few guideposts for seekers other than experience and reason, but Jesus encouraged questions raised by doubt when he said: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  (Matthew 7:7,8).

            This saying of Jesus is in the context of prayer, but it goes beyond prayer and contemplates a detachment from worldly concerns and limitations that can open our hearts and minds to a transforming spiritual power that Jews, Christians and Muslims refer to as God and that Buddhists refer to as nirvana.  For Christians, God has been equated with love. (1 John 4:16-21).  It is a mystical spiritual power of altruistic love taught and exemplified by Jesus that shapes our relationship with God and our spiritual being; and it has a moral dimension that shapes those standards of legitimacy that determine how we relate to each other—that is, our worldly doing.

            Just as our spiritual being motivates our doing, it can be said that, As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26)  The relationship between faith and deeds (or works) has long been the source of debate between Protestants like Martin Luther who have argued that God’s grace is the sole source of salvation, and that good works don’t count for much, and Catholic doctrines based on the passage from James that emphasize the importance of good works to salvation.  For Muslims the Qur’an provides that both good works and belief in the Qur’an as the perfect and immutable word of God are required for salvation.

            In a world of many religions, the exclusivist belief that God favors one religion and condemns all others is inconsistent with the concept of God’s reconciling love.  Evangelism that has its focus on converting those of other religions is not based on God’s reconciling love but on a sense of religious supremacy that promotes religious conflict.  Jesus taught that all who did the will of God were his brothers and sisters in the universal family of God.  He never taught that God favored one religion over others—not even his own.
 
            Jesus was a Jew who rejected the deontological concept that Mosaic Law was God’s standard of righteousness.  Jesus taught the primacy of love over law, a teleological principle summed up in the greatest commandment to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself.  It combined the mystical being (loving God) with the moral doing (loving one’s neighbor); and when asked, Who is my neighbor, Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan in which an apostate Samaritan stopped to help a wounded Jew.  It illustrated that loving our unbelieving neighbors is the test of true faith, negating exclusivist religious doctrines that condemn unbelievers.
  
            Those bound by exclusivist religious doctrines and dogmas cannot see the truth of God’s universal and reconciling love and how it can set them free from the bondage of sin and death.  Religion can be both good and evil.  Satan does a convincing imitation of God with some of his best acting in the synagogue, church and mosque.  How can we tell the difference?  God seeks to reconcile and redeem believers with forgiveness and love, while Satan seeks to divide and conquer them with fear and hate.  History has confirmed that religions have confused the forces of good and evil in the past, and current events illustrate that they continue to do so.

            To be or not to be, that is the question.  That was the question of a despondent Prince Hamlet as he contemplated death as a means to escape his complex dilemma.  It is also a question for us related to our spiritual being that not only motivates what we do in this life but anticipates what follows—of which Hamlet was uncertain.  Our being (how we relate to God) and doing (how we relate to each other) is shaped by an understanding of scripture and tradition that must be made relevant to our time and place by experience and reason, including advances in knowledge and politics such as democracy, human rights and the secular rule of law.    

            Our journey of faith seeks God’s truth, and that requires using our experience and reason to interpret scripture.  One of the passages used to support the exclusivity of Christianity is John 14:6, which has Jesus say, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father but through me.  In the preamble to John’s Gospel (John 1:1-14) Jesus is presented as the Logos or word of God made flesh, not as God per se; and John’s Gospel goes on to emphasize the new command of God to Love one another. (John 13:24,35)  A reasonable interpretation of John 14:6 in context is that God’s word to love one another is the way, and the truth and the life.  That word requires following Jesus as the word of God but not worshiping Jesus as God. 

            That is just one example of how seekers whose beliefs are not constrained by exclusivist religious doctrines and dogmas can experience new revelations of God’s word on their journey of faith, and it applies to Muslims as well as Jews and Christians.  God is bigger than any religion, and God’s word is a living word that is not limited to those words in ancient holy books and its meaning is not restricted to the doctrines and dogmas of exclusivist religions.  Believers should be seekers who embrace experience, reason and advances in knowledge—including critical biblical scholarship—that challenge the exclusivist doctrines and dogmas of orthodox religion so that they can help transform the world with the reconciling power of God’s love.


Notes and References to Resources:

Previous blogs on related topics are: Religion and Reason, December 8, 2014; Faith and Freedom, December 15, 2014; Religion and New Beginnings: Salvation and Reconciliation into the Family of God, January 4, 2015; The Greatest Commandment, January 11, 2015; Love over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is There a Common Word of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today? January 25, 2015; Promoting Religion through Evangelism: Bringing Light or Darkness? February 8, 2015; Is Religion Good or Evil?, February 15, 2015;  Jesus: A Prophet, God’s only Son, or the Logos? April 19, 2015; An Introduction to God is Not One, by Stephen Prothero, April 26, 2015; Christians Meet Muslims Today, June 14, 2015; Freedom and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; What Is Truth?, August 30, 2015; Politics and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015; and Faith and Religion, the Same but Different, October 4, 2015.         

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Faith and Religion: The Same, but Different

   By Rudy Barnes, Jr.

            The words faith and religion are often used interchangeably, but there is a real difference in the distinction.  Religion requires faith, but faith does not require religion.  Faith is what we believe to be sacred, and has been described as “…being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1)  Religion is an institutional and pre-packaged form of faith, complete with a holy handbook, doctrines that define orthodoxy (right belief), and immutable standards of legitimacy that define what is right and wrong.     

            Most believers begin their journey of faith with a traditional religion and at some point question their religious doctrines and dogmas based on advances in knowledge, reason and experience.  This transition from religion to faith can be illustrated by the four elements of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, tradition, experience and reason.  Orthodox religious beliefs are defined by doctrines and dogmas based on scripture and tradition.  Experience and reason can cause believers to question religious doctrines and dogmas and challenge the boundaries of orthodox beliefs.  That is typical in libertarian democracies where believers have the freedoms of religion and speech, but rare in Islamic cultures where those freedoms are restricted.  

            A believer’s journey of faith from orthodoxy to heterodoxy is only natural and should not be discouraged, but most religious leaders condemn those who question their orthodox doctrines and dogmas.  The result is that many nones(those who claim no religious preference) have left religion, but few have abandoned their faith.  The transition from religion to faith is a positive development in a globalized world of increasing religious pluralism since it lessens the likelihood of religious conflict.  Christians and Muslims who once sent missionaries to convert the heathens and infidels of other religions now struggle to live with each other as neighbors.    
           
            Christianity and Islam are exclusivist religions that encourage polarization and hostility, since each claims to be the one true faith.  Since the Reformation, the Christian religion has mutated from the original Catholic and Protestant division into a panoply of competing faiths or denominations, a trend aided and abetted by critical biblical scholarship and the freedoms of religion and speech.  This process has diffused the contentious nature of exclusivist religion in libertarian democracies of the West but not in the Islamic East, where sectarian religious conflict predominates and apostasy and blasphemy laws prohibit the freedoms of religion and speech. 

            Islamism is fundamentalist Islam, and Salafism and Wahhabism are two prevalent strains of Sunni Islamism.  ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab have promoted particularly radical and oppressive forms of Islamism to justify their terrorism, and they will continue to attract disaffected Muslims to their violent cause until Muslims define Islam in a way that denies radical Islamism its legitimacy.  That will require Islam to reject apostasy and blasphemy laws and embrace the libertarian principles of democracy, human rights and the secular rule of law. 

            The fragmentation of Protestant Christianity into numerous denominations that continue to be exclusivist in matters of salvation but libertarian in their politics illustrates that the freedoms of religion and speech can mitigate the hostility between exclusivist religions and minimize virulent religious conflicts like those now plaguing the Middle East and Africa.

            Until Islam has embraced the freedoms of religion and speech, it must find the common ground needed to minimize sectarian conflict; and Islamic scholars have already identified that common ground.  In 2007 they offered the greatest commandmentto love God and one’s neighbor as oneself as a common word of faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike; but there is a question whether loving one’s neighbor—especially one’s unbelieving neighbor—is an accepted norm within Islam.  The enforcement of apostasy and blasphemy laws and sectarian conflict in Islamic nations since the Arab Spring of 2011 has indicated there is no tolerance—much less love—of one’s unbelieving neighbors within Islam.

            The rigid and exclusivist religious doctrines of Christianity and Islam encourage religious conflict and discourage the growth of individual faith.  Making a distinction between faith and religion is of my own doing, not that of Webster, who defines the terms as synonymous—as is my use of experience and reason as a means of transcending the limits of religion with faith.  My purpose is to illustrate how exclusivist religious doctrines based on scripture and tradition discourage the growth of faith based on experience and reason.  Advances in knowledge coupled with experience and reason will always challenge the boundaries of orthodox religion, and when enough believers move beyond those boundaries religious conflict is minimized.

            The world needs more faith and less religion.  The freedoms of religion and speech have enabled believers in libertarian democracies of the West to transcend the rigid constraints of orthodox religion, and believers in Islamic cultures can experience the same religious and political liberation once they eliminate apostasy and blasphemy laws and embrace the principles of democracy, human rights and the secular rule of law.  Those libertarian principles can bring diversity to Islam just as they did to Judaism and Christianity, and that would minimize sectarian religious conflict and debunk the legitimacy of radical Islamism.


Notes and References to Resources:

Previous blogs on related topics are: Religion and Reason, December 8, 2014; Faith and Freedom, December 15, 2014; Religion and New Beginnings: Salvation and Reconciliation into the Family of God, January 4, 2015; The Greatest Commandment, January 11, 2015; Love over Law: A Principle at the Heart of Legitimacy, January 18, 2015; Jesus Meets Muhammad: Is There a Common Word of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims Today? January 25, 2015; Promoting Religion through Evangelism: Bringing Light or Darkness? February 8, 2015; Jesus: A Prophet, God’s only Son, or the Logos? April 19, 2015; An Introduction to God is Not One, by Stephen Prothero, April 26, 2015;  A Fundamental Problem with Religion, May 3, 2015; Religion, Human Rights and National Security, May 10, 2015; The Future of Religion: In Decline and Growing, June 7, 2015; Christians Meet Muslims Today, June 14, 2015; Fear and Fundamentalism, July 26, 2015; Freedom and Fundamentalism, August 2, 2015; and Politics and Religious Polarization, September 20, 2015. 

The four components of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral—scripture, tradition, experience and reason—are described in Our Theological Task in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church, 2012 (The United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville Tennessee) at pages 78-91. See https://www.cokesbury.com/forms/DynamicContent.aspx?id=87&pageid=920.  It should be noted that reason includes critical biblical scholarship that relates to interpretations of scripture that are part of tradition, illustrating how the four components are interrelated.

On how nones have left religion without abandoning their faith and spirituality, see the interview of Kaya Oakes, author of The Nones are Alright, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kaya-oakes-the-nones-are-alright_560d8787e4b0af3706dff3b1.