Monday, February 11, 2019

WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Church and State ------ How Christianity and Islam Have Handled That Relationship Is At the Root of Mid-East Politics


Central to both Christianity and Islam is the belief that God intervened in human history.  Furthermore, that God revealed himself to mankind at a specific time and place, directly and decisively, once and for all.  Does this suggest there will be harmony?  Let's take a closer look.

On the one hand, Christians believe that God, in the form of Jesus Christ, became a human being and redeemed human nature by taking it on for himself.  This was how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was born.

On the other hand, to Muslims as well as to Jews, the notion of the Trinity seems blasphemous because it detracts from the absolute oneness of God and thus opens the door to idolatry.  Muslims believe that the word of God was communicated to a human being.  And, they believe that the chosen human being was the prophet Muhammad, who thus became the "messenger" of God.

While Muhammad is believed to have possessed some special talents, no Muslim believes that he was anything other than a man, or that he actually was the author of the Word of God (which in time was transcribed as The Koran, or Qur'an).  They believe he merely passed along the Word of God initially by reciting it to his fellow human beings. 

Thus, Muslims do not regard themselves as followers of Muhammad, but only as people who have accepted the Word of God as given to Muhammad, and surrendered themselves to God's will.  "Islam" translates as "surrender," and a Muslim is one who "surrenders."  The importance of Muhammad is that he was the human vehicle through which the Word was communicated.

On the other hand, Jesus of Nazareth was born into a community whose religion was an expression of its national independence, at a time when that national independence was in the process of being crushed by the Roman Empire.  Given the overwhelming power of the Roman Empire, a revival of the Jewish religion in its nationalistic form was bound to lead to disaster --- and it did so forty years after Jesus' death.

In his book, Faith & Power:  The Politics of Islam, Middle Eastern scholar Edward Mortimer suggests that Jesus offered a way out of this blind alley by expounding a non-political interpretation of Judaism:  "My kingdom is not of this world."  Claiming not to be the national warrior leader (Messiah) whom Jewish prophets had predicted, Jesus offered salvation only in the world to come, to be achieved by individuals through faith, hope and charity, rather than by the nation through organized  revolt.  By implication, salvation in this sense was not reserved for Jews only.  After Jesus' death, Christianity became an invitation to all who suffered under the Roman Empire to hope for a better world after death.

Yet the notion of a non-political religion was a novel one, which the Roman Empire itself could not take at face value.  The expression of allegiance the Roman Empire expected from its subjects was to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor.  Christians who refused this were persecuted, with varying degrees of intensity, until the day came  (three centuries after Jesus) when the emperor himself became a Christian.  Once that happened, Christianity was no longer non-political.  A Christian ruler was naturally expected to follow Christian precepts, to advance true Christian doctrine, and to suppress heresy.

It was more than a thousand years before a school of political thought arose suggesting that religious belief was a matter for individuals, with which the state need not concern itself.  All this time, says Edward Mortimer, Christians kept alive the notion of "the church" as something distinct from the state.  Though church and state might be composed of the same people, they had separate leadership whose roles were in theory distinct and complementary, even if in practice overlapping and often conflicted.

While for many centuries a number of European countries declared their monarch to be the head of the Christian church in that country, as countries evolved a parliamentary form of government, the power of the monarch was diminished and "the church" became less and less an agency of the state.  Even our Founding Fathers included in the U.S. Constitution wording that to this day requires the separation of church and state.

Because church and state have been moving apart over the past 200 years in many Christian societies, many people of Christian background have expected something similar to happen in the world of Islam.  But Edward Mortimer says that involves a profound misunderstanding, since in most Muslim societies there is not and never has been such a thing as a church.  Mortimer believes that the community of believers founded by Muhammad was virtually from the beginning, what we should call a state.

Therefore, it is fair to say that the conflicts today sponsored by many Muslim groups flying the flag of Islam, are simply attempts to get or retain political power.  They seem to be using dedication to their particular interpretation of the Word as sort of a smoke screen to boost their political power.  While not all Muslim groups are motivated in this way, the radical Muslim group ISIS is a fine example of how extreme the political side of Islam can become ---- they even describe the territory they now have taken and rule, as "The Caliphate Restored."
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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this winter at CPC.
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