Franklin Graham Is Wrong (Again)

Dr. Hawkins in her hijab

Hear, O Israel: The LORD your God is One. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. 
Deuteronomy 6:4-9

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, he began with the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD your God is One. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."

Not surprisingly, he linked it to a verse from Leviticus (19:18), commanding that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The rabbis believed that the love of others was implicit in the love of God. You cannot love God if you do not love your neighbor.

For Jesus, this was the summary of the Torah: love God and love your neighbor.

I have been meditating on the great commandment while reading the story of Dr. Larycia Alaine Hawkins, an associate professor of political science at Wheaton College (this would be the Illinois Wheaton, not the Massachusetts Wheaton). She announced that during Advent she would be wearing a hijab as a sign of “embodied solidarity” with her Muslim sisters and brothers, and posted an explanatory note on Facebook in which she said that we all worship the same God.

She wrote:

I stand in human solidarity with my Muslim neighbor because we are formed of the same primordial clay, descendants of the same cradle of humankind--a cave in Sterkfontein, South Africa that I had the privilege to descend into to plumb the depths of our common humanity in 2014.

I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.

But as I tell my students, theoretical solidarity is not solidarity at all. Thus, beginning tonight, my solidarity has become embodied solidarity. 

It was a beautiful statement, but it elicited a punitive response from the college. Dr. Hawkins was placed on administrative leave, not for wearing the hijab, but for what they called “significant questions regarding the theological implications” of her action. “Wheaton College faculty and staff make a commitment to accept and model our institution’s faith foundations with integrity, compassion, and theological clarity,” the college declared in their public statement. “As they participate in various causes, it is essential that faculty and staff engage in and speak about public issues in ways that faithfully represent the college’s evangelical Statement of Faith.”

Most prominent among those who took to social media to support the college and denounce professor Hawkins was Franklin Graham, who posted his response on Facebook:

Can you believe this Wheaton College professor who says she’s going to wear a hijab for the holidays this year to show solidarity with Islam? Shame on her! She said that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Well she is absolutely wrong—she obviously doesn’t know her Bible and she doesn’t know Islam. The God of the Bible, has a Son named Jesus Christ. The god of Islam doesn’t have a son, and even the thought of that would be sacrilegious to Muslims. The God of the Bible sent His Son to earth to die in our place and save us from our sins. The god of Islam requires you to die for him to be sure that you’re going to heaven. That’s a huge difference—and there are many more examples! I’m thankful the school is dealing with this and has put this professor on administrative leave. Wheaton College is one of the premier evangelical universities in this country—and on top of that, my father Billy Graham and my mother graduated from Wheaton in 1943.

Many Christians understand Jesus very differently than Franklin Graham does. But he is right that what Christians believe about Jesus is very different from what Muslims believe. For Islam, Jesus was a prophet. For Christians, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Word of God incarnate.

But does that mean we believe in a different God?

If God is One, then we cannot believe in a different God. We may understand God differently. We may experience God differently. But God is One.

Telling Muslims that they do not worship the same God that Christians do is the same as telling them that they do not worship God at all. It is telling them that they worship something less. It is hard to imagine anything more insulting.

And.

If the critical factor is what we believe about Jesus, then we would have to conclude that Jews also do not worship the same God.

And that would mean that the historical Jesus, the rabbi who kept the Sabbath and attended Synagogue, who was a devout and observant Jew, also believed in “a different God.”

The Children of Abraham at Duke

The path to parenthood was not an easy one for Abraham and Sarah. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, but he and Sarah were childless. So Sarah insisted that her servant Hagar would bear child in her place. And she did. But when Sarah finally was able to bear a child of her own, she demanded that Hagar and her son Ishmael be cast out into the wilderness. Abraham sent them away, with just a skin of water, knowing that they had little chance of survival.

When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.
Genesis 21:15-20

Judaism, Christianity and Islam all trace their roots back to Abraham. For Judaism and Christianity, that line runs through Isaac. For Islam, the line runs through Ishmael.

Though they share a common ancestry, and are often linked as “the three great Abrahamic religions,” Judaism, Christianity and Islam have an uncomfortable tension built into their stories of origin.

In my last post, I wrote about how in Wahhabi extremism that tension often turns deadly.

But it also plays out in less deadly ways.

Recently the good folks at Duke University tried to foster interreligious tolerance and understanding when they announced that every Friday at 1:00 p.m. the chapel would broadcast the adhan, the Muslim call to midday prayers in Arabic and English.

The response was swift if not surprising. The Rev. Franklin Graham, whose extremist views often seem at odds with his kinder and gentler father, responded with his typical thoughtfulness on Facebook:

Ashley Pratte, writing on Breitbart.com, saw it as part of a larger sinister pattern. “As campuses continue to foster political correctness,” she wrote, “they use it as a way to favor religions seemingly at war with Western Civilization and Judeo-Christian beliefs.” She went on to observe, “Frequently, we see students fighting for their religious freedom on campus—especially Christians. We hope that Duke University will also allow equal opportunity for Christian students to gather to pray and respect their religious freedom.”

If Ms. Pratte knew anything at all about Duke, she would know Christianity is alive and well. The chapel has regular Christian worship services Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m., as well as at other times through the week. Every day at 5:00 p.m. they have a carillon concert, audible across the campus, that frequently includes Christian hymns. Duke is also home to a United Methodist seminary, Duke Divinity School, and Duke has maintained a United Methodist connection since its founding.

Ms. Pratte, Rev. Graham and their many allies on cable news can rest easy. Duke has reversed its decision. There will be no broadcast of the call to prayer.

David Graham (no relation to Franklin) reported in The Atlantic on line that Omid Safi, Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center said that the University’s response was understandable since there had been "numerous verified instances of credible threats" against leaders of the University. "My disappointment is primarily directed toward people who find it acceptable to have recourse to violence, even the threat of violence, to make the point they want to make—particularly if they see these threats as being substantiated by their own religious conviction." he explained. "We all know about the Muslim community having our crazies, but it seems like we don’t have a monopoly on it."

To be clear, neither Ms. Pratte nor Rev. Graham was calling for violence, but in our hyper-sensitized times the threats are not surprising.

In the Atlantic article, the other David Graham comments, “Now, one might argue that while Duke's gesture was well-intentioned, the timing was wrong—why rile people up at a moment when nerves are already on edge about Islam? But I think it's the other way around. There's no time when it is as essential to stand on the side of a minority as when that group is under fire.”

The Problem Is Wahhabi Extremism

The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.
And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
Genesis 6:5-6

In the preamble to the story of Noah and the flood, the narrator tells us that God was grieved to his heart by the wickedness of humankind. The prehistory of Genesis is rich in symbolism and there are times when the narrative soars with the vast possibilities of creation, but there is a recurring sub-plot of God’s deep despair at the moral failures of his human children.

We may recoil at the behavior of primitive peoples thousands of years ago, but the stories still speak to us because there are still times when it seems like we have learned so little.

The horrible killings in France and the gruesome beheadings by ISIS in the Middle East have focused our attention again on the specter of human evil. And in the wake of those great evils there has been a renewed argument about how we should confront the problem.

In the current debate, the problem has often been defined as “Islamic Extremism,” and some have argued that we cannot really confront the issue until we name it for what it is. Not surprisingly, this has led to a backlash against Muslims in America and in Europe.

Defining the problem as “Islamic Extremism” is at once both too narrow and too broad. It is too narrow because it leaves out the many other forms of religious and secular extremism that are problems around the world. And it is too broad because it shames a religion of 1.7 billion followers for the actions of a small number.

Last Sunday on “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Reza Aslan, a Muslim scholar and writer, whether we should be at war “with a strain of Islam.”

“There’s no question that there has been a virus that has spread throughout the Muslim world, a virus of ultra-orthodox Puritanism,” Aslan responded. “But there’s also no question what the source of this virus is — whether we’re talking about Boko Haram, or ISIS, or al Qaeda, or the Taliban.”

And then he narrowed the focus from the world wide and diverse Muslim faith to a relatively small but very influential sect: “All of them have as their source Wahhabism, or the state religion of Saudi Arabia,”Aslan continued. “And as we all know, Saudi Arabia has spent over $100 billion in the past 20 or 30 years spreading this ideology throughout the world.”

ISIS, Boko Haram, and the 9/11 bombers are all products of Wahhabism.

Americans were outraged by the beheadings of Western journalists and aid workers at the hands of ISIS. But with exceptions like Amnesty International, we have turned a blind eye to the dozens of beheadings carried out as public entertainment in Saudi Arabia. Under current laws, strongly influenced by Wahhabism, the death penalty is allowed for such varied offenses as homosexuality, atheism, adultery, apostasy, and murder. For a thorough discussion of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia by Alistair Crooke, click here.

Wahhabism takes its name from its founder, Abd al-Wahhab 1703-1792, a preacher and scholar who led a revivalist movement in what is now Saudi Arabia. He stressed a return to a purer form of Islam and denounced more typical Muslims as imposters. Crooke writes, “Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity -- a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader (a Caliph, if there were one). Those who would not conform to this view should be killed, their wives and daughters violated, and their possessions confiscated, he wrote. The list of apostates meriting death included the Shiite, Sufis and other Muslim denominations, whom Abd al-Wahhab did not consider to be Muslim at all.”

In terms of geopolitics, it is as if Saudi Arabia lives a double life. And the United States turns a blind eye.

On the one hand, they export Wahhabi extremism around the world. They fund world-wide terrorism. They distribute books and videos that are virulently anti-Semitic and anti-western. They subject dissenters to incarceration and public flogging. On the other hand, they have supported our interests in the Middle East and have been our allies (depending on how you define “ally”) since President Roosevelt met with the Saudi king on his way back from Yalta in World War II.

The World Is Broken, But It Will Be Healed in the End

No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
John 15:13

While waiting for my bagel at Panera I was absentmindedly checking my email when I came across this note from my friend and colleague Bill Flug:

I watched the Kassigs yesterday offer their statement about their son's death and said to myself, "They're Methodists." I was right, as you may know by now. Epworth UMC Indianapolis.

Bill concluded by saying that it made him proud to be a Methodist.

Later, in my office, I watched a CNN recording of their statement, which the reporter characterized as coming “from a church in Indianapolis.”

Peter’s dad, Ed Kassig began by quoting that verse from John’s Gospel. Peter Kassig gave his life in service of the people Syria, bringing humanitarian aid to the victims of the civil war there. He was captured in 2013 while delivering relief supplies.

His mother, Paula, began with a simple affirmation of their faith, "Our hearts are battered,” she said, “but they will mend. The world is broken, but it will be healed in the end. And good will prevail as the one God of many names will prevail.”

The world is broken, but it will be healed in the end.

It is not hard to see that the world is broken. The evidence is all around us. It is harder to believe that it will be healed in the end. But that is our faith and our vision. That hope was born with Israel’s vision in the Exile, and it endures today.

In a letter to his parents from captivity, he wrote, “I hope that this all has a happy ending but it may very well be coming down to the wire here, and if in fact that is the case then I figured it was time to say a few things that need saying before I have to go.” There was no happy ending, but hope endures.

Peter Kassig converted to Islam while in captivity and took the name Abdul-Rahman Kassig. “In terms of my faith,” he wrote, “I pray everyday and I am not angry about my situation in that sense. I am in a dogmatically complicated situation here, but I am at peace with my belief.”

“I am obviously pretty scared to die,” he wrote, “but the hardest part is not knowing, wondering, hoping, and wondering if I should even hope at all. I am very sad that all this has happened and for what all of you back home are going through. If I do die, I figure that at least you and I can seek refuge and comfort in knowing that I went out as a result of trying to alleviate suffering and helping those in need.”

“Good will prevail,” said Paula Kassig, “as the One God of many names will prevail.” It is hard to know what to make of Peter Kassig’s conversion to Islam. His reference to a “dogmatically complicated situation” is open to multiple interpretations. He could have “converted” in hopes of finding favor with his captors, and he could have entered into a profound shift in world view. But it is also possible that he saw faith, as many Methodists do, as a seamless garment. Or maybe a patchwork quilt. The differences are real, but we are still all connected.

Ed Kassig concluded their statement with a call to prayer. "Please pray for Abdul-Rahman, or Pete if that's how you know him, at sunset this evening," He said. "Pray also for all people in Syria, in Iraq, and around the world that are held against their will. And lastly, please allow our small family the time and privacy to mourn, cry -- and yes, forgive -- and begin to heal,"