How can I counter the irrational hatred of Internet Pakistanis for Christianity?
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Effort 1:
Christianity and Islam should show each other respect and live in peace
Does worship divide or unite?
A distinguished Catholic gives a bold answer to a thorny question about how much monotheists have in common
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Erasmus
Nov 4th 2013 by B.C.
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CAN people of different religions, or different interpretations of the same religion, pray together? In religious history, that has been a very thorny question. The early fathers of the Christian church, furiously determined to preserve the integrity of their faith in all its details, took a very firm line on this matter. They threatened with excommunication anybody who prayed with "heretics"—a word which often, in practice, meant the losing side in whichever theological argument had just shaken the Christian world.
The issue still excites passion. Ultra-conservative Catholics were dismayed by the willingness of Pope John Paul II to pray publicly with Muslims (in Morocco, for example) and to acknowledge that "because of the faith we have in common, Christianity and Islam have many things in common [including] the privilege of prayer...." His successor (whether as pope or in his earlier days as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) seemed to take a stricter view. He thought it was wrong for a Christian to pray with a non-Christian if the latter expected his or her Christian partner or friend to water down or relativise the fundamentals of faith in Jesus Christ. He also argued that in Christianity alone, God was present on Earth (through his Incarnate Son) in contrast to the "distant" God of other religions.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, has often been criticised by doctrinal hardliners for remaining part of the Geneva-based
World Council of Churches (WCC), whose membership is mainly Protestant. According to the hardliners, belonging to the WCC inevitably involves joint acts of worship with liberal Protestants which blur the intregrity of a tradition-minded church. Any Orthodox participants in the tenth assembly of the WCC, now in progress in South Korea, will doubtless hear fresh allegations that they are keeping inappropriate company. For those who object to joint prayer by different shades of Christian, the idea of Christians and Muslims jointly addressing God is presumably inconceivable.
Yet I have just been reading a
book by a distinguished Catholic figure which has the almost provocative subtitle
"Encouraging Muslims and Christians to Pray Together". It brings together many years of reflection and research by Timothy Wright, a Benedictine monastic who was formally abbot of Ampleforth abbey, a religious community in northern England which also runs a famous private school for boys.
It describes his own evolving relationship with Islam, especially with the Shias; he has exchanged visits with the Imam Khomeini Institute for Education and Research in the Iranian theological centre of Qom. Lest anyone think that his acquaintance with the Muslim world has been naively emollient, he stresses that he was strongly influenced by a group of Trappist monks in Algeria, seven of whom were murdered in 1996.
In a book whose main title—"No Peace Without Prayer"—is self-explanatory, the learned monastic author compares the direct experience of God sought by the Sufis with his own Benedictine tradition; and he finds commonalities and differences in Christian and Muslim views of Jesus, of Abraham/Ibrahim and of the revealed word of God in general.
If anyone who is outside the world of organised religion happens to read this book, he may be struck by the extraordinary mixture of faces that today's Catholic church (to take only one highly organised faith) presents the world. On one hand, Catholicism can seem very harsh in the way that it treats people who accept its teaching in every way but are for some reason denied the most important rites of the church—divorcees, for example. Yet a prominent Catholic can reach out in an extraordinarily generous, broad-minded way (too broad-minded for some, no doubt) to a Muslim world that shares some important beliefs with Christianity but also rejects some fundamental tenets.
Some non-religious people will have a rather blunter reaction to the book:
we don't mind whether Christians and Muslims pray together, as long as differences between them don't threaten the peace of the world, as they often have. The number of people who believe (or can be persuaded) that Christianity and Islam should show each other respect and live in peace is much larger than the number who can be convinced that members of the two faiths can legitimately pray together. It will be a pity if people are put off the first idea because they find the second one goes a step too far.
