Is there really anything else to be written about the "Ground Zero mosque?" The headlines are saturated with opinion columns from both the left and right.
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Emotions ranging from antipathy to sympathy are running high. I've listened closely to the debate, trying to hear through the hype. What's really driving such angst and discord about the proposed plan to construct a community center in lower Manhattan with a prayer room for Muslims? Suggesting that I've reached a conclusion on the issue would be premature, but I've gained more compelling insight into the state of Muslim-Christian relations in America.
Amidst change, tensions run high. The sound of the cultural alarm clangs--and like Pavlov's dog--most opinion writers and commentators almost uncontrollably scurry back to their culture-war foxholes and lob a few grenades. Haven't we moved beyond this? The disproportionate noise around this single topic points to something much deeper taking place in the American psyche--a new world infringing upon the old.
It's a simple human compulsion--fearing that which we don't understand. In the midst of this contentious debate, frustrations have risen so high that many aren't even considering the facts about the proposed "mosque." (It's a community center, by the way, not a traditional mosque--no dome, no crescent bearing steeples). It's become a game of running with the latest headline or pithy quote that supports your pre-determined position. Any inch given in the opposite direction and the defenders feel like a failure.
In my forthcoming book, The Next Christians, I attempt to explore the question of how Christians should engage an increasingly pluralistic, post-modern, and post-Christian world. Applied to this specific debate, how are we as Christians to think about the future of the Muslim faith and its expansion in America? Should we fight for a legal system that grants freedom of expression only to those who espouse Judeo-Christian values and keep all others out?
Whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or not, our culture is showing more and more evidences of its pluralistic roots. In this diverse setting, Christians will have to choose their response to the growth of faiths like Islam in their communities. As a country built on religious liberty, there is no way to hide behind our Constitution and thwart attempts to construct non-Christian houses of worship. On the one hand in the lower Manhattan battle, the feelings of the 9/11 families provide a reasonable basis for dispute. But in most communities throughout the U.S., that enormous trump card won't work. From Baltimore to Seattle--Muslim houses of worship continue to appear. And at the rate Islam is growing, this trend won't stop anytime soon. For some, this may be a difficult development to wrestle with, but regardless, it is our new reality.
In this moment, Christians have an opportunity to model civility as we coexist alongside other religions in the public square. Despite the nature of our struggles, we must remain informed by our faith rather than our emotions. We can recognize that Islam and Christianity offer competing ideas about the world, and yet work together to solve problems where we find common ground--like fighting malaria, eradicating sex trafficking, opposing pornography, and so on.
[For an excellent resource on the future of our public square, see Os Guinness's Case For Civility.]
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SOURCE: Q Ideas
