The previous post suggested
that radical Christian hospitality does not mean being willing to host just any
event in church. But a Muslim prayer service is not a brothel or a loan shark
booth. It is a religious service. So among those who accept that the church
must exercise discretion about the sort of events it hosts, the next question
is which criteria should be considered when deliberating whether an invitation
is extended to a non-Christian group to hold a religious service in a church.
This is a question of our theology
of religions. Those who consider all religious expressions to be more or less legitimate
and helpful ways of feeling our way towards the divine presumably will see little ground
for differentiating between them – let a thousand flowers bloom and why not also
in church, as we certainly do not have a monopoly on truth about God?
Those who consider religions
a mixed bag with some fresh or not so fresh expressions doing more harm than
good may well want to limit hospitality to the more beneficial and healthy forms
of religion. I suspect that Canon Giles Goddard was rather more willing to host a
prayer service by “Inclusive Mosque” than a more mainstream or radical
expressions of Islam. Surely love of our neighbour includes a desire to protect
them from harmful ideologies.
Some, mindful of the warnings
against idolatry in the Bible, may for this reason distinguish between the
religions, ruling out a Hindu service but allowing for a Jewish one, for
example. This need not imply an affirmation that all that is Jewish is good or
all that belongs to Hinduism is bad (which would be a ridiculous claim) but it
would affirm that idolatry dishonours God and harms people and if that is true
we would not want to promote idolatry.
But what is true of idolatry
may be true of false religion more generally. If it is possible to worship the
one true God in a dishonourable and harmful manner, then we would want to guard
against this and do nothing to encourage others to persist in harmful and
dishonourable ways.
The question is at first
theoretical. In other words, is it conceivable that there are false religions
and false ways of worshipping the one true God? Someone who adheres to the
Christian faith as received by the Church of England (among others) can hardly
deny that there are indeed harmful ways of being religious.
But if that is so, giving the
green light to a Muslim prayer service in a church needs to be built on more
than a desire to be hospitable and a conviction that Muslims and Christians
worship the same God. We must also be reasonably confident that (a particular version of) Islam is not a religion
that encourages people to go in the wrong direction.
Here is why some will
distinguish between Judaism and Islam. Islam, as understood by non-Muslims, is
post-Christian. (Muslims consider Islam eternal and Christianity a corruption
of the original.) The Quran was written in opposition to the Christian faith,
or maybe more precisely in opposition to a misunderstanding of the Christian
faith. Thus, speaking in very broad terms, while most forms of Judaism are
non-Trinitarian, Islam is anti-Trinitarian.
(Judaism and Christianity are
siblings from a common root that have developed side by side, sometimes in
conscious differentiation from each other but Judaism is nevertheless not as explicitly
anti-Trinitarian as Islam and Unitarianism or so it seems to me. I am not aware of any Islamic school
of thought that has tried to come to grips with the fact that the traditional
Islamic understanding of what “Trinity” means within mainstream Christian faith
is fundamentally wrong.)
Many Christians will find it relatively
easy to join in with many Jewish prayers, especially of course where the Psalms
are used, maybe considering these prayers to be deficient (not brought in the name of
Jesus Christ) but not offensive. This makes it easier to conceive of
hosting a Jewish prayer meeting.
It is rather more difficult
for Christians to join in Muslim prayers, even or maybe especially if they know
Arabic. There is no Islamic praying in which it is not affirmed that Muhammad is
Allah’s prophet and the prayers may well
include (in Arabic) “Say: He is Allah, the One! Allah is He on Whom all depend.
He begets not, nor is He begotten. And there is none like unto Him.”
Now Christians can of course
affirm that God “begets not” in the sense that “God did not, does not and never
will have sex with Mary or any other woman” and we can also affirm that God is
not “begotten” in the sense that God was not born as a result of a sexual
union. (Well, those of us who affirm the virgin birth anyway. Those who affirm the divinity of Christ but deny the vrigin birth may have an issue here.)
But it would still be an odd prayer in which case the question arises whether
prayers should be invited in church of the sort which we who have responsibility for what goes on
in a church cannot wholeheartedly pray ourselves. It is a question that maybe
only arises for those of us who are in the habit of only using prayers which we
can or at least want to be able to pray. So it is maybe not just a matter of our
theology of religions but a question of our own theology and practice as well.
