Christian and Muslim scholars meeting at Yale University for a discussion on peace and reconciliation this week forewarned that a clash of "global proportions" would inevitably unravel in the near future unless Christianity and Islam learn how to co-exist.
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(Photo: Yale Divinity School / Frank Brown)Miroslav Volf (right), director of Yale's Center for Faith and Culture talks with with Mustafa Ceric, a grand mufti from Eastern Europe, during a workshop preceding the Common Word conference, July 29-31, 2008.
"Why have you come here?" asked Miroslav Volf, director of the Yale Divinity School's Center for Faith and Culture, in opening remarks at the "Common Word" conference Tuesday. "Because, as I do, you see heavy and dangerous storm of Muslim-Christian tensions menacing the world in which we live."
According to Volf, the thesis of the Yale conference, "Loving God and Neighbor in Word and Deed" is simple: "What bounds Christians and Muslims together is their common belief in the oneness of God and the commitment to love God and to love neighbor."
He said that although relations between Christians and Muslims have been at a low point since the Crusades, he saw the "Common Word Between Us and You" document among the "rays of sun" penetrating the dark storm. The letter, signed by 138 Muslim clerics in October, called on the two faith communities to move past "polite ecumenical dialogue" and toward more sincere discussions on peace.
Volf, who helped pen the Christian response to the Muslim letter, proudly noted that over 500 Christian leaders endorsed the Christian statement because they too "sensed a danger of global proportions if the peace between Muslim and Christians did not win over."
While Volf did not mention how that danger might materialize in today's context, Prince Ghazi bin Muhummad of Jordan, who played a leading role in writing the Muslim letter, was more explicit in his foreboding address to the 150 high-profile Christian and Muslim leaders on Tuesday.
Prince Ghazi discredited one part of Samuel Huntington's 1993 vision by stating that post-9/11 governments of Islamic majority countries have not banded together against government of Christian majority countries. He said, however, that Huntington was correct in predicting that tensions between Christians and Muslims would heighten on a global level after the collapse of atheistic communism.
On that note, he boldly compared the hostility between Christian/Western societies and Muslims to the prejudices held by Rwanda’s Hutu and Tutsi tribes before the 1994 genocide.
He said that such a predicament is "more likely" to happen when catastrophes such as global climate change strike and competition for food and other natural resources become more fierce.
On Monday, Senator John Kerry had appropriately summed up the lesson of the conference: “We must love one another or die.”
The four-day conference, which concludes on Thursday, is the first interfaith event to have spawned from the "Common Word" exchange. As part of its Reconciliation program, the YCFC has scheduled four other conferences that will each take the peace initiative one step further. Those events will take place in October at Cambridge University, November at the Vatican, March 2009 at Georgetown University, and October 2009 at Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute in Jordan.
While interfaith dialogue is nothing new, organizers and participants attending this week's conference were very optimistic of the implications that the "Common Word" dialogue would have on Christian-Muslim relations. Many speakers referred to the event as having the potential to be "historic" or "watershed."
Speakers on Tuesday also dedicated part of their addresses to respond to their critics.
Volf challenged the argument that religion would only fuel conflict rather than resolve it. He said he believes the world is becoming a "more religious" place and that in order for there to be peace among people, religion must be taken seriously. Continue >>
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To those who keep striving for all of the religions and denominations to "learn to get along" I say, "Learn the truth and the truth will set you free by showing you that there is only one true and living God and you must serve only Him!" Jesus set the rules for discussing the things of God. He told Nicodemus that only those who are born again by the Spirit of God can understand the spiritual kingdom of God. To everyone else the spiritual things of God are pure drivel and foolishness. When a Calvinist says, "it doesn't matter if we do not agree on election, what matters is that we agree that our salvation is in Christ and Christ alone," we must keep in mind that he/she doesn't have the slightest understanding regarding the true Jesus Christ, and therefore, thinks that his/her Christ who died for only a few is the same as the Lord Jesus who died for all! The dialogue with Nicodemus was imposible unless Nicodemus was born again by the Spirit of God. The same is true when those who are not born again attempt a dialogue with true believers. Those without the Holy Spirit generally become physically animated and emotionally frustrated in such an encounter. The anti-Christian spirit that possesses them takes control of their part in such encounters. Believers must learn to simply back off and pray for the deliverance of such people.
Christ's greatest victory was over temptation and sin. Christ's world was basically divided into Jews and Gentiles or those who had God's laws and those who didn't. You don't see Christ waring with Gentiles throughout the New Testament. His greatest victory was over temptation and sin so he present Himself as a perfect scarifice to God for our benefit. The same thing goes with all of us. We need to spend most of our time praying, loving others and avoiding temptation. If you make it through one day without sinning, you had a heck of a day!
There just seems to be so much rage and fear coming from conservatives. You should follow the lead of a guy like Mike Huckabee. He says what he has to say, but he isn't angry or fearful often. I keep getting emails from Human Events "the Bible under assault" or " marriage threatened" or "Islam is the most violent religion." Everyone who thinks different from you in some ways is not your enemy. These are the people you are supposed to be planting seeds with and fishing for. You do that best by showing Christ's humility, meekness, gentleness and truth. It's Christ the Savior you are supposed to present and only present Christ the judge as a last resort and for the worst behavior. I see to many to want to be Christ via Revelation and not Christ who washed feet.
There is only one Chistanity. And there is only one Church. One's Faith must be in Jesus Christ and what He did on the Cross, And one must believe in the Christ of the Bible to be saved.
While there are those muslims who have left islam, and have put their Faith in Chist,( hundreds of thousands ) Maybe.
Now is the time for them to stand up and say so.
And as I said before,We are living in the last day. Go ahead and talk to those of the muslim faith, It will produce no good fruit.
As someone has said, at the most it will only hurry along the one world religion foretold in Bible Prophecy.
arragornthestrider
Well stated.
Having read or scan-read most of the posts, one thing seems to be missing from this ongoing discussion: the "God" that Christians worship, follow and serve is most definitely NOT the same one Muslims follow.
Any attempt by these supposed Christians organizing these conferences clearly puts them clearly in the category of the End Times deceived, working toward a one-world religion under the leadership of the Anti-Messiah.
True followers of the only Messiah worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God of Moses, David and the Prophets - the God of the covenants and promises which are irrevocable - the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah (Christ), Who along with the Holy Spirit, are the Trinity...Three in One and One in Three - the only True God! All else are false gods and works of Satan.
SeekingHim
A true Christian believes in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the Godhead.
These other faiths you have mentioned believe in part, but not in whole or perhaps not at all.
We must always have a watchful eye for deception on the inside and outside. It is the Holy Spirit which reveals the truth in faith, and how it is practiced.
And yes, we must listen and be diligent to respond if something is found to be false.
This is not to be confused with being judgmental. This is obediance to the Word of God.
I would agree that there are many here who "profess" to be Christians. It is sad.
But I'm talking about followers of Christ from other religious backgrounds (not just Muslims, but Hindus, Buddhists, etc.) who do NOT leave those backgrounds, YET worship Christ, BELIEVE and study the Bible as God's Word (not necessarily all of our Christian doctrines which may not come out of the Bible).
Of course, no one can judge faith, and we should be careful that we don't try. It is not our role to determine who has faith and who doesn't. Right?
SeekingHim, your question puzzled me a little bit -- "how you (artm) would explain those who are from a Muslim background who are following Jesus like (some) Christians." If we are speaking of a true IMITATOR OF CHRIST, does it matter what his/her background may have been? The saint who leaves behind his gay lifestyle? The ex-Muslim? The ex-Mormon? The ex-Catholic? The ex-Hindu? The Jewish convert?
Paul writes to many of the churches in the scriptures because of the very reason that - even though they have professed to have found FREEDOM in Jesus Christ - they are still unable to let go of the old legalism of ritual and custom. Is that not the very thing that each man/woman who professes to be Christian must endure - sanctification? As the Holy Spirit indwells and gently weans us off... things of the world; things we once held dear; things we once devoted our lives to.
Your question implies a trade-off merely of one religion for another, one set of rituals for another... I don't know that that is Christianity per se. I don't know that that is what Jesus bled and died and rose for... just to start yet another religious group.
Paul writes about leaving the former things behind, and about how he presses onto toward the goal. Jesus also made it clear that we are either for Him or against Him, and that we are either helping Him to gather, or else we are helping to scatter.
So when you say there are "hundreds of thousands" of professing Christians who are from a Muslim background... that actually reminds me of the 80% of the U.S. population who call themselves Christian and yet... "by their fruits" we can't help but wonder... where is the changed life? Where are the fruits of the Holy Spirit?
As Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to Me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of Heaven." It is far less important what I once used to be, what I once professed to be, what I once used to believe... than how TRULY IMPORTANT it is that my citizenship is now in Heaven. We are a "new creation" in the world, but not OF the world.
wbmoore, I would actually go one step further... one must not only "believe" the gospel in order to be saved. I can intellectually BELIEVE that what the Bible says is true... does that make me a "Christian" (over-used term, for this context I mean - IMITATOR of Christ)? Satan believes that God sent Jesus to suffer and die and be resurrected and all that. And Satan is no Christian. Satan's minions believe that as well. Satan's minions are not Christian.
The question, then, is.. have you "received" Jesus Christ? The Bible says in John 1:12 "But as many as received Him (Jesus), to them He gave the right to become children of God." Paul later writes that we should "put on Christ," and that it is "no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."
Some speakers have put it this way -- your faith/belief in Jesus should be like faith/belief in a parachute. That is an active faith. Faith that produces action. Faith that yields fruit. Faith that produces works. (I'm not suggesting that by works we are saved, no, not at all). But as James writes "faith without works is dead."
Jesus taught (speaking of the "authenticity" of prophets) that "by their fruits you shall know them." He also taught that "Not everyone who says to Me, "Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of Heaven." Only those who OBEY.
One must believe that God sent Jesus to suffer and die for our sins, resurected Him on the third day, and He is alive and seated in heaven at the right hand of the Father, acting as our sole intercessor between us and God the Father.
Anything short of that is not Christianity.
People might believe Jesus was a good man, or a prophet, or a sage and not believe Him to be part of the trinity - the one true God in three persons. And they would be mistaken.
To dialog with muslims might not be a bad thing, as it will probably hasten one world religion we've been warned would come - Rev 13.
We are seeing the end times come! yeah!
When did God divide heaven? I don't remember God tell satan he could have any part of it. I remember God casting him and his followers out. Jesus did not compromise the word for the rich man. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies,even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.
I'm not sure how you (artm) would explain those who are from a Muslim background who are following Jesus like (some) Christians. There are hundreds of thousands of them.
Certainly a clash between "religions" could be expected.
Certainly Christ has to be at the center of anyone's saving faith, BUT a person does not have to be a part of established "christianity" to be a true believer in Christ.
We are living in the last days. Christ is about to return for His Church. Go ahead and talk with those of the muslim faith, But there can be no unity.
There are no bonds between Christanity and the muslim faith. There is most certanly going to be a clash of Global Proportions.
Jesus said, I am the Way, No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
There is the problem. Christians Pray. We are seeing Biblical Prophecy comeing to pass right before our eyes.