Notes for the next broadcast

Sitz im leben

Ordinary Time: Following Jesus

Wednesday, 25 August

• Feast of St. Louis of France--a Crusader King!
  • St. Louis Church: "Mother Church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo."
  • Illustrated history of the parish. The current church was dedicated on 25 August 1889 (121 years ago--or, perhaps, eleventy-ten years).
• The central question for the show: What should we think about the plan to build a mosque near the World Trade Center?

Theological perspectives

We agree

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are monotheistic religions that all claim to take their origin from God's covenant with Abraham.

• There is one God and there is no other (The Shahada).
• God is worthy of all worship, reverence, and praise: "I am the Lord, your God; you shall have no other gods before Me."
• God compassionate and merciful.
• We cannot do anything unless God wills it so: Insh'allah."

We disagree

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Any laws written to make it hard for a controversial group to exercise its religious rights could be used against other religious groups in the nation.

Hacker's Law

"The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions."

I do not subscribe to the idea that we can be saved by dialogue. The reason that we can't "all just get along" is that we disagree about the highest standards by which we judge what is true, beautiful, and good.

The Great American Religious Compromise is to agree to disagree peacefully.

Objections to Judaism

• To call Jesus "the Christ" is to call Him "the King of the Jews." The Jews do not take kindly to Gentiles (non-Jews) telling them that Jesus is the King of the Jews. No amount of dialogue can resolve this issue. Either Jesus is the Christ or He isn't.
• Muslims repudiate the Temple, the role of the sacrificial priesthood in the Temple, and the centrality of Jerusalem as the place to find and please God. Mecca and Medina both surpass Jerusalem as holy cities; no non-Muslim may enter those cities on pain of death.

Objections to Christianity

• To the Jews, Christians completely misunderstand the history of Israel and the meaning of the Jewish scriptures. Worshiping Jesus appears as ludicrous to them as worshiping Jim Jones of Jonestown, David Koresh from Waco, or Marshall Applewhite from Heaven's Gate.
• To both Muslims and Jews, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is tri-theism and is a violation of the first commandment. Both Muslims and Jews reject the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement.

Objections to Islam

• Mohammad calls himself "The Seal of the Prophets"--the last and most definitive interpreter of both the Jewish and the Christian religions. Neither Judaism nor Christianity accept Mohammad's interpretation.
• Mohammad was a theocrat, a warrior, a polygamist, and a slaveholder (as were Christ David and Christ Solomon). This makes it difficult for the Muslim fundamentalists to make peace with democracy and the prohibition of polygamy and slavery.

Constitutional perspectives

Legal issues: Who has the right to stop a religious group from exercising their freedom of religion? Money talks. If the land is for sale, if the zoning codes are met, and if the building can be paid for, then the Muslims who want to build the mosque have equal rights under the law to do so.

The Blame Game

Who started the war between Christians and Muslims?

• Headline News: Highlights of Western Civ
• Western Europe has been at war with militant Islam since the 7th century AD. Muslim armies conquered Christian territory in Northern Africa and the Iberian peninsula in the first century after Mohammad's death. In the Eastern Mediterranean, Muslim armies fought a series of wars with Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire from 325 AD on, until they conquered it in 1453 AD.

Our wars in the Middle East appear to some Muslims as Crusades.

We believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are justified.

Many Muslims believe that our wars are a religious crusade against them.

Forecasting the future

We are playing guessing games about matters of good taste and prudence: Is this the best way to "build bridges" between the culture of the United States and that of Islam? Will the mosque help or hinder the prospects of peace?

Setup

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