I do not know how many Christians have read the Quran. And I do not know how many Muslims have read the Christian Scriptures. But I do know that until we come back into relationship, until we begin to learn the wisdom at the heart of one another's traditions, we will be less likely to work for peace. And without peace in the household of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar there will not be peace among us as nations today.
"Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace" is a resource book in the Praying for Peace Initiative, designed especially to nurture relationship between Christianity, Islam and Judaism as a way of making peace in our world. Each morning and evening in a seve- day cycle we use words from the Quran, the Hebrew Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus to pray for peace. We know the shadow side of our religious inheritance, the way it is used to fuel hatred and division between us as peoples and as nations. But do we also know the prophetic power for peacemaking at the heart of our three faiths? We need to do the hard work of confronting the falseness within us and between us while at the same time accessing the vision and the hope for healing.
"Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God." How many of us would have guessed that these words, which invite us to look for the Sacred in everything, come from the Quran? (The Cow 2:115) We have been too ready to believe the lie that it is only in certain faces, certain races, certain places, that we will glimpse the Holy. How can we help one another remember the true heart of Islam, the true heart of Christianity, the true heart of Judaism -- all of which cherish a vision for the sacredness of every life?
Whichever way we turn, O God, there is your face in the light of eyes we love in the salt of tears we have tasted in weathered countenances east and west in the soft skin glow of the child everywhere. Whichever way we turn, O God, there is your face there is your face among us. (from "Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace," 2011)
This is not to say that in religious extremists committed to tearing our world apart we will readily see anything other than the violence of their countenance. But it is relationship, relationship and relationship that can strengthen us to see more deeply. And it is relationship across the boundaries of religion and nationhood that can change the way we see and relate as nations.
A number of years ago my wife and I went on pilgrimage to the burial place of St. John in Turkey. He is remembered as the one who leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper. In the Celtic world it was said of him that he therefore heard the heartbeat of God. He became a symbol of the practice of listening for the beat of the Sacred deep within everything that has being.
Not for the first time in our lives my wife and I got entirely lost. We were in Selcuk close to the tomb of John but could not find it. By "mistake" we wandered into the garden courtyard of a mosque. There we were greeted by the Muslim imam. He welcomed us to Turkey and asked after our visit. When he learned that I was a priest, he bowed to me and said, "You are a minister of Jesus, peace be upon him." He then invited us into the mosque where we exchanged blessings. It was the imam who then showed us the way to John's tomb, just up the hill from the mosque.
As I climbed the hill I could not stop thinking of the humility of this man, bowing and using the ultimate term of respect to refer to Jesus. I realized he was in no sense being untrue to his own tradition. He was being deeply true. And more challengingly he was inviting me to be true to the heart of my tradition, true to the way of strong humility, of not raising ourselves up over one another, whether as individuals, nations or species.
Jesus says, "Whoever wishes to be great among you must be a servant among you" (Matthew 20:26). It is in learning to bow to the sacred in one another and in one another's traditions, no matter how ugly the false expressions are, that we will find the way forward together.
May we know that we are of You may we know that we are in You may we know that we are one with You together one. Guide us as nations to what is deepest open us as peoples to what is first lead us as a world to what is dearest that we may know the holiness of wholeness that we may learn the strength of humility that together we may live close to the earth and grow in grounded glory. (from "Praying with the Earth: A Prayer Book for Peace," 2011)
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: Christian Civility: The Test of Intra-Faith Relations
John Philip Newell: The Praying for Peace Initiative | Huffington ...
10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
10:36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
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This common-place of inter-faith dialogue is simply not true. I have lived in places most peacefully and agreeably with friends and neighbours whose religion was unknown to me. We do not need to know anything about the other. All we need to do is get along. And ''knowing the other'' is not a prerequisite.
People of faith need tolerance, not multicultural superficiality.
Besides that, there are countless religions. Who has time to examine them all, much less dig through the endless pile of ideas and ideologies to find the nuggets of gold that might or might not lie within?
What I care about is the common human ethics and values that must be adopted by and guide us all in order to live in a pluralistic world - a world that includes the religious of all persuasions, and those of no religious persuasion whatsoever.
The ONLY reason I would care about your religion - whatever it is - is that your religion is teaching ideas and implementing actions that are in OPPOSITION to our common human values.
Thus (for example), what I care about in the fundamentalist versions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam is that there are clerics, scholars and vast congregations of ignorant people supporting them who are homophobes and mysogynists.
I don't need to study your religions to know that there might be contra-indications to those terrible anti-homosexual and anti-female memes. Frankly, I don't care.
All I care about is that those enmeshed in religious darkness repent of their darkness, and stop using their iron age texts as justification for hatred, intolerance and oppression, of any sort.
Pretty simple stuff, really.
People may take it on their own, but the New Testament, which christians live by, does not advocate death as an answer to disbelief. 43 "You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
44But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? 48Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.. The Koran has a different approach. The Qur'an commands Muslims to stick up for themselves in a defensive battle --
i.e. if an enemy army attacks, then Muslims are to fight against that army until
they stop their aggression. All of the verses that speak about fighting/war in the
Qur'an are in this context.
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Sorry, you're wrong.
I've read the New Testament, and the Old, many many times.
The only difference in the New is that God's instructions to the believers change. He tells them not to kill the unbelievers themselves, but he also says he'll do the job later on, as part of the second coming of Christ.
It's a bloody book, with a bloody ethos.
That is what I said. We are instructed to be peaceful. Vengence belongs to God. That is the Judgement. The end of time. You may question God's methods. I won't. All of us will someday leave this world, and discover if we were right, or wrong.
How simple is this, anyway?
I'd much prefer that people stop saying NAMASTE altogether, and instead work diligently to totally free the Dalits (Untouchables) from the horrid lives of squalor and servitude they are too often forced to live.
I still really do like this article, even if I found that disappointing.
For peace and harmony to happen I believe all three religions need to first admit to themselves that their god is an often violent and bloody entity. Is this really something you want to worship and emulate?
You cannot preach peace when the idol of your worship you base peace upon often shows no love or respect towards those different than you.
We have no need of a killing deity.
We DO need to nurture respect and compassion to all.
Go back away into the night where you belong and let the world progress.
(night is a reference to desert night time stories, nothing sinister)
Not exactly peaceable advice.