3
THE TWO TASKS REVISITED
BEING A CHRISTIAN IN THE ERA
OF CIVILIZATION CLASHES
HABIB C. MAILK
Being a Christian in the era of civilization clashes? As if there has ever been a period in history free of such clashes! Confrontations with evil and the ensuing spiritual crises that such confrontations spawn have been with Christians ever since the earliest times. These conflicts have usually involved clashes between the opposing values of Christians on the one hand, and pagans or other belief systems on the other. The first three hundred years saw the followers of the new creed out of Palestine persecuted by the pagan Romans and a variety of gnostic cults and other heresies. In AD 410, after Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome, fleeing pagans streaming into North Africa carried horror stories of what had happened and blamed Christianity for the disaster, which in turn prompted the Bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine, to write a massive defense of Christianity—his famous City of God—that also turned out to be an elaborate theology of history complete with an exhaustive ecclesiology and a treatment of the problem of evil.
In the first half of the seventh century a new challenge emerged out of Arabia in the form of the early Islamic conquests that quickly reached southern France after overrunning North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Seen from an early Christian perspective, Islam was, in a basic sense, the return of the Arian heresy (the revenge of Arius, so to speak). Arianism, the denial of the divinity of Christ, had been condemned by the church at the Council of Nicea in AD 325. The response of Christian Europe to these Islamic conquests came some centuries later in the form of the Crusades—waves of counterattacks into the Levant with a view to reclaim control over Christianity’s holy places. The Mongol invasions and then the Ottoman conquests that followed brought new civilizational challenges to European Christendom. And then, after a period of introspection in which Christians wrestled with their own shortcomings and produced both the Reformation and Counterreformation, the civilizational clash was internalized, and renewed challenges came from the deism of the eighteenth century, varieties of atheism, and lastly the secular humanism of the contemporary West.
Christian believers, therefore, have been embattled in every age, because in every age there has been a civilization clash of sorts involving one assault or other on Christian beliefs and values. A historian once half-seriously tallied the number of years throughout recorded history when there were no documented instances of conflicts or wars—they came out to some forty years of peace altogether. The world’s current preoccupation with the World Cup does not mean a cessation of wars!1But even during such rare periods of no direct hostilities, culture wars and battles of ideas and spiritual challenges rage on. Whether we choose to call it a clash of civilizations, or of cultures, or of values; or whether it is a clash between civilized existence as such on the one hand and varieties of barbarism on the other; or whether still it is a clash within a particular civilization between, say, fanaticism and moderation, Christians have lived in a perpetual state of crisis resulting from recurring assaults by hostile worldviews and sometimes directly by the devil himself. Hence there is the abiding depth and relevance for individual Christians and Christian communities alike of, for instance, Karl Barth’s “Crisis Theology,” with its emphasis on the continuous struggle with sin and with our fallen state. This is the ultimate meaning of the cross for us Christians.
Today, Christians have just emerged successfully from a clash that took up most of the twentieth century: the challenge of communism. But it was a debilitating clash, and after having also disposed of Nazism at tremendous costs, we are facing a new (but at the same time an old and familiar) threat: the challenge of Islamism, or radical jihadist Islam. These are the two broad titles of this latest phase of the perennial struggle—along with, of course, the ongoing culture war right here in our very midst that threatens to undermine everything we as Christians hold dear to our hearts. The culture war includes the combined assaults of materialism and hedonism, the myth of human self-sufficiency, relativism and subjectivism, scientism and technologism, atheism, indifferentism, and so on. Communism and Islamism, however, are two very different threats. While communism was an atheistic materialist ideology attempting in vain to overthrow religion and obliterate spirituality, Islamism is an extremist interpretation of a 1,400-year old religion and as such represents a spiritual challenge of a far more potent nature. Moreover, Islamism entails a belief system that does not hesitate to embrace death. Specifically, the Islamist seeks to go to paradise by sending you to hell! As Michael Ignatieff recently put it, when someone is fighting you eschatologically like the suicide bomber, what do you do? You have to protect yourself, and that may mean you have to kill him first—no room here for half-measures or for romantic pacifism.2
What then, in addition to Charles Malik’s two tasks (attention to the soul and the mind), is required of a believing and committed Christian in today’s era of clashes? In fact, there are multiple civilizational challenges and frontiers of confrontation, a number of them directly related to Islamism, and some by way of internal housekeeping. I will concentrate on six areas that require the special attention of the Christian believer in today’s world and in the foreseeable future.
The Crisis of Europe
Europe is experiencing profound malaise as a civilization. It has largely become post-Christian, and what is worse is that it embraces this self-inflicted state for the most part willingly. Is Europe then slowly perishing? Even the thought of such a question makes one shudder. Not long ago a question like this was inconceivable. If one’s categories of evaluation are EU expansion and overall EU economic performance, then such a question at this juncture would sound absurd. But these are surely not my categories. For a long time the West was defined mainly by Europe, and it was at the zenith of its power and creativity and assertiveness. But most importantly, it was at the height of self-confidence: the selfless missionaries, the material and scientific progress, the aesthetic achievements, the moral message of the West, the living spiritual deposit of centuries of piety and toil—all stood for something good and universal. Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, which represented a wake-up call for Muslims. The Ottoman Empire was progressively failing while Europe was leaping ahead. Then came the two world wars and decolonization, and there crept in self-doubt resulting in a gradual loss of nerve—most alarmingly, a loss of faith. Early on in his pontificate, Pope John Paul II mentioned an urgent task that faced the church and Christians generally: the need to re-evangelize Europe. The “re” is crucial because one is not dealing here with a tabula rasa or some terra incognita, but with Europe where Christianity has imprinted itself on people’s lives for at least a millennium and a half. The late pope’s call has been taken up by leading American Catholic thinkers like George Weigel in The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics without God, Father Richard John Neuhaus of First Things, Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, and others. But the actual task of re-evangelization of Europe remains in the embryonic stages. Hardly anything could be more urgent. Praying for Europe is vital as is writing about its spiritual crisis, but actually going into the field to re-evangelize is indispensable.
What are the alarming signs that characterize post-Christian Europe, and how does this situation compare with matters across the Atlantic in the United States? What is said here must be taken as delineating disturbing broad trends, but there are of course pleasant exceptions everywhere:
Europeans are ashamed of their Christian heritage; in fact, they hate it. The EU refused to include any reference to “Judeo-Christian heritage” in the new European constitution—a cumbersome and unwieldy document. This is to deny a glaring historical fact that the last 1,500 years, if not more, in Europe were profoundly shaped by the enormous impact of that tradition and heritage. Burning incense blindly at the twin altars of multiculturalism and political correctness, plus a pervasive and increasingly virulent secularism, stand conspicuously behind the feelings of shame with respect to this Christian identity.
Europeans are not having enough babies. Negative growth has been registered in Italy and France, and in other parts demographic increase is at an all-time low. Compare that to the far healthier statistics in the United States, now having passed the three hundred million population mark. The difference is evident throughout Europe, particularly at children’s playgrounds where there usually are not the throngs of kids crowding the slides and swings that one sees across America. One disturbing though somewhat sensationalized study by a Russia watcher who is a demographic specialist concluded that if present trends of decline continue, in less than forty years the majority in Russia will be Muslims.3Europe is fast becoming a continent of senior citizens with all the attendant socio-economic consequences that entails.
There is loss of Christian faith across the board in Europe. Many in Europe have decided to “go it alone”—without God and without their Christian heritage. Churches in many urban areas throughout the continent are more like museums than living places of worship, or they display an aging and dwindling attendance as things were under communism. In America, on the other hand, a medium-sized family arriving late for Sunday worship would likely have a hard time finding empty places in the crowded pews. Church attendance is still robust in the United States compared to that in large parts of Europe.
Whenever Europe needs cheap labor it looks to the neighboring Islamic regions such as North Africa, Turkey, and other parts of the Middle East. The result has been an influx of Muslims into Europe in the millions, and many of these are coming in not in order to assimilate, but as settlers. One scholar has called it a “demographic jihad.”4Worse still, the Europeans (especially the French) are in denial and turn a blind eye to this phenomenon, explaining it in purely socioeconomic terms with hardly any reference to the underlying cultural and religious components. Muslims streaming into France are hardly arriving in order to embrace French laicisme! Couple this phenomenon with the potential entry of Turkey into the EU and one has the makings of the end of European civilization as we have known it. Assisting Turkey’s entry into the EU is therefore tantamount to murder, or suicide if you are a European. Already America’s record in the Balkans during the 1990s in helping to assert the Islamic identity of certain parts there has been shameful. Contrast all this with the United States’ domestic need for cheap labor, which is obtained mostly from south of the border, and one sees the steady influx of Catholic Hispanics who share the same overall worldview with the vast majority of Americans.
Features of what is best termed the “culture of death” are taking hold of parts of Europe (and to a lesser extent, the United States): abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicides, homosexuality leading to legalized same-sex unions, and genetic manipulation. The difference between both sides of the Atlantic on this issue is that in the Unites States there are at least moves afoot in society to openly resist this creeping culture of death, whereas in Europe such resistance is weak if not non-existent.
Europe matters for Christians and Christianity. The spiritual, and eventually physical, demise of Europe before this multi pronged onslaught would constitute a calamity of historic—indeed apocalyptic—proportions. We cannot allow this to happen. The only antidote is an aggressive, sustained, and earnest re-evangelization of the afflicted continent—a rearguard action to shore up our fraying civilizational flanks. This has now become a more urgent task than evangelizing any other part of the world. The big question remains: will re-evangelization bear quick enough fruits to save Europe?
The Embattled Christians of the Middle East
The cradle of Christianity is steadily emptying out. Christians native to the region where it all began are leaving in growing numbers. The reasons are simple: persecution and being caught between repressive regimes on one side and rising Islamist radicalism and fanaticism on the other; lack of security and no clear future prospects; dwindling economic opportunities; the allure of the West where assimilation seems relatively easy; and low birth rates—certainly lower than those of Muslims who can marry up to four wives and who can divorce much more easily than Christians. Apart from the purely humanitarian side of the issue where the depletion of any group due to the reasons cited is something worthy of the attention of Christians, and apart even from the fact that in this case the disappearing groups are coreligionists, there is a practical policy-related matter that must be considered: secure, free, and prosperous indigenous Christian communities living in their ancestral homes throughout the Middle East will help promote Islamic moderation and foster respect for ethno-religious pluralism in the face of both the oppressive regimes and the extremist Islamists.
There are two distinct historical narratives for Middle Eastern Christians: the vast majority (over 90 percent of them) fell at one point or other during the last 1,400 years under direct Islamic subjugation and became dhimmis, or second-class citizens. These include the Copts of Egypt and the Christian communities of Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. They never knew a free existence since the rise of Islam. The remaining 8 percent, the Christians of Lebanon mainly, managed to escape to a large extent the dhimmi fate, but they did so at great expense in terms of blood and treasure. The post-9/11 U.S. policy of promoting democracy and freedom in the Middle East gave hope to many native Christians, in particular those of Lebanon who had passed through more than a quarter-century ordeal of persecution and Western neglect. The importance of the Christians of Lebanon for the Christians of the wider region cannot be overstated. They have served historically as beacons of freedom and magnets of attraction for their less fortunate brethren in other Arab lands. They have been the lungs, as it were, through which not only other Arab Christians but anyone in the Arab world with a yearning for a freer life could breathe and receive wafts of ideas and inspirations hailing from the open societies of the West.
Following the recent setbacks of the Iraq war, a clear trend of backtracking on this stated American policy of promoting freedom has begun to emerge, and Christians as well as Muslim moderates are feeling let down as a result. Emigration of Christians has started to pick up again, particularly out of Iraq since the heating up of the insurgency and out of Lebanon following the 34-day war of summer 2006 between Hezbollah and Israel. There are in the Middle East an estimated ten to fifteen million native Christians, but their numbers are steadily dwindling. Committed Christians in the West must care about the fate of these ancient and embattled communities. Regrettably, many fall victims to the fallacious logic of some that since a genuine Christian believer can endure anything in this fallen world and remain true to his or her faith, that therefore a free and secure and prosperous existence is not necessary because such a real Christian can be so under any circumstances no matter the hardships. Would fortunate and secure Western Christians easily exchange their privileged situation to live like some of these beleaguered communities of Middle Eastern Christians? In other words, do not begrudge the Christians of the Middle East a free and prosperous existence on the grounds that authentic Christianity can thrive under any pressures. The pursuit of happiness, including security and prosperity in this life, is not something that is antithetical to the Christian faith. Faith in Christ no doubt arms us against the terrible ravages of a cruel world and the sufferings it inflicts, but such faith does not imply refraining from seeking to improve our lot in this life by warding off actual or potential suffering.
Another important lesson to keep in mind is that these are ancient proud churches with deep roots and rich traditions. Helping native Christians to rediscover these roots and traditions, and to revive and nurture them, is the greatest service you can do for them and for yourselves since these very same roots and traditions lie at the foundation of the faith you share with these communities. Do not view them as hollow relics of a dead past and therefore as prime candidates for re-conversion to evangelicalism. If that happens in some cases voluntarily, then that’s fine. But don’t let a planned program of seeking recruits among a struggling community take the place of aiding that community to find its bearings within its own traditions, experiencing a spiritual revival on this basis, and achieving a secure and free existence in its own cultural and spiritual soil.
Most importantly, Christians in the West should not hitch their eschatological expectations to any seductive wagon that happens to be passing and thereby inadvertently place these native Christian communities by association in mortal danger. One example of this is that of some Christian Zionists who hold to extreme versions of dispensationalism: those who clearly confuse the ancient Chosen People of Israel (chosen so that the Messiah, who is Jesus of Nazareth, would come out of them to save the world, as he has done) with the contemporary state of Israel. Scripture and the church teach that Jews who remained Jews after the coming of Jesus the Messiah have not forfeited God’s eternally valid choice, but that the actual meaning of that same choice after Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection has become a mystery to be revealed and resolved at the end of time. Political Israel today is not the same thing theologically as the Jews, God’s Chosen People after the coming of Christ. Such identifications with the state of Israel have been very damaging to indigenous Christians, who have been accused by Muslims of being Israeli agents, agents of the imperial West, and a fifth column in the midst of the House of Islam. Christians of this extreme dispensationalist persuasion need to be reprimanded whenever they indulge selfishly in these fantasies to the detriment of local Middle Eastern Christian communities, and Western Christians must distance themselves from their excesses and their confusions of the realms of politics and theology. Avoid at all costs irresponsible apocalypticism; stop eschatologizing the daily news headlines as Pat Robertson has done regarding Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Serious evangelicals need to clean house and rid their ranks of such dangerous embarrassments.
Wherever you find an oasis of free Christianity in the Middle East such as the one in Lebanon, nurture and protect it; get politically involved on its behalf, because its disappearance could spell historically another 1453—the year Constantinople fell irreversibly to the invading Ottoman Muslims. If Western governments abandon the pledge to spread democracy, freedom, and hope for the peoples of the Middle East, concerned Christians in the West should pursue that challenge and not allow such a noble pledge to turn into a cruel hoax. Often in evangelical circles one hears talk about the architecture of making an impact on God’s behalf, and that is indeed a very lofty spiritual challenge for any Christian to undertake. When it comes to the Christian communities of the Middle East, however, this vital spiritual task must be approached with awe and trepidation. Two guiding principles should be applied at all times: addressing these communities has to be done in complete and sincere humility, and deep respect has to be shown for their traditions and histories (i.e., their peculiar situational and experiential context). Western evangelicals therefore must work with the local churches, not in spite of them; they must patiently bear and suffer these tormented churches because they too are of God, though imperfect through sin.
The Challenge of Islamism
Islam is a serious spiritual challenge in the world today, and Islamism, which is the extremist version of that religion, must itself also be taken seriously as a spiritual challenge in its own right. Islamism is not the same as Islam, but the two are not unrelated. Certain readings of the Koran and certain jurisprudential and exegetical traditions in Islam could lead to a rigid and intolerant position taken with respect to non-Muslims, or to moderate Muslims, which is precisely what Islamism has, in essence, done. Often Islamism translates into an active call for a worldwide jihad against the infidels (kuffar), as is the case with Al-Qaeda, and this jihad invariably entails violence. The Islamist position allows no room for reconciliation or compromise with the forces of infidelity, namely everyone else, and hence there is no concept of permanent peace, but instead at best a possible temporary truce: Osama bin Laden has offered one to the United States and the West on repeated occasions since September 11, 2001; Hamas offered one to Israel as recently as fall 2006.
For some time now, Islam has been facing multiple challenges from modernity, and one of the outcomes of that confrontation has been a heightened degree of fanaticism in the name of rejecting deleterious features of modernity—this is one of the sources of Islamism in our time. This process is expected to continue well into the foreseeable future, and it calls for urgent security measures to be put in place to deal with the adverse side effects emanating from this wrestling match between Islam and modernity. Samuel Huntington, the Harvard professor who coined the term “clash of civilizations,” mentions a telling phrase: Islam’s bloody borders. This is an astute observation on his part because indeed it is quite arresting to see how the Islamic world is encased in red on the map, meaning that wherever Islam comes in contact with non-Islam blood is to be found. The examples are plentiful: Bosnia, Sudan, Mindanao, Kashmir, Afghanistan, East Timor, Bali, Lebanon, Israel/ Palestine, and more. Why is that? Is it all a matter of a vast external conspiracy against Islam and Muslims by a malicious outside world? In certain cases there may well be elements of this. Or is there something inherent to this creed that makes it difficult for Muslims to coexist peacefully with non-Muslims? Is it therefore both these reasons, or is it something else entirely? Whatever the answer, this is a situation requiring urgent security measures, as stated earlier, side by side with sincere attempts to dispel mutual misperceptions and misunderstandings. But the clearing up of these misunderstandings does not come about automatically or swiftly, and certainly not at religious dialogue conferences, no matter how well intentioned. The pathetic state and history of Islamic moderation, with moderates holding the majority but usually staying silent and feeling intimidated, does not help. “All of us against the fanatic few” makes for a nice slogan with little to encourage practical application.
Take, as an example, the cartoon controversy of last fall when a Danish newspaper printed cartoons of Mohammad. Everyone agrees that blasphemy of any sort is vulgar, tasteless, and provocative. Everyday morning, noon, and night our Lord is maligned in a thousand different ways all over the secular West, and specifically in Hollywood. Christians naturally feel very offended. But they recognize that the freedom to blaspheme is also a part of that sacred human right known as freedom of expression. In Islam all pictorial imagery is forbidden, so in fact there is a double offense here for the Muslim: that Mohammad was depicted at all and that he was depicted degradingly. But to understand the depth of the civilizational clash between Muslims and Christians one need only consider two principal misconceptions that emerged from this cartoon controversy: (1) the demand by enraged Muslims that the Danish government apologize for what happened; and (2) the conclusion that since Christians in the West do not take to the streets to burn and destroy and vent their rage violently when Jesus is insulted, then this means they have lost their faith, or their religion is weak, or they have somehow become religious wimps. The first of these misconceptions suggests the total absence in the Muslim mind of any notion of separation of public and private sectors, or of the sanctity of freedom of expression, or of the need for a free and independent press. The second boils down to crying, “You must defend your Prophet!” as the correct expectation from any believer worthy of the designation. Both of these reactions tell us a great deal about Muslims and Islam and how they project their own peculiar categories and assumptions and misconceptions onto others. They are given here as examples to illustrate the huge chasm that would need to be bridged in order to transform the clash of civilizations to a dialogue of civilizations. A former Muslim who abandoned his faith and goes under the assumed name of Ibn Warraq has rightly stated that if the rest of Europe and the West do not stand up on the side of freedom of speech and support Denmark, the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest.
There was a time in the past when the church was coercive on the issue of blasphemy, but that went against its most basic beliefs, and it has since performed the necessary mea culpa and moved on. Performing mea culpa, something Pope John Paul II did much of on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, is actually a sign of strength not weakness—just fathom Saint Augustine’s ecclesiology and the meaning of the two cities in his depiction of the Christian worldview. But herein lies yet another instance of misunderstanding and miscommunication with Islam: Islam regards all mea culpas as signs of weakness and error. Islam cannot conceive of itself engaging in any such admission of fault on any level. To do like the Pope and the church, or to let pass unanswered an instance of deliberate abuse of the sacred is for Islam an indication that Christians, and the church in particular, have abdicated responsibility and abandoned their religious values and beliefs and no longer stand up for their most cherished articles of faith by actively defending Jesus—even unto perpetrating violence—when he is ridiculed or attacked. We are still unfortunately a very long way off from seeing the emergence of a Muslim Voltaire, someone from within that religious tradition who would stand up and say, I completely disagree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to say what you believe in.
If these misconceptions and misperceptions divide ordinary Muslims from Christians, one can imagine how much more divides Islamists from Christians. Believing Christians in our age need badly to become better acquainted with the nature of Islam generally and with its more extreme and potentially hostile manifestations like Islamism. Before any dialogue or rosy optimism can be indulged in, knowledge and self-protection are crucial first steps. At the end of the day, Islam needs to be seen as a mélange of neo-Arianism, Docetism, and jumbled references to the Old Testament, the New Testament, and apocryphal non- or deuterocanonical books (mainly those ascribed to Thomas and Barnabas). This means that from a Christian standpoint it is a creed replete with half-truths as well as outright errors. However, one thing Muslims consistently display that Christians could learn from is a complete attitude of submission to, and prostration before, God Almighty—herein lies the secret power of their spirituality, their version of “Thy will be done.” We must therefore love the Muslim at all times despite everything.
The Question of Russia
This matter has deliberately been set apart from the earlier consideration of Europe because it seems there is a peculiar problem when it comes to attitudes toward Russia, with potentially adverse implications for Christians. The point is simple, even self-evident, yet largely lost. Russia was totally mishandled by the West following the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. A lethal combination of patronizing triumphalism and misplaced proselytizing zeal has characterized American and even Christian attitudes to post-communist Russia. The persistent and unnecessary American encroachment on Russia’s “near abroad,” to borrow a term from the Cold War lexicon, in places like Georgia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, parts of Central Asia, Azerbaijan, and even Belarus, in the name of spreading democracy and freedom, or expanding NATO/ EU membership, and so on, has been very damaging, especially for Russia’s reformers, and has rendered inoperable any possible alliance with Russia.
In fact, non-communist Russia, even if emerging slowly out of a long tradition of authoritarianism, ought to be a natural ally in any looming civilizational confrontation. Huntington may have been insightful with “Islam’s bloody borders,” but he got it all disastrously wrong on Orthodoxy, Russia, and the Orthodox world in general. Orthodoxy is not a world apart from the West on fundamental values and ultimate beliefs, as Huntington portrays.5Historically, politically, and temperamentally there are clear and often profound differences, but the Orthodox world must be viewed by Western Christians, whether Catholics or Protestants, as an integral and inseparable part of the overall universal Christian civilization. Believing Christians therefore should reach out to Russia on the deepest levels; they should embrace Russia’s Christians and Russia’s church with her amazing liturgy and her saints; they should study her traditions and immerse themselves in her rich literary heritage that is very Christian (for example, Dostoevsky); they should acquaint themselves with Russia’s fine, simple, sturdy common folk, with the intricate shades of her Orthodoxy, indeed with her soul! Whenever possible, help Russia’s own church to revive and stand on her feet and live her traditions and her faith. Pope John Paul II tried, but sadly he could not break down the barriers with the Russian church. He did, however, address the Uniate issue—a sticky one between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches. Perhaps Pope Benedict XVI will have greater success in bridging the gap with the Russian church.
Know that Russia is on your side. Believe that and let her feel you do. Again, work with the local church. The same should be true for other parts of Orthodox as well as Catholic Eastern Europe. Poland, for example, which is 95 percent Catholic, was instrumental in bringing down communism. For every confused youthful soul in Poland there are tens of thousands who are spiritually very alive and very active. They belong within the Catholic Church where they are very clearheaded about their spiritual priorities. They should be viewed by evangelicals as partners in evangelism, ready co-laborers in the cause of Christ.
The Culture War at Home
Much has been written about this, including the seminal work by Boston College professor Peter Kreeft, and does not need to be rehashed here.6That such a war is raging right in the heart of the West, that it is essential it be fought, and that it is winnable are all axioms this author does not question. The most important clue to the successful waging of this war is to target all those elements in our society that in one way or another promote the culture of death. Required for waging this war is intellectual rigor based first and foremost on the acknowledged harmony between faith and reason, religion and science. One important recent source where the interested Christian might start is Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (faith and reason).
Consider, for example, the debate raging between creationism and evolutionism. The problem is that the entire debate as it is conducted is flawed from the outset, and is largely unnecessary: neither do the so-called creationists represent the only religious position or side of the argument, nor do the evolutionists dispose of religion altogether or of the religious position when they expose the errors and shortcomings of creationism. A proper Augustinian understanding of the way Scripture ought to be read and interpreted would reveal that creation of all that there is by an omnipotent and omniscient God is not necessarily incompatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution. This, by the way, is the Catholic Church’s position. As for intelligent design, there is nothing new there; it is the old argument for God’s existence based on evidence of design updated to accommodate the most recent scientific findings. That is fine, provided we as Christians don’t get too hung up on rational or scientific “proofs” and start to substitute them for faith as gift and grace (Augustine again, basing himself on Saint Paul).
In the fog of the battle do not be confused by new names and fads and buzzwords. For example, everything these days seems “post” something: postmodern, post-metaphysical, post-Christian, post9/11, post-oriental studies, post-feminism, etc. What is this morbid fascination with “moving beyond,” this mad rush to declare everything as obsolete? It is a faddish fetish and an obsession with sheer novelty; it is exasperation with the permanence of truth. It all really began in modern times with Nietzsche’s famous “beyond good and evil,” namely his attempt to transcend and overturn traditional/conventional morality. Man is running out of names to describe how he wishes to scurry ahead of himself (in fact, to run away from himself—to leave himself behind). All this boils down to the morbid urge to deny the permanent, the durable, the perennial, the unchanging. A good example of this “time to move on” impulse is Richard Rorty’s The Future of Religion7 where the author “imagines” new ways of what it is to be religious—a kind of post-recognizable religiosity type of thing! And since much of the discussion of the culture war, if not the actual war itself, takes place in the media or at the academy, being both media savvy and academically adept become musts for those Christian foot soldiers on the frontlines of the war. The enemy reduces itself to a variety of Christophobes who don’t hesitate to indulge in the fallacy of moral equivalence and who are basically consumed by blind hatred for everything smacking of Jesus Christ.
The Ecumenical Imperative
In Lebanon, the home country of this author, an effort was begun some years ago at Christian teaching for youth from a variety of Christian denominations. The reason was that the private secular school attended by many of these youths offered no religious instruction. Parents needed to find a suitable alternative, so they devised an interdenominational forum they called Cross Talk, which remains the only such Christian teaching program that caters at once to Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants anywhere. This biblically-grounded ecumenical effort was ad hoc and informal at first, with the teaching done by some of the parents themselves, and it subsequently received the joint official blessings of the respective local churches involved. Cross Talk now serves young people ages four to eighteen (some 320 in total) and is looking to acquire new premises to accommodate its expanding clientele. It is truly the work of the Holy Spirit in every way!
If the people who set up Cross Talk under the guidance of the Spirit could do it in little Lebanon, then Christians in America and the West should be able to cooperate much more closely than they have been. Protestants need to be reminded that the Inquisition is over, the indulgences are gone, and the corrupt medieval popes are a thing of the past. If the Catholic Church and the pope are doing the right thing these days, join hands with them. Cooperation against the holocaust of abortion has been an admirable example. More such examples of cooperation are needed. Don’t see the pedophile scandal through the prism of the secular media establishment; accept sincere apologies and move on. At all costs avoid schadenfreude; it is unchristian. Be open to churches other than your own. Being a community of believers, Christians were never intended to live only a purely vertical spiritual life—the individual believer, the Book, and God—but a horizontal one as well—a community of the faithful, an ecclesia. And the vertical together with the horizontal form the cross. Thank God for the first one thousand years of Christianity, the first millennium! There was only one church and there were the great church fathers and the early church councils in addition to the canonical Scriptures. It was tough to battle all those heresies and to painstakingly work out those intricate issues in Christology, but the church received constant help from the Holy Spirit. Let us agree at least to concentrate on the common ground we all share from those first thousand years—it is a very rich and redeeming legacy. The more recent antagonisms and prejudices are paralyzing, so avoid or bracket them for the time being.
Conclusion
Being a committed Christian invariably means being so in the midst of turmoil, anxieties, challenges, dangers, and the loss of tranquility. But such Christians are familiar with these situations and are ready for them because they know the meaning of the cross. Our Savior has prepared us for precisely this state of affairs—to be his followers in the world. Every age presents its own peculiar assortment of crosses to be endured and overcome. The question that recurs every time is: do we engage, or do we withdraw? But the two are not really contradictory as they might first seem. In fact, a committed Christian is prepared to do both, each at the proper time. Knowing when to engage and plunge into the fray and when to remain on the sidelines preferring to pray and contemplate in serenity and perform occasional concrete and discreet acts of charity—this wise discernment is precisely what the Holy Spirit provides. The book of Revelation clearly intimates to us, however one interprets the symbols, that matters are going to get much worse before they get better. Jesus himself told us people will do this and that to us because of his name’s sake, but that he is with us until the end of time. Crises both personal and collective, internal and external, are the order of a fallen world, but rejoice and be glad, he says, for “I have overcome the world!” Clashes of cultures and civilizations is only one type of crisis that tests us and deepens our faith if we embrace the cross and allow the Comforter, sent to us by Jesus and his Father, to take charge of our lives. This then is the true meaning of “love conquers all.”
Discussion Questions
1. Of the six civilizational challenges facing Christians today:
Which one have you encountered the most?
Which one is of most urgent concern to you?
Which are you in a position to address or affect?
2. What does it mean to say that Europe has become postChristian?
3. Why does the spiritual fate of Europe matter for Christians?
4. Why are the Middle East’s Christians dwindling in numbers?
5. Why is it important to respect the local traditions of Middle Eastern churches and work with, rather than in spite of, them?
6. What is Islamism and how should it be faced?
7. What is it about Russia that makes it much closer to the West than might appear?
8. What role might you be uniquely qualified to play:
In the re-evangelization of Europe?
In nurturing struggling Christian communities in the Middle East?
1. On July 12, 2006, two weeks after Habib Malik delivered the speech on which this chapter is based, war again broke out in Malik’s native homeland of Lebanon.
2. See Michael Ignatieff, “Lesser Evils,” New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004.
3. He is Paul Goble, vice dean of social sciences and humanities at Concordia-Audentes University in Tallinn, Estonia, and formerly a U.S. government official for twenty-five years. See Meredith Buel, “Analyst Predicts Muslim Majority in Russia within Thirty Years,” Voice of America, February 28, 2006, http://www.voanews.com/English/2006-02-28_voa77.cfm (accessed October 15, 2006). See also “Russia Challenged by Coming Muslim Majority, Expert Says,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 6, 2006, http://www.referl.org/releases/2006/03/389060306.asp (accessed October 15, 2006). Viktor Perevedentsev, who has been studying Russian population trends since the 1960s, disagrees with Goble and regards his predictions as highly inflated. See Steven Eke, “Russia Faces Demographic Disaster,” BBC News, Moscow, June 7, 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news (accessed October 15, 2006).
4. See Robert Spencer,Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions about the World’s Fastest-Growing Faith (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002), 170–73.
5. See Samuel P. Huntington,The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 139–44, 270–72, and throughout the book wherever Orthodoxy is discussed.
6. See Peter Kreeft, How to Win the Culture War: A Christian Battle Plan for a Society in Crisis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002).
7. Gianni Vattimo, Richard Rorty, and Santiago Zabala, The Future of Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).