January 20, 2012

Cathedral series studies Islamic and Catholic relationship

Ned Andrew Solomon, Tennessee Register

The Cathedral of the Incarnation is hosting a series of adult education classes in January that organizers hope will build a bridge of understanding between Muslims and Catholics.

“When trying to understand a culture different from one’s own, it is important to see that culture as it sees itself,” said Ron Messier, professor emeritus in history at Middle Tennessee State University, who presented the first class in the series on Jan. 8.

“Once we feel that we understand the paradigm, we should not assume that everyone within the culture under study fits the paradigm exactly in the same way,” he added. “There is a wide range of beliefs on most issues within both Christianity and Islam.”

The series began during National Migrant Week, and was planned by Joceline Lemaire, director of adult formation at the Cathedral, in collaboration with its Social Justice Committee.

Through presentations by renowned experts in the field, the classes will explore the teachings of Islam, the relationship between Islam and Catholicism, and the experience of Muslims moving to this region.

“The main impetus for this series was a news article in The Tennessean in July 2011, reporting on ACT!, a Virginia-based national organization opposed to the growing Muslim presence in the U.S.,” explained Lemaire. “It was said that Tennessee had the largest membership in this organization. We thought we had a responsibility to learn and teach from a balanced perspective about Islam and the Muslim presence in Middle Tennessee.”

While conducting research to help develop the series’ curriculum, Lemaire said, “I was fascinated to learn that the opposition to the building of a new mosque in Murfreesboro closely parallels the opposition to the building of a Catholic Church in Murfreesboro in the 1920s. At that time, the KKK marched in opposition.”

The program covers a variety of perspectives on the relationship between Islam and Catholicism. On Jan. 8, Messier spoke “Jesus, One Man Two Faiths: A Dialogue between Christians and Muslims.” On Jan. 15, David Rowe, Ph.D., professor of history at MTSU, presented “Hospitality or Hostility? Welcoming Strangers to Middle Tennessee.”

On Jan. 22, Abdelghani Barre, president of the Executive Committee of Nashville’s Islamic Center, will speak about the teachings of Islam and experiences of Muslims here. He will be joined by the Nashville Islamic Center’s Imam, Mohamed Ahmed, a graduate of Al-Azhar University in Cairo and a teacher of Islamic Studies and Arabic at the University of Georgia.

During the final class on Jan 29, Jesuit Father Bruce Morrill, the Edward A. Malloy Professor of Catholic Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, will discuss, “The Church and Other Religions: Doctrine and Prayer.”

The classes demonstrate the common bonds, in faith and human experience, between Islam and the Catholic Church, rather than the extreme contrasts that have often permeated the media since 9-11.

Through those talks and the discussions they generated and some specific comments from Christians and Muslims, Messier became convinced that, “Jesus could be a locus for dialogue between these two faiths.”

“My good friend Whit Bodman, a Ph.D. in Islamic studies and a United Church of Christ minister once told me that his study of Islam helped him understand the Trinity,” Messier said.

“My former student – in my Introduction to Islam class at Vanderbilt – Parwana Ashari, a Muslim from Pakistan, wrote in one of her papers, ‘The role of Jesus in Islam is underestimated.’ She went on to say that she looked forward to the coming of the day of judgment, when Jesus would return to lead the righteous to the afterlife,” he added. “My host at a foundation for writers and journalists in Istanbul, a Muslim, when I asked him how his organization promotes the idea of tolerance to people who are not especially inclined toward tolerance, he answered unhesitatingly, ‘By example and with humility, just like when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.’”

As far as similarities between Muslims and Catholics, Messier points to the fact that both faiths believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Muslims are virtually unanimous on this issue, and, according to Messier, it is unambiguously stated in the Quran. The house of the Virgin Mary, located near Ephesus in Turkey and believed to be the house where Mary lived before her Assumption, attracts huge numbers of Christian and Muslim pilgrims.

The belief in Jesus’ miracles is a common point too. Like Christians, Muslims believe that Jesus exorcised demons, cured the sick, and raised people from the dead.

“The Quran includes one miracle that is not in the canonical gospels, but is in one of the infancy gospels,” said Messier. “It is the miracle where Jesus forms birds out of clay, breaths life into them, and they fly away. The rhetoric in this story in the Quran is very close to the same as where God makes Adam out of clay and breaths life into him.”

Furthermore, in the gospels, we read that Jesus summarized his teaching in two commandments. It turns out Muslims endorse these same two commandments. “And did so in an open letter signed by over a hundred Muslim leaders from around the world, addressed to the heads of all the major Christian and Jewish denominations,” said Messier.

There are some important differences too. “Whereas both Christians and Muslims believe in monotheism, that God is one, Muslims categorically deny the Trinity,” Messier said. “They do not distinguish between the Trinity on the one hand and tri-theism on the other. They cannot think of God as being the father of Jesus in a physical sense. On the other hand they do believe that Jesus was conceived because of an act of God’s will.”

Although the crucifixion is central to Christianity, it is only mentioned in one verse of the Quran, which postulates that Jesus was neither crucified nor killed. Instead, most Muslims believe in an alternate theory, that a crucifixion took place, but God rescued Jesus and someone else was crucified in his place.

“I had a long conversation with my friend, brother Nahidian, Imam of the Manassas mosque in Virginia, about the crucifixion,” said Messier. “He holds to the substitution theory. I don’t. He said that if we get hung up on this part of the story, if we can’t get past it, we are probably missing the most important part of the story: what came after the crucifixion. Both Christians and Muslims believe that God took Jesus up to heaven in a glorious state, the ascension. That represents Jesus’ confrontation with and triumph over death, over evil itself.”

Father Morrill will wind up the series by presenting on the doctrine of the Church, specifically the Second Vatican Council’s “Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,” also known as “Nostra Aetate.”

“In it, the Church asserts first the bond across humanity due to all having been created by the one God, and then expresses appreciation for the ways in which various religious traditions – Hinduism, Buddhism, among others – strive for divine contact and wisdom in conjunction with wisdom for a proper perspective on life in this world,” said Father Morrill.

The Declaration specifically addresses Islam, declaring the Church’s “high regard for Muslims” in their worship of the one God and submission to “the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan.”

Similar to Messier’s examination of how the two faiths intersect theologically, the Council’s document acknowledges Islam’s reverence for Jesus as a prophet and honoring of his virgin mother Mary, as well as their awaiting the final judgment and resurrection of the dead.

From there, Father Morrill will discuss the 10 great intercessions of the Good Friday liturgy, which commemorates the torture and execution of Jesus.

“The 10 prayers move, as it were, outward in concentric circles so as to embrace the entire world,” said Father Morrill. “The movement can be seen as flowing in the opposite direction as ‘Nostra Aetate,’ with its initial acknowledgement of all peoples of good will seeking God, then moving to Eastern religions, then to the biblically based, or Abrahamic religions of Islam and, finally, Judaism, seen closest to Christianity.”

One intercession reaches out to all Christians, praying for unity on the basis of “our common baptism.”

Another intercession reaches out to those who believe in God but not in Christ which, most immediately, would entail the other Abrahamic religions. There is also a prayer for those who do not believe in God at all, which begs that the “hurtful things” Christians may have done might not prevent them from knowing the love of God.

“It seems to me that the Good Friday intercessions speak volumes about that posture of friendship and earnest desire for the progress of all peoples, as well as a properly humble and, in proper measure, penitent acknowledgement of Roman Catholics’ failures, as individuals and at times as a corporate body, to be the living witnesses of the Gospel of peace and human upbuilding that Christ gave his life to empower,” said Father Morrill. “This stands for the Church – in its leaders and all members – not least in its relationship with Muslim peoples.

“Acknowledging the historical animosities and even violence between Christians and Muslims,” continued Father Morrill, “the Church urges that the past be left behind so as to foster mutual understanding for the benefit of all humanity, as well as mutual striving to ‘promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.’”

The remaining classes will be held 9:45-10:45 a.m. Sundays in room 303 of St. Albert Hall. They are free and open to all.