Religious Cooperation on this Side of the Atlantic

Attacks on minority religions in America are on the rise.

There have been several mosque burnings in recent months, and hundreds of tombstones have been vandalized in Jewish cemeteries in the last couple of weeks. More than a hundred synagogues have received bomb threats since the start of the year although, thankfully, there have been no bombs. These may be the acts of just a few individuals, but America’s religious communities have come out in force to support each other.

American believers of all stripes have mobilized to support targeted religions. Christians from a variety of denominations have organized and attended rallies for religious freedom, especially in support of the freedom to worship the divine as one sees fit. Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans and Baptists, along with Hindus, Muslims and Jews -- the list could go on -- have participated, and their leaders made speeches calling for acceptance of all religions.

The Rev. Cody Sanders wrote in this month’s Baptist News Global, “If we don’t act now in solidarity with our Muslim siblings, we’ve got no legitimate reason to claim we are followers of Jesus.”

Within this large umbrella of interfaith support of our country’s smaller religions is these religions’ support of each other. As their communities and institutions have been attacked, Jews and Muslims have been supporting each other and working together.

When a mosque was burned in Victoria, Texas, Jews opened their synagogue to the Muslims as a worship space. When another was burned in Tampa, Fla., local Jews contributed extensively to the fund for replacing it.

In both Philadelphia and St. Louis, where hundreds of Jewish tombstones were knocked over by vandals, Muslims organized to help the Jewish community restore the cemeteries. As bomb threats against Jewish community centers have increased, Muslim organizations have been quick to condemn such threatening actions, as have representatives of Christianity and other religions.

These supportive activities are not just one-off events, but parallel a growing movement within each religion here in the USA to participate in activities that improve understanding and friendship with each other. In some communities, Jews have attended Muslim Friday prayers while, in others, Muslims have attended synagogue services. Elsewhere, there have been “teach-ins,” where Jews and Muslims learn about each other’s religious beliefs and practices, seeking to understand the differences and identify aspects of their commonalities -- including important moments of shared history.

This is what the USA’s legal emphasis on religious freedom means. It means that our nation is one of the few places in the world where the country and its government provide members of all faiths (and no faith) the freedom to worship and believe as they see fit. It allows for interreligion cooperation and friendship. Rather than elevating one religion over another, the government allows room for all and for all to work together (or not) as they wish. While short-term political surges may temporarily privilege one religious movement, these are always tempered by our legal and constitutional foundation.

The steps American Muslims and Jews have taken toward cooperation are only beginning to take fruit, but they provide hope in light of the ongoing religious problems in the Middle East, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There, politics and political advantage have overshadowed religious discussion, cooperation and freedom.

In part, this is because in all countries involved, the government supports one religion over the other and, often, the religion becomes a weapon in each government’s arsenal. The arguments, violence and sometimes military conflict largely prevent the development of religious tolerance, understanding and cooperation, which could lead ultimately to peace.

Moreover, the cooperation of the two religions in the USA is reminiscent of Jewish-Muslim cooperation during Muhammad’s time. Jews were citizens of Medina when that town decided to invite Muhammad to govern them. And, although they did not convert to Islam as Muhammad hoped, Jews cooperated with his rule, and he remained respectful of them throughout his life. This should not be surprising since Islam believes in Judaism’s God.

It is only quite recently, in the upheavals of the 20th century that resulted in the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, that Muslims of the Middle East came to hate Jews. Again, this has more to do with Israel’s occupying land formerly held by Muslims and still claimed by them than with religious differences.

In the end, although we should not read too much into recent cooperative and supportive activities between American Muslims and Jews, we should be proud that our country provides a place for such rapprochement. Perhaps members of the two religions will learn about each other in ways that might lead to positive developments elsewhere.

Climate Change Prediction and Biblical Prophecy

The world’s two largest energy-producing countries and greenhouse gas emitters signed a deal this week to reduce carbon emissions. President Barack Obama agreed to cut U.S. carbon emissions about a quarter by 2025 and China’s President Xi Jinping agreed to increase to 20 percent the share of his country’s production of power without the use of fossil fuels by 2030.

This is significant, especially given recent climate reports. This month, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed that the worldwide mean temperature will increase by more than 3 degrees by 2100. The Pentagon recently issued its “2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap,” laying out changes to military strategy needed to address effects of climate change. These include rising global temperatures and sea levels, changing precipitation patterns and increasing frequency or intensity of extreme weather.

Despite the high-level science and the policy changes, a survey taken by Yale University in 2013 indicated only two-thirds of Americans think climate change is happening and only a half think it will affect them.

And American political culture contains a large segment of climate-change deniers, a belief promoted by the media and politicians. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s negative response to the American-Chinese agreement is case-in-point.

Why is this? Because climate change is about predicting the future, and that is always an uncertain process. Since the future has not happened, it is imaginary and cannot be proven. While scientists and policy makers can talk about past and present trends, the extension of those trends into the future is a tricky and inexact process.

But, perhaps more importantly, climate change just happens to be the wrong kind of process for effective predictive warnings.

A look at Old Testament prophecy in its historical context indicates the problem: prophets talk about current circumstances. They ask for near-term action. Haggai and Zechariah reveal that God wants the Jerusalem Temple rebuilt, and within 5 years, the governor and high priest build it. Jonah goes to Nineveh, after he escapes from the whale, and prophesies that God will destroy the city unless its inhabitants repent. They do and God relents.

In 1 Kings 22, the prophet Micaiah prophesies to the allied kings of Israel and Judah they will lose the impending battle if they fight. They ignore him, charge into battle, and are defeated.

So, effective biblical prophecy speaks about the short-term and seeks to bring about a particular action. Climate change prediction does neither of those things.

On the one hand, climate change predictions look too far into the future. Citing temperature rise in 2100, three generations away, does not inspire an immediate response. It is too far away to get worried about it. Even 2025 and 2030 are beyond many people’s “worry horizon.”

On the other hand, when climate change discusses the short-term, it is too late to do anything about it. The Pentagon’s report focuses on how to handle the effects of climate change already taking place. Its tone is “this is happening, deal with it.”

When NASA tells us that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have been since 2000, it has already happened. And will reducing carbon emissions now do anything to prevent temperature rise in the next four or five years? No, the carbon that will cause that rise already is in the air.

So, climate change predictions are either too far into the future to inspire action or they are too near-term to affect the outcome. The processes by which human emissions are transformed into climate change simply take too long.

Does this mean that we should do nothing? Of course not. The Chinese-American agreement is important and will set the stage for further agreements at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.

This column simply aims to lay out the PR problem facing policy makers who wish to lessen the coming impact of climate change. Perhaps they should take a page from the biblical prophets’ playbook. They should promote actions people can take now that will have an impact within the next few years, rather than in the next few decades or centuries.

Wanted: An American Islam

We readily speak of “American Christianity” and “American Judaism” and are even wrapping our minds around the notion of “American Buddhism,” particularly on the West Coast. So why does the notion of “American Islam” strike us as strange?

Part of the reason, of course, stems from 9/11 and the events and politics following in its wake. But as the fourth (or is it now the third?) largest religion in the United States, it should be more settled than that. More than 3 million Americans believe in Islam, about the same number as American adherents of Buddhism, and only a million or two less than Judaism. So why does Islam not yet seem settled? Perhaps because it is only beginning to develop as an American religion.

Living in a land of immigrants, Americans have always had a back-and-forth relationship with religious centers abroad. At America’s founding, European Christian churches supported their followers by sending missionaries and preachers to lead them. But many of our earliest institutions of higher education were founded to educate the clergy: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, St. Mary’s in Baltimore, and William and Mary. Americans wanted their own religious leaders, so Catholic and protestant churches opened colleges and seminaries to supply them.

America’s Christians wanted more than trained clergy; they also wanted their lay people to know the details of their religion and to practice it. Toward this end, the churches invested in education and founded primary and secondary schools. Since there was little state-sponsored education in America prior to the 20th century, these schools often provided the only education available.

When Jews began settling in America in large numbers, they followed the same pattern. After drawing upon foreign-trained rabbis for a century or so, Jewish synagogues joined together to found Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1875 for training rabbis. Other Jewish seminaries and yeshivas were created in the ensuing decades. At the same time, Jewish high schools and educational programs sprang up across the U.S. in areas of Jewish settlement.

At the start of the 20th century, Buddhism followed a similar pattern. Asian-trained monks had come to the United States during the 19th century, along with the waves of Asian immigration. After 1900, some founded sanghas (Buddhist monasteries) here and started to train others, Buddhists of both Asian and European ancestry, in the monastic form of leadership common in Buddhism. Buddhist schools also became widespread, especially on the West Coast, to educate Buddhist youth.

How is Islam doing in its Americanization process? It has gotten a good start, but has not moved very far along yet. While Muslim primary and secondary schools have arisen in regions with larger numbers of immigrants, only one or two institutions of higher education have developed, such as Zaytuna College.

However, there are no seminaries dedicated to the education of imams for mosque leadership. Muslim communities either bring in foreign-trained imams or follow dedicated lay leaders. That means there are no American institutions where Muslims can gain the education and training they need to lead a mosque and its congregation.

Religions always reshape themselves to fit into the nation in which they are practiced. When Judaism entered England in the late 1600s, for example, one of the first things it did was create the post of Chief Rabbi, imitating Anglicanism’s Archbishop of Canterbury.

Religious reshaping does not come overnight; it comes from a process of debate and discussion by religious authorities. Muslim seminaries would provide a location for that discussion by religious clergy who understand America’s social dynamics and can think about how Islam fits into them. And, more importantly, those clergy can then train others.

The lack of Islamic seminaries in the U.S. means there are no training programs through which an American Islam can be formed and passed on. American Muslims recognize this need and have begun taking steps to address it. In Connecticut, Muslims have worked with Hartford Seminary (Christian) to establish the first certified training program for Muslim chaplains to supply the requirements of the military and hospitals. At Claremont University, a master’s degree has been established to train Muslim educators and other community workers.

What America needs, however, is a full-fledged Islamic seminary (or two) so that our Muslim citizens can have their religious necessities and practices met by Americans who have been trained here -- just like America’s other larger religions.

Thanks to the University of Wyoming's Seth Ward for providing background for this essay. Read some of his remarks at http://drsethward.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/on-teaching-islam-in-the-united-states/.