the aclu and foot baths

In 2005 the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued a Christian football coach who prayed before games, calling it "inherently coercive."

The same chapter now supports Michigan schools installing Muslim footbaths in the restrooms. They insist it's not coercive and doesn't endorse Islam because anyone could use the footbaths. Despite the protests of the Wall Street Journal, I have to say it seems reasonable to me. This is an accommodation of people's religion, rather than publicly drawing other people into religious observances.

If it were more overtly religious, like a Muslim judge posting the Decalogue in his courtroom, I expect the reaction would be the same as if a Christian judge had done it. The ACLU would claim it was a violation of the separation of church and state.

What, you don't think the ACLU has it in for Christians and Christianity, do you?

Despite the popular Chicken Little thinking I've seen in evangelical circles, the sky is not falling. The prevailing influences on our society remain Judeo-Christian, from our literature to our lexicon. I've yet to see any evidence that it is inimcal to the national good to extend a little courtesy to minority religions such as Islam.

I know of one case off the top of my head in New Jersey a few years ago where the ACLU came to the defense of a church organization when it was barred from renting a municipally owned building that had been rented to other nonreligious organizations. The Princeton Borough goverment had rejected the application to rent the space on an errorneous leading of the Establishment Clause; the ACLU pointed out that renting space to some groups and denying it to others based on their religious nature is discriminatory in nature. That's not exactly anti-Christian, is it?

Paranoid thinking is inexcusable when it comes from healthy adults who should know better but choose not to. Culture war mentality is counterproductive, creating as it does tremendous chips on our shoulders and the accompanying hosility toward those we have prejudged to be against us. Do that enough and people who have no problem with us will find one.

Islam and politics

I read an interesting piece in The Star-Ledger some weeks ago. I wish they put their opinion section online; if they did, I would link to this column.

The writer's thesis was that Islam may very well be a great religion, but where it differs from the world's other major religions is that its theological system is inextricably linked to its political system. Muslims not only view Mohammed as a prophet, they view him as the seal of the prophets, the one who modeled for the faithful how to live life. In addition to being a prophet, Mohammed was a statesman, and a warleader as well.

The writer called a number of Muslim advocacy groups in the U.S. and asked them questions about human rights in the Middle East. They went out of their way to avoid saying anything negative about countries like Saudi Arabia where Islamic law is upheld. (He asked one spokesman about the fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie and got this less-than-ringing endorsement of free speech: "It's wrong to demand someone's death for what they wrote, but don't quote me on that.") In fact, he wrote, several prominent Muslims scholars reportedly have said that if Muslims were in the majority here in the United States, it would be their duty to enforce Islamic law here as well.

I've had the privilege to know a number of Muslims, and I've taken the opportunity to learn more about Islam from a Shi'a co-worker of mine. But I do wonder if this writer didn't have a point: Islam may be a religion of peace, but at this point in its history, it's not a religion that co-exists with other faiths well, particularly when it's in the majority -- much like Christianity in the Middle Ages.

In the shadow of 9-11, who is our enemy?

Muslims are not our enemy.

In the days after 9-11, President Bush reminded the country of this important truth, and its bears repeating. Muslims are not our enemy. There are millions of Americans who profess the Muslim faith, and beyond our borders are millions upon millions more appalled by the 9-11 terror attack.

But as Muslims are not our enemy, we owe it to ourselves and to them to ask who or what our enemy really is.

Is the enemy just Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda terrorist network, and other organizations allegedly involved in the Sept. 11 and subsequent terrorist attacks?

Is the enemy fundamentalism? If so, does that apply to other "flavors" of fundamentalism, including Hindu fundamentalism and Chistian fundamentalism?

Is the enemy extremism in general?

What is the spiritual component to what we have been seeing before and after the attacks? What should we be praying for?

Some people are saying that we brought the attacks on ourselves because of our political or economic policies. They fault us for backing Israel despite its troubled relationship with the Palestinians that has led to a yearlong intifadah, and in propping up corrupt foreign governments because of their benefits to us in terms of trade or political leverage, even in the face of horrendous human rights.

Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went as far as blaming homosexuals and abortionists. What should we as a church be repenting of?

I can't speak for anyone else, but as a Christian myself I find it troubling to hear people wishing Osama bin Laden the most exquisite deaths imaginable and gloating over the probable soteriological sceniarios now being played out by the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. My wife and I pray daily for the people in Afghanistan and for the Taliban, for their repentance and for revival in that nation.

Who is our enemy? The answer we settle on will have profound implications for us as a people and for our nation.


Copyright © 2001 by David Learn. Used with permission.