A Scandal Worth Embracing

The winter 2008 issue of the Review of Faith and International Affairs focuses on perspectives on “Islam and Pluralism.” The journal includes a roundtable of responses to A Common Word Between Us and You , the October 2007 letter from Muslim leaders to the Vatican and other Christian leaders and to the controversial Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to “A Common Word Between Us and You,” drafted by several professors at Yale Divinity School and published with dozens of endorsing signatures, including many prominent evangelicals, in the New York Times .

Evangelical theologian John G. Stackhouse tells us Why I Signed the Yale Response to “A Common Word” after noting some hesitation and despite several reservations. I contributed Why I Would Not Have Signed the Yale Response to “A Common Word.”

As I say in my response, I’m inclined to think that the theological issues alone are sufficient to reject the document, or at least to cause Christians to think a lot harder about what might be included in a formal response. But my central concern is the Yale statement’s inexcusable failure to tackle head on the dismal lack of religious liberty in the Islamic world and to challenge the Muslim leader’s disingenuous statement that “justice and freedom of religion are a crucial part of love of the neighbor.” My conclusion:

Evangelicals missed a golden opportunity to call attention to the contradiction between rhetoric designed for Western public consumption and statements made within, and for, the Islamic community. Rather than again pursuing “interreligious dialogue”, they could have taken the opportunity to publicly confront the theologically sanctioned violations of religious liberty in Muslim-majority societies. Evangelicals could have contributed to the public debate had they offered up something like the following: “If you believe that freedom of religion is rooted in love of neighbor (assuming that Christians who affirm the Trinity and deny that Mohammed was a true Prophet can still be considered neighbors in an Islamic state), then please join us in a public endorsement—a “common word”—asserting the right of individual human beings to choose, proclaim, and change their religion without fear of legal sanctions. Won’t you join us in a “common word” calling upon Saudi Arabia, Iran, and all Muslim-majority countries to allow the public free exercise of religion, including the right to convert without legal sanction? Won’t you publicly join us in denouncing all those who have issued fatwas calling for penal sanctions for ‘apostasy’? Will you publicly join us in a “common word” to repudiate by name any past fatwas calling for the discrimination and persecution of ‘apostates’?” Such a statement might well have been “scandalous,” but that would have been a scandal worth embracing.