Mark Brett, Whitley College

Flinders Street Baptist Church, Adelaide, October 12th 2003

The anniversary of the Bali bombing is a fitting day to raise some of the key questions about Christian approaches to religious conflict – not just conflict between religions, but we also need to reflect on the conflict between religions and the advocacy of secular states. It is commonly thought by many Muslims, for example, that the very idea of a secular state is a compromise of faith. If faith covers all areas of life, then on this view, it should cover politics as well. In general terms, this view is shared by at least one of the ministers at my church in Melbourne, Tim Costello, and as an Old Testament scholar, I can only agree. To argue that God does not really care about social and political matters, since spiritual issues are on a different plane, would be to compromise the central concern of the Israelite prophets. Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah would turn in their graves; that was precisely the point they insisted on against anyone who thought that faith could be separated from social and economic issues. ‘I hate, I despise your religious feasts’, says Amos 5. ‘Away with the noise of your hymns’. ‘But let justice roll down like a river’. If we stand in the prophetic tradition, then we cannot but agree with those Muslims who say that politics and economics are important to God, and people of faith cannot leave those issues to one side.

But having agreed with the idea that authentic faith addresses all of life, we have at the same time, apparently, sided with both Muslim and Jewish extremists who argue the same thing. But the implications they draw are simply incompatible: each extreme in the Middle East wants a fully Islamic state, or a fully Jewish state, and the minorities who do not conform to the central religious vision are left to one side, without being able to participate fully in the national life. This is exactly the outcome that our Baptist ancestors rejected; they rejected the idea of religious uniformity and went to gaol for it. They advocated the separation of church and state, and maintained the principle of religious freedom, yet without compromising the prophetic insight that God cares for all of life. How is this paradox to be maintained? How can faith be radically comprehensive without requiring us, on analogy with Muslim and Jewish extremists, to propose the construction of Christian states?

We cannot, and should not, turn the clock back to Christendom, but the secularist model of states is also problematic if it means that religious commitments are to be banished from public life. Our Baptist heritage points in another direction, which is to argue that no single religious vision is to have a monopoly. And in particular, no particular religious vision should be imposed by force. Our tradition commits us to a diversity of faiths, not to the banishment of faith from politics, economics or culture. There is a danger in modern Christian history, which I would concede to Muslim and Jewish extremists, that concessions to secularity have often amounted to simply submitting to a homogenizing dominant culture – which in the West is effectively the religion of consumerism and global capital. Consumerism is not imposed by explicit force, but it seeps more insidiously into the fabric of everything, undermining human dignity for the poor and marginal who cannot live up to the latest commodified vision of happiness.

We actually have a similar problem in the history of Christian missions where there has been a persistent sleight of hand: we distinguished between faith and culture, and what this actually meant in practice was that Christians in the Third World have often had to submit to the dominant culture of the Western missionary. The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf is one among many in recent years who has shown us a way to repent of our thoughtless colonialism: he has emphasized that the body of Christ should not neglect cultural differences but make space for them. The apostle Paul’s insight that ‘In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek’ implies a limiting of powerful ethnicities and affirmation for the weak. The privilege previously reserved for the Jew was, through Christ, now extended to the Greek. Insofar as the church lives in the spirit of Christ, it will therefore seek in every place to overcome the distortions of power and dominance. As the Pauline scholar Sze-kar Wan has rightly argued, the body of Christ expresses trust in God ‘not by erasing ethnic and cultural differences but by combining these differences into a hybrid existence’.

It follows then, that a primary calling for all Christians is to seek out other Christians and to love them – not just on Sunday mornings in relatively homogenous congregations, but in all the world. That will mean listening to Christians in Baghdad, or Bethlehem, or Beirut, finding out how they see the world, discerning how their views of the world differ from what we see in the dominant media machines like CNN, and working out what we are going to do about that difference.

We will need to learn to appreciate that different cultures and communities have different conceptions of freedom. It may even be necessary to agree with many Muslim clerics that Western conceptions of freedom are often just secular recipes for social disaster. We have heard a lot about Muslim fundamentalism lately, but there is also something fundamentalist about imposing ideas of freedom and democracy without reference to the particularities of a cultural context. If we are going to move beyond the ‘clash of fundamentalisms’, we will need to refuse stories which divide the world into the ‘axis of evil’ and the ‘axis of good’. In order to do this, we will need to overcome the powerful forces which are bent on stereotyping and demonizing the other. This is one of the messages of a delicately titled, recent book called Why do People Hate America? in which Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies speak about the ‘knowledgeable ignorance’ of the Western media. An American media arm like CNN is indicative of a much wider problem: no society is more blessed than the US with the means of communication, the resources to learn and to project ideas, yet the enormous infrastructure of the American media manages to stifle intellectual dissent and to promote an intensely self-absorbed perspective on the world.

The Israelite prophets consistently condemned the self-absorption of their own communities, even when this inward-looking attitude was based on religious convictions about election. Amos preached judgment against those who imagined that their special status before God absolved them of concern for the poor (Amos 2:6 – 3:2). Jeremiah argued that the just treatment of refugees or ‘resident aliens’ was a litmus test of the common good. The temple of the Lord is no refuge, he argued, and worship is meaningless, unless the people of God do these things: ‘If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place’ (Jer 7:5-7). If a nation’s treatment of refugees is a litmus test of faithfulness to God’s standards, as Jeremiah suggests, then I suspect that the current regime in Australia has failed this test. And if we were to follow Jeremiah’s logic, then we have no divine protection.

The prophets went even further when they claimed that it is not enough to have justice within one’s own community, caring for the poor and refugees within our own gates, because ultimately there is no genuine peace or shalom unless there can be justice within and between the nations. Think, for example, about the famous passage from Isaiah 2:2-5:

In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’ The torah will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.

In effect, this vision of God’s future suggested that there can be no authentic peace until there is world peace, when the well-being of all peoples on earth have been brought under God’s care. And this is the vision of global peace that sustains the later prophets.

There is, however, a dangerous fantasy emerging in our time which threatens to co-opt Isaiah’s vision and turn Jerusalem into Washington. There are a lot of people in the Middle East, and not just Muslims, who are all too aware of the links between Washington and Jerusalem, between Jewish supporters of the state of Israel and the highly influential Christian Zionists whose view of prophecy suggests that they should support Israel and be deaf to the cry of Palestinian Christians. This collaboration between Christian and Jewish Zionism has been most helpfully described by Colin Chapman, especially in the second edition of his book Whose Promised Land? It is no accident that Chapman, who is an evangelical Christian, used to teach Islamic studies in Beirut. The value of this book lies precisely in its representation of Palestinian Christian perspectives for an evangelical audience, perspectives which are easily dismissed by the dominant Christian culture in North America.

Zionist fundamentalism is the antithesis of what was preached by Isaiah and Jeremiah. Both these prophets called for a radical trust in Yahweh, and both warned that Jerusalem will be judged if it does not live up to God’s standards of justice. That is not an unconditional right to the state of Israel.

If Jeremiah were to preach this message in Jerusalem today, he would not have to change it very much. He would sound remarkably like the group called ‘Rabbis for Human Rights’: deal justly with each other; do not oppress the alien; do not shed innocent blood. The Rabbis for Human Rights have repeatedly argued that the oppression of Palestinians is contrary to the Torah. They have been known to do quirky things like plant trees around Palestinian towns when the Israeli army has cut them down — they were just doing what Deuteronomy 20:19-20 says they should do: don’t include trees in your battles.

The advocacy of justice for Palestinians has a powerfully authentic ring to it when it comes from Jewish groups like this, and there are many of them. Among the most significant is the Tikkun organization, headed by the American rabbi Michael Lerner. Rabbi Lerner has been a consistent critic of the atrocities committed by the Israeli Defence Force and of the ways in which many Jews live in denial of what is going on. His view is that there should be an international consortium to provide reparations for Palestinian refugees and economic support for a Palestinian state. He thinks that there should be an international tribunal to try crimes against humanity committed by both Israelis and Palestinian terrorists, but there also needs to be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in Israel. And all of this is Zionist in the sense that he thinks it the best way to secure the peace of Israel.

Michael Lerner could be considered a contemporary advocate of Jeremiah’s theology, but this theology could be applied, beyond the Middle East, to any policy which measures everything only through the lenses of national interest. How would Jeremiah’s message sound if it were preached in Washington? Deal justly with each other; do not oppress the alien; do not shed innocent blood. How would that sound if it were preached in Canberra? Deal justly with each other; do not oppress the alien; do not shed innocent blood.

In his recent book The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, the British Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has urged us to re-think the internationalist vision of Isaiah — in which all the nations stream up to Zion. If we are to avoid the clash of fundamentalisms, he argues, we need to work towards a vision of the God of justice who stands above us all, ‘teaching us to make space for one another, to hear each other’s claims and to resolve them equitably. Only such a God would be truly transcendent. capable of being comprehended in any human language, from any single point of view’. ‘Those who are confident in their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faith of others’. In this time of great insecurity, it is this kind of confident faith that we need. It is this kind of confidence which can allow for religious toleration, as our Baptist forebears did. We cannot afford the kind of narrow, political wisdom which can only see the world through the lens provided by national interest. We need the kind of divine wisdom that transcends national borders not through military aggression, cultural superiority or economic heartlessness, but through the grace and justice of a God who longs to liberate all of creation.

For those with an eye to detail, it is worth pointing out that Isaiah’s vision of reconciliation in Isaiah 2:2-5 is repeated word for word in Micah 4:1-4, but the Micah text has a slightly different conclusion. Instead of talking about the house of Jacob walking in the light of YHWH, Micah concludes his version by referring to people who are not Israelites: ‘All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of YHWH our God for ever and ever’ (Micah 4:5). This conclusion to the oracle is much more pluralistic in its emphasis, even when it is the action of God in Jerusalem which is the catalyst for world peace.

Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom points out the inter-relationship in these prophetic visions between justice and peace. In both texts, the order of events is important: justice is the foundation of peace. And the source of the justice is God: YHWH is the one who adjudicates between the nations. It is equally important to notice that it is not Israel’s law which is imposed in some imperialistic way on all the nations; it is the ‘torah’, in the sense of ‘instruction’, and the ‘word’ of YHWH which will bring disarmament. The law of Moses, which is so important in shaping Israelite identity is not the instrument which brings ultimate justice and peace. The justice of God lies behind the Mosaic law and goes beyond it; ultimately it is a gift to all the nations and not just to Israel. Micah 4 even presumes that God’s rule in the last days will allow people to worship other gods.

The Judaism at the time of Jesus was more resolutely monotheist, but the Gospels do not entertain the idea that any earthly power might have the right to impose their own vision of justice on others. Even beyond the somewhat radical suggestion that Christians should not kill each other, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests that we are to love our enemies, and to pray for them, because this reflects the character of God. God makes the ‘sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’ (Matt. 5:44-45; cf. Luke 6:27-36). And if we are to love our enemies in the way that God does, the parallel in Luke 6 concludes that we should not be judging them (v.37). If we were to bring this teaching to bear on the war in Iraq, it would provide an entirely different perspective on God’s action in history than the one provided by the Bush administration’s invocations of God.

The Sermon on the Mount brings to mind the Christians who went to Baghdad for the war, just to be with the people. There was, for example, a long-time TEAR supporter from NSW named Donna Mulhearn, who became a member of the Human Shields group. I’ll just read a section of one of her letters which appeared on the TEAR website, and I’m leaving out some of the more horrific details:

Dark, black clouds hang over Baghdad – smoke from the bombs or from the oil wells that are burning. Air raid sirens are bellowing as I type.

We went to the Catholic hospital this afternoon across from the church. It was a sobering visit. We spoke to Sister Marianne…a short, gentle elderly woman. She told us that there have been several expectant mothers who have lost their babies in the womb because of extreme stress. So here we have this attack killing the unborn. Tell me that that is not a crime against humanity.

Our talk was interrupted by huge blasts that almost knocked us off our feet…the noise rocked my eardrums. Sister Marianne also told us about the effect that the bombing is having on small children around Baghdad. Many are coming in very sick, mostly severe vomiting because of the intense fear. So now we have the smug, rich powerful leaders of the world forcing innocent children into such a state of fear that they are physically sick…. and no doubt emotionally damaged for years to come… I wonder if they are proud of this attack. I wonder what they think they will achieve.

Sister Marianne eagerly took up our offer to help in any way we could. So we have been placed on a roster to come in to the hospital each day. I told her I’m not trained in medicine, but she smiled and said, just be here to comfort the women and children, that’s what we need. So now I will go to St Raphael’s Hospital to cry with the women and try to comfort the children.

People say that I am naive to be here. They say my mission is a waste of time, that I am foolishly misled. Well, if showing compassion to a fellow human being is naive and foolish then so be it.

Donna Mulhearn is a Christian, but her love of neighbour, expressed in Baghdad, did not distinguish between Christians and Muslims. She cared for the victims of terror, whoever they were. Her example reflects, like the Sermon on the Mount, the indiscriminate love of God. In contrast to the traditions of 1 John, Matthew sees the perfection of love precisely in the love of enemies (Matt. 5:48), not in love within the Christian community: ‘If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your sisters and brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?’ (Matt. 5:46-47). If Donna Mulhearn can be described as naïve, then so can the Sermon on the Mount.

There is another inspiring woman, from Melbourne, whose life has been a similar example of God’s indiscriminate love, beyond the boundaries of the Christian community. Christine Mallouhi married into a Syrian family and has lived for the last 27 years in a number of Muslim countries. She and her husband, Mazhar, currently direct a publishing group in Lebanon which produces books in Arabic explaining Christ to Muslims. This is a difficult task, she says, when the Christian West is seen as generally immoral and supportive of a regime which has humiliated the Palestinian people for decades. Most Muslims in the Middle East know the God of Jesus Christ through George Bush’s bombs, and they know the God of Moses through the oppression of Palestinians. If there is one thing that Muslims probably have in common, it is not the militant interpretation of the doctrine of jihad; it is a concern for the unjust fate of Palestinians.

In a paper written for Zadok magazine last year, Christine claims that the Palestinian issue has become a significant element in legitimating any aggression against the West, including terrorism. Saddam Hussein, for example, had posters all over Iraq describing himself as a father of Palestinian resistance, and of course, Osama bin Laden also lays claim to the Palestinian cause – although it should be noted than bin Laden would have no truck with the secularist, American-sponsored regime of Saddam Hussein. Only a just settlement for the Palestinians will remove what Christine calls ‘the legitimate link from the terrorists’ cause’. In her book, Waging Peace on Islam, she attempts to bridge the chasm created by stereotypes on both sides. Citing Luke 6:27-36, she emphasizes that Jesus refused to fight evil with evil, and challenged his disciples to overcome evil with good. If we treat others the way they treat us, or only show compassion and anger when our friends and family suffer: how are we different from others?

In the Sermon on the Mount, a radical trust in God provides the foundation for the love of enemies. In Ephesians 2, the peace given by Christ is exemplified in the breaking down of ethnic conflict between Jew and Gentile. It follows that wherever there is ethnic conflict in the world, we should hope for a Christian spirituality at work, not in the managed negotiation of conflicting self-interests, but in a ministry of reconciliation modeled on the self-giving love of Christ.

At the present moment, I would suggest, the key conflict is not between Jew and Greek, but between all the children of Abraham, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, and those of us who see ourselves as Abraham’s seed through being part of the body of Christ. The task of Christian peacemakers is to recover the message of Genesis that there is no conflict between the blessing of Isaac and the blessing of all the families of the earth. In Genesis 21, Ishmael too is to become a ‘great nation’, just as Abram was promised in Genesis 12, and it should come as no surprise that the Palestinian people might lay claim to such a promise. The view that all the land promises of the Hebrew Bible have been superceded by spiritual reality of the Kingdom of God too easily leads to the idea that land rights are not really important, which in turn plays into the colonialists’ understanding of providence that land rights belong to the dominant culture. The insight of the prophets is irrevocable: might does not make right.

How are we to overcome terror with trust? A minimal suggestion: follow Jeremiah’s approach, and don’t support policies which lead to the shedding of innocent blood. Rediscover our family connections with Islam, and find ways to talk with Muslims. It was such a pleasure to read in a recent edition of the Good Weekend the delightful story of the friendship between Stan Pedler and Balfour Ross. Stan first met Balfour on Thursday island when ‘it wasn’t the done thing to have too much to do with Balfour because he was that strange Muslim chappie in town’. Stan doesn’t think much of Islam, and although Balfour won’t be going to heaven if he dies a Muslim, Stan says ‘I’ll do my best to put in a good word for him with God when my time comes.’ Balfour, on the other hand, while deeply affectionate towards his friend, is amazed that his Christianity has him believing that the world is only 6000 years old. The Islamic fanatics are more like Stan. Stan believes the European Union reflect the 10 horns – or is it 12? – of the Beast. Come the Rapture, the Antichrist will be the leader of the EU, enthroned by some secret Catholic conspiracy. Stan gets most of this stuff from the Internet. He’s typical of what we call in Malaysia the frog under the coconut shell: he croaks an deafens himself, but outside the shell you can’t hear him. Can he be saved? Of course, God has the power to be merciful, and his mercy is beyond our comprehension.

While I did wish that Stan had some the theological skills of his Muslim friend, I was heartened to read about a friendship that still works, while preserving such contrary points of view. Good on you Stan; you’re my kind of fundamentalist.

But then there’s a maximal implication of radical trust, if we are to take Jesus’ line: be compassionate with everyone you find, including people who don’t seem very deserving, and especially with your enemies. Overcome fear with the love which has already been given to you by the Christ who brings peace. As 1 John 4:18 puts it, ‘perfect love drives out fear’. And Michael Leunig expands this with profound simplicity: ‘There are only two languages, love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear’.

In her book, Waging Peace on Islam, Christine Mallouhi points to St Francis Assisi as the great alternative to the Crusaders. He went without weapons and without fear to preach to Muslims, and he was eventually received with respect. In an uncanny echo of that saintly example, a Muslim writer Ziauddin Sardar concluded his book Why do People Hate America with the prayer of St Francis: O Master, grant that I may never seek So much to be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved, as to love, with all my soul.

Sadar’s advice was to America, but it could apply to all of us. Put aside the crusader’s sword and unwrap yourself from national flags. Let us envelop ourselves instead in the prayer of St Francis.

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996) 47-48; cf. John Barclay, ‘Neither Jew nor Greek: Multiculturalism and the New Perspective on Paul’ in M.G. Brett (ed.), Ethnicity and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1996/2002), 209-14.

Sze-kar Wan, ‘Does Diaspora Identity imply some sort of Universality? An Asian-American Reading of Galatians’ in Fernando Segovia (ed.), Interpreting Beyond Borders (The Bible and Postcolonialism, 3; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 126-27.

Ziaudden Sadar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Why do People Hate America? (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), 10-11.

See, e.g., Jim Wallis, ‘Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush’s Theology of Empire’ Sojourners Magazine Sept/Oct (2003). Available at sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magainzine.article&issue=soj0309&article=030910

Colin Chapman, Whose Promised Land? The Continuing Crisis over Israel and Palestine (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2nd edn 2002).

See, e.g., Michael Lerner, ‘The Psychodynamics of Denial about the Middle East, and How to Break Through It’ Tikkun July/August (2002), 7-11.

Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (London: Continuum, 2002/2003), 65-66.

Jacob Milgrom, ‘”Let your love for me vanquish your hatred for him”: Non-violence and Modern Judaism’, in D.L. Smith-Christopher (ed.), Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Non-violence in Religious Traditions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998), 131-32.

Christine Mallhouhi, ‘Waging Peace on Islam’ Zadok Perspectives 77 (2002), 11-12. On the intellectual roots of Islamic terror organizations, see Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), especially pp.60-102 on Sayyid Qutb’s critique of secularism.

Christine Mallouhi, Waging Peace on Islam (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2002); cf. Paul-Gordon Chandler, ‘Mazhar Mallouhi: Gandhi’s Living Christian Legacy in the Muslim World’ International Bulletin of Missionary research 27 (2003), 54-59.

Robert Schreiter, Reconciliation: Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), 25-26.

See Mazhar Mallouhi et al. (eds.), The Beginnings of the World and Humanity: A Contemporary Study in Genesis [in Arabic] (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar Al Jil, 2001), pp.149-367. This contains a revised version of arguments presented in Mark Brett, Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity (London: Routledge, 2000).

See Keith Whitelam’s account of modern historians of the Bible who have also adopted the rhetoric of an ’empty land’ (terra nullius), seeing ancient Palestine as empty of a population capable of political organization. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, 1996), 43-45; cf. Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 1995/2001), 89-98.

‘Two of Us’ Good Weekend August 23 (2003), p.18.

Michael Leunig, Common Prayer (Blackburn: HarperCollins, 1990).