[amc] Jesus and Jihad
- From: "Ray Gingerich" <RGingerich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Austin Mennonite Church" <amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 23:30:08 -0500
Nature
I objected to the word "missional." Now that I understand that it is because
Mennonites want to be identified as evangelical that they had to come up with a
word to replace "evangelical." The following story makes that desire quit
understandable. Ray
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Jesus and Jihad
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 17, 2004
f the latest in the "Left Behind" series of evangelical thrillers is to be
believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and
toss them into everlasting fire:
"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the
earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in,
howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent
when the earth closed itself again."
These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they
have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is "Glorious
Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from
the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the
height of piety.
If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and
publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of
non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the
fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and
it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.
In "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are
ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and
filleted bodies of men and women and horses."
"The riders not thrown," the novel continues, "leaped from their horses and
tried to control them with the reins, but even as they struggled, their own
flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated. . . .
Seconds later the same plague afflicted the horses, their flesh and eyes and
tongues melting away, leaving grotesque skeletons standing, before they, too,
rattled to the pavement."
One might have thought that Jesus would be more of an animal lover.
These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists
really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved
into hell?
As my Times colleague David Kirkpatrick noted in an article, this portrayal of
a bloody Second Coming reflects a shift in American portrayals of Jesus, from a
gentle Mister Rogers figure to a martial messiah presiding over a sea of blood.
Militant Christianity rises to confront Militant Islam.
This matters in the real world, in the same way that fundamentalist Islamic
tracts in Saudi Arabia do. Each form of fundamentalism creates a stark moral
division between decent, pious types like oneself — and infidels headed for
hell.
No, I don't think the readers of "Glorious Appearing" will ram planes into
buildings. But we did imprison thousands of Muslims here and abroad after 9/11,
and ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part
because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It's harder to feel empathy for
such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their
tongues and eyes any day now.
I had reservations about writing this column because I don't want to mock
anyone's religious beliefs, and millions of Americans think "Glorious
Appearing" describes God's will. Yet ultimately I think it's a mistake to treat
religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi Arabia.
I often write about religion precisely because faith has a vast impact on
society. Since I've praised the work that evangelicals do in the third world
(Christian aid groups are being particularly helpful in Sudan, at a time when
most of the world has done nothing about the genocide there), I also feel a
responsibility to protest intolerance at home.
Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith?
Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans
were cursed as descendants of Noah's son Ham, and were intended by God to be
enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this
Biblical justification for slavery as God's word — but surely it would have
been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could
have been perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith.
People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions
of nonevangelicals into hell. I don't think we should ban books that say that.
But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate
religious intolerance and violence against infidels.
That's not what America stands for, and I doubt that it's what God stands for.
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"There is no way to peace; peace is the way." A. J. Muste
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