Who Is My Neighbour?
By John G. Stackhouse Jr.
Churches can easily lead the way in educating us about the
religions of our non-Christian neighbours
Quick! Tell me everything you know about Islam.
Well, let’s see. Muslims are Arabs from the
Middle East who keep their women covered up.
They were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. They
also come from Pakistan and Afghanistan
where our troops are fighting the Taliban,
who are a kind of Muslim.
They promote suicide bombing, except
for those who promote peace because Islam
is “the religion of peace.” They hate Israel and
the Jews and they’re still angry about the Crusades, so I guess they still hold a grudge against
Christians too.
There are two kinds of Muslims with
names that start with S, but I can’t remember
the exact words right now. Their religious centre is Mecca,
which is in Saudi Arabia, I think, and it has a big black cube
in the middle around which they walk and pray.
Plus some of them are funny: Little Mosque on the Prairie
shows that.
If you were asked to dump out on the table everything you
think you know about Islam, would you do any better?
Most of us wouldn’t because most of what we know about
Islam comes from two sources: entertainment media and
news media.
Since those media cannot be relied upon to provide Canadian citizens with a well-balanced and thorough understanding
of our Muslim neighbours – or, indeed, our Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist or Jewish neighbours – and since our public school systems continue to keep religion out of the curriculum as much
as possible rather than making world religions a mandatory
subject as they should, then what can we Christians do?
Educate ourselves. Our network of churches is poised to
deliver the education our media and school systems are not
delivering. So let’s do it well and lead the way in Canadian
society toward a proper understanding of our cultural differences in our increasingly diverse society.
How? It’s easy. Get the right books and get the right
teachers.
Good books have been generated by evangelical Christians on world religions. Faith Today columnist James
Beverley has published several introductions to religions,
including Religions A to Z: A Guide to the 100 Most Influential Religious Movements (Thomas Nelson). Canadian
Irving Hexham, professor of religious studies at the Uni-
versity of Calgary, has published The Concise Dictionary
of Religion (Regent College Publishing). And
American scholar Gerald McDermott has
recently published The Baker Pocket Guide
to World Religions: What Every Christian
Needs to Know (Baker). (This isn’t the myth-teller Gerald McDermott, by the way, but the
professor.)
More substantially, the textbook I use in
my courses on world religions is Theodore
Ludwig’s The Sacred Paths (Prentice-Hall).
As for the right teachers, most universities
and community colleges have someone who teaches a world
religions course. Pay them to give a seminar in your church.
Better still, partner with other churches and do it together
on a Saturday to maximize the attendance and share the
costs. (Start with Islam or with the religion most important
in your community and then proceed to the other religions
germane to your community. You don’t have to cover them
all, of course. You simply are trying to find out who your
neighbours are.)
Then invite a clergyperson or other spokesperson from
the religion to visit. I don’t recommend you start with clergy
because their business isn’t to teach dispassionately but to
passionately inspire. But once you have a good intellectual
framework established through reading and teaching, you
can then engage the other tradition intelligently and appreciatively.
Knowing about other religions won’t make us all like each
other, of course. Sometimes getting to know someone better
makes you like the person less! There’s nothing sentimental
about this project.
Quite the contrary. We need to know and understand our
neighbours if we have any hope of building a flourishing
society with them, let alone share the gospel with them in a
way they can understand and receive it.
Most of what
we know
about Islam
comes from
two sources:
entertainment
media and
news media
John Stackhouse teaches world religions as the Sangwoo You-tong Chee professor of theology and culture at Regent College,
Vancouver.
