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This year, in St. Louis, the piece de resistance was offered by the Rev. Jerry Vines, former president of the SBC and currently serving as pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. "Today, people are saying all religions are the same," Vines intoned. "They would have us believe Islam is just as good as Christianity. But I'm here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Islam is not as good as Christianity. Christianity was founded by the virgin-born Lord Jesus Christ. Islam was founded by Mohammed, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives, and his last one was a nine-year-old girl." "And I will tell you, Allah is not Jehovah either," Vines continued. "Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist that'll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people." Predictably, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued an angry release condemning Vines's statement. "This type of deeply offensive, bigoted, and inaccurate rhetoric hands a victory to those who wish to drive a wedge between Muslims, Christians, and Jews," CAIR board chairman Omar Ahmad is quoted as saying. CAIR called on President Bush, who addressed the SBC meeting by satellite on June 11, to repudiate Vines's remarks. The SBC, for its part, is standing by the Jacksonville pastor. The Rev. Jack Graham, the newly elected head of the SBC, said Vines's remarks were "accurate." On CNN's Crossfire, Jerry Falwell backed away from the claim that Mohammad was demon-possessed, but said the pedophilia charge was based on historical fact. On his website, Falwell includes a bullet-point history of Mohammed and his supernumerary wives, concubines, and mistresses. Rebuttals of the pedophilia charge have been slippery. Falwell's Crossfire opponent, Hussein Ibish, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, lamely countered that a lot of what happened "1,500 years ago" is "mythological" and "shrouded"; no one knows for sure if it's true, and, anyway, "it's not the point." It is dubious to dismiss Mohammed on this basis, considering the long history of polygamy and concubinage in the Jewish tradition. (As for the demon factor, it's a go-to phenomenon for Baptists and other Evangelicals to explain everything from Mohammad's mountaintop revelation to UFO sightings.) Compared to King Solomon, who is believed to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines, Mohammed's love life looks deprived. Moreover, Arab Muslims traditionally trace their lineage to Ishmael — the offspring of the original patriarch Abraham and his concubine, Hagar. Then there's the possibility that that Mary was as young as 12 when she gave birth to Jesus. Add to that the fact that the God of the Old Testament did instruct Jews to take the lives of thousands of people. Vines and company, then, have what amounts to a credibility problem. But what the sensational aspect of this controversy obscures is the fact that Southern Baptists have real, theological differences with Muslims, Jews, other Christians, and non-Christians generally. It's estimated that two billion people worldwide profess to be Christians — maybe half of whom, according to the strict Evangelical definition of personalized mental loyalty, are true believers. That means they believe the vast majority of humanity is destined for Hell. To say the least, this makes for rather awkward public relations. When this exclusive worldview rears its head, as it tends to do at the SBC's annual meetings, representatives of other faiths cry foul; the agnostic elite looks down its nose in bewilderment and disgust. And charges of "intolerance" and "hate" inevitably follow. But are Evangelicals guilty of such charges because they seek to convert non-Christians? The answer is clearly no. Consider the blossoming association between Evangelical Christians and Israeli Jews, a new "special relationship" that was captured well by a May 23 Wall Street Journal article entitled "How Israel Became A Favorite Cause of Christian Right." "Evangelical Christians across the U.S. are raising millions to benefit Israel," the article notes. National Review's Rod Dreher reported on this months ago. In an informative piece on NRO, Dreher quotes Columbia University's Randall Balmer: "Evangelicals have been very charitable, to say the least, toward Israel, because they believe the Jews are the Chosen People of God, even though they failed to recognize Jesus as Messiah. They believe that God's promises to Israel are still good, and that any nation that doesn't line up with Israel is against God." It's clear, then, that Evangelicals, as a whole, are devoted not to the people of Israel but to the concept of Israel, in the cosmic context of the Book of Revelations. After all, they would consider it their moral duty to try to convert the same Israeli Jews if they were citizens of any other nation. This isn't compassion in the best sense; rather, it's a sort of ecclesiastical solidarity, an abstract connection based on orthodoxy. Dreher observes that some Jews "resent the notion that Israel is worth supporting because it fits into an apocalyptic endgame scenario" they don't buy — "particularly because the dispensationalist script predicts the Jews will convert en masse to Christianity at the end of time." Specifically, it predicts that 144,000 Jews — 12,000 from each of the 12 ancient tribes of Israel — will accept Christ before the world ends, as predicted in Revelations. Those not among the 144,000 are bound for perdition. A peculiar alliance, this. However, it's still true that Evangelicals, on a practical level, seek to convert Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians out of love and genuine concern for eternal destiny, not imperial animosity or condescension, as may have been the case during the Middle Ages. And, as Dreher notes, Evangelicals are reasonably opposed to the common enemy of Jews and Christians alike, radical Islamism. But, again, hatred and intolerance are not their motivation. To be sure, they are engaged by the theological connection — the sense that biblical prophecy is playing out before their eyes, vindicating their literal-truth reading of Revelations. On a more visceral level, there's the sense that spiritual kindred are being victimized by infidels. But in no way can this be characterized as hatred or bigotry. Many pro-Israel Evangelicals with a taste for eschatology or End Times theories — of the sort described in the bestselling Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins — may not even be aware of the origins of the Israel they devotedly support. They'd be surprised to learn that Israel, in its modern incarnation, was founded in large part by atheists and socialists. (As Karen Armstrong noted in The Battle For God, a history of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalism, the messianic form of Zionism burgeoned later, especially after the Six Day War of 1967, when it seemed Israel was unstoppable, indeed divinely sponsored. But after the hard-fought and sobering victory in the 1973 war against Egypt and Syria, this triumphalism began to fizzle.) While debating Falwell on Crossfire, Hussein Ibish, perhaps with the Evangelical-Israel alliance in mind, tried mightily to equate the SBC's view of Mohammad with anti-Semitism. After all, isn't it ironic that many Evangelicals who are pro-Israel today not so long ago claimed that Jews, in concert with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, secretly run the world? Aren't these the readers of Pat Robertson's loony New World Order tome? While this may be true in some cases, it's a banal and simplistic characterization. In their own way, Southern Baptists and other Evangelicals are philosemites. You will find more Old Testament apologists among their number than among mainstream Jews, for example. And as Tevi Troy wrote in a thoughtful piece in The New Republic about his former boss John Ashcroft, "Jews sometimes seem to view members of the Christian right as contemporary versions of the Christian zealots who oppressed Jews in 18th-century Ukraine or 15-century Spain. But I see them as more like the Puritans, who encountered religious prejudice in England and braved death to come to the New World, where they could be 'fanatics' in peace." But they're more than merely passive "fanatics." They're practical, if sometimes misguided, defenders of a faith they believe is exclusively true. And, unlike many Muslims today, they are indeed profoundly peaceful, as Troy suggests. Christians of all stripes laid down the sword long ago. Isn't it time for Mohammad's followers to do the same? — Scott Galupo is a writer living in Alexandria, Va. |
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again, the tribunes of sophistication are shocked that Southern Baptists
still believe what they've believed for hundreds of years. The Southern
Baptist Convention (SBC) holds an annual meeting and without fail, someone
says something that scandalizes somebody: gays, feminists, Catholics,
mainline Protestants, Jews — the SBC cuts a wide swath.
