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A Familiar and Ancient War

When Jesus was young, there were people like John the Baptizer who hated the corruption of the religious establishment, and of the people themselves, who called for people to repent of their own evils, and be baptized as a sign of their new intentions.  Jesus was one of those people.  That is to say, the first Christians were a reform movement of Judaism.

Before long, they were attracting non-Jews to the movement, and the success of the reformers resulted in their becoming what we today would call more European than Middle-Eastern.

The character of Christianity was shaped in those first few centuries.  The documents they left behind reflect that time, those struggles, those ideas and ideals.

That was almost two thousand years ago.  None of us live there.  We live in Europe, or Africa, the Americas, and other places far, far from Jerusalem and Ephesus.  In those places where Christianity is alive and important, there are divisions between those who try to understant what Christianity might mean for this century, and those who believe that we must think as Jesus and Paul and Luke thought in the first century.

The fact is that the people who wrote the Apostles' Creed, or the Nicene Creed, did not think like Jesus or John the Baptizer.  Neither do we.

If you look around, it is the conservatives, or the extreme conservatives--the fundamentalists--who try to call the church back to the 1st century, or the 4th century, or the 16th century, or like whenever it is they think truth was defined; that we should believe in miracles, and faith healing, walking on water, demon possession, divine scriptures, or an infallible priesthood.

Something similar is happening in Islam.  Muhammad lived in the 6th century.  Within Islam, there is a great struggle, as there still is within Christianity, too, between those who want to keep what was, and those who want to come to terms with today.  Osama bin Laden's real enemy is Saudi Arabia, his homeland.  He believes his own country has lost its 6th century roots.  He wants the Saudi monarchy deposed, and Islamic fundamentalists put into power.

It isn't about us.  It is about themselves, just as Christian fundamentalism isn't about anything except the reformers in Christianity.

What is happening to Muslims--a struggle between fundamentalists and reformers--has happened, and is still happening, in Christianity.  Christians had a six century head start; the Crusades, and the Reformation, and secularism.

The mosque on the other side of town is no more the problem than is the church down on the corner.  Unfortunately, religious disputes have often resulted in religious wars, and wars kill people.  

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