More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea

A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships

David D. Grafton, David D. Grafton

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781725290457
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Islamophobia continues to rise among Americans even within progressive mainline churches, creating a poisonous and dangerous atmosphere for interfaith relations. American Lutherans, however, have been engaged in dialogue with Islam for over a generation. Originally, like other Protestant churches, Lutherans studied Islam as a monolithic religious system for the purpose of proselytizing the Christian faith. Over the years and with experience, American Lutherans came to know Islam as a faith tradition of believers in different cultures and contexts. By developing relationships with Muslim neighbors, some ELCA Lutherans and their international partners have learned that it is possible to witness to the Christian faith and listen to Muslim neighbors for the purpose of understanding and to work for a common cause of justice. More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea documents the "Focus on Islam" that began in the 1980s among ELCA Lutherans and then reflects on more than a generation of engagement with Muslims in various domestic and international contexts. This volume documents where the ELCA has been, what it has learned, and encourages others to continue to develop positive relationships with Muslim neighbors and communities as a Christian activity and to combat Islamophobia.

Section 1: Reflections on American Lutherans and Islam

chapter 1

Beyond Apologetics

The God and Jesus Project

Mark Swanson

God and Jesus: The Project

In December 1986, the Division for World Mission and Inter-Church Cooperation (DWMIC) of the American Lutheran Church (ALC) issued a ninety-four-page document, a simple thermally-bound letter-sized book with a one-piece pink paper cover, with the title God and Jesus: Theological Reflections for Christian-Muslim Dialog.10 The document was the fruit of a project led by the Rev. Dr. Mark W. Thomsen (1931–2014), then director of the DWMIC of the ALC and later the first director of the Global Mission unit of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).11 Its aim, Thomsen immediately tells his readers, was to address questions asked by missionaries and others (GJ 1):

1.How can one witness to the trinitarian faith in such a way that the biblical witness is faithfully proclaimed within a Muslim context?

2.What is the purpose of Christian witness and mission among Muslims?

3.How does one effectively witness to the Christian faith among Muslims?

Thomsen and the DWMIC designed a process for addressing such questions; a task force consisting of experts in relevant fields was assembled and began to meet in 1984. From the beginning, its work was to take place within the framework of a set of missiological principles that guided the work of the DWMIC (and that echo Thomsen’s characteristic theological terminology): “1) contextualization of mission, 2) the finality of Jesus Christ, 3) the nature of the finality of Jesus Christ,12 and 4) the universality of God’s presence, revelation, and activity in the cosmos” (GJ 3–4). Meetings were held, and papers were written and discussed. A draft of the developed document was shared with a variety of people involved in Christian-Muslim relations;13 some of their responses were incorporated into a final draft. The resulting book, consisting of an introduction and seven chapters, was then offered “to missionaries of The American Lutheran Church working within a Muslim context and anyone else who might benefit from such a document” (GJ 1).

A contemporary reader might be tempted to put the document aside after reading a few pages. There are ways in which the project today seems quaintly out of date. The seven specialists and chapter-authors turn out to be a group of white male theology professors in their 50s, all of them Christians, most of them with roots in Midwestern Scandinavian- or German-background Lutheranism.14 The project is aimed at helping overseas missionaries to “witness to the Christian faith among Muslims,” with the hope that some might come to faith in the crucified and risen Jesus (GJ 93–94). Despite this ambitious goal, there is in general a lack of evidence of engagement with actual flesh-and-blood Muslims (with one important exception among the authors, as will be noted later). Abstraction is rampant; we hear about address to “Islam” or about the beliefs of “the Muslim.” There is no sign that any Muslim human being ever participated in the meetings of the task force. Indeed, one senses that when some of the team members thought about Muslims, they thought solely about people on the other side of the world, in “Muslim areas” or “a Muslim region” (GJ 19, 27). The existence of a developing African-American Muslim community in Midwestern cities such as Minneapolis, or the growth of Muslim communities among immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East following the passage of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, was not yet on many of these scholars’ radar. Nor was the presence of Muslim intellectuals at great American universities.

So, it is tempting to toss the document aside, perhaps with a sigh, and congratulate ourselves on how far we have come since 1986. We in (what is now) the ELCA have learned to tend constructive and fruitful relationships with Muslim individuals and institutions, and we strive for mutuality in these relationships (although, for example, it was only in 2019 that the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, where I teach, and the American Islamic College created a truly shared course).15 We have gained in sophistication in the ways we talk about bearing witness to the Gospel in a religiously plural world (as in A Declaration of Inter-Religious Commitment).16 At the very least, in our denominational work, we have learned how to create a task force that is somewhat representative of the diversity within the denomination.

It turns out, however, that God and Jesus is a much richer document than might at first be thought. I believe that reading it is still instructive after thirty-five years. And so I turn to a very selective presentation of the work.

God and Jesus: The Book

1. The Apologetic Move

In his introduction, Mark Thomsen quickly introduces readers to the theological symbol that the entire volume is devoted to exploring (GJ 4–5):

In the very early discussion of the task force, it was decided to explore the possibility of using the theological symbol of the crucified and raised prophet as a means of witnessing to the biblical faith and clarifying how Christians and Muslims believe in one God differently.17 . . . As the task force developed its work, it found that it was possible to witness to the apostolic understanding of the finality of Jesus with the theological symbol of the raised prophet.

So here is the project’s suggestion: that it might be possible to maintain the finality of Christ with faithfulness to Scripture and to speak in a way that might be comprehensible and clarifying in Christian-Muslim conversation, by speaking of Christ as “the raised prophet.”18

A few observations may be made. In the first place, rather than simply a theological symbol, what we have here is an apologetic move, that is, a way of speaking designed to explain the Christian faith to someone outside the faith. First, a promising area for a conversation is identified—here, the centrality of prophets and messengers to the Islamic understanding of how God deals with human beings, reminding and guiding them with warnings and good news. Next, common ground is claimed: Jesus is a prophet in both Christianity and Islam. And then, one can build on this common ground: Jesus is the crucified and raised prophet.

The apologetic move just described is by no means simply a trial balloon or a piece of spaghetti thrown against the wall to see if it sticks. Rather, the task force seeks to give a theological justification for each of its steps and does so in a methodical way. Is the project faithful to Scripture (or, specifically, to the missiological principles of DWMIC)? Is it, Christianly speaking, faithful to speak of Jesus as a prophet, or enough to speak of Jesus as the crucified and raised prophet?

Finally, I note that there may have been within the task force some resistance to the characterization of the project as apologetic. This is strange, given Christian apologetics’ roots in the apologia of 1 Peter 3:15, the defense, or reasoned explanation, that one is to offer to anyone “who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you,” which then is to be done “with gentleness and reverence” (see GJ 69–70). However, I recall discussions in the 80s and 90s in which apologetics was associated with a kind of aggressive proselytism, and Thomsen surely wanted to steer clear of that. If at the very end of the book he can speak, in a homiletic register, about the desire that Muslims “find faith, hope, and love in God’s incredible prophetic embodiment in Jesus” (GJ 93), in the introd...