Islam,

“I am sickened by the BS going on by the religious & political right with the center in NYC & Mosques across the country. I wonder if we can get some Austin religious leaders together and make a statement, do a service project together etc. to counter this. This is beginning to pick up national steam and is in need of being addressed here. I plan to do a portion of my sermon on this Sunday. My topic is courage.”

Islam is the Imam of the North Austin Muslim Community Center in Austin, Texas. I consider him a friend and brother. We have shared lunch and coffee together numerous times. I have had him on my radio show “Soul Talk” on several occasions.

I have prayed with and spoken to his religious community. Islam and I had a frank conversation during a worship service at my church entitled, “A Window Into the World’s Most Controversial Religion.” Afterwards we had a congregational Q&A and then a dozen of us treated Islam to lunch for more dialogue.

Islam invited myself, a Rabbi, and a Comparative Religion professor to his Muslim Community Center Tuesday, August 18th for a strategy session around the national mosque controversies. According to Time magazine there are at least six Mosques being vigoursly opposed across America.

I have been marinating my conscience in Jefferson’s bedrock American principle upon hearing so many disgusting, hyperbolic, voices whipping up peoples bigotry and fear.

“Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion…

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

This magnificent revelation became the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

As I walked into the Mosque I couldn’t help but notice there were two trucks parked near the entrance owned by a local company doing work in the building. The logos read, “Liberty Mechanical.”

The Spirit moves in mysterious ways! America’s cardinal canon was confirmed.

I spoke these words to my congregation two days earlier.

“Courage calls us to the maturity, wisdom, and discretion to find a balance between protection and principles. How can we protect ourselves and those we love without renouncing our principles? How would you like your religion to be judged by the worst of its adherents?

Our world is in a major transition. It is changing with 4 G network speed. Change produces fear in us. As humans we often act out of this fear choosing to create the “Other.” We demonize and target them. Courage charts another course.

Gandhi said, “The practice of nonviolence calls forth the greatest courage.” I’m asking you. I’m asking this church to live our faith, our principles. I’m asking your courage to be more embracing than the fear.”

I’m asking the same of you.

Jesus opened his mouth and taught them…“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

I raised my hand in our freshman Bible class at Abilene Christian College. “God seems to be very different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. Did God change? Did God evolve over time?”

Dr. Brecheen answered calmly and reliably. “Oh no.” “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

I was just a 17-year-old kid, and I had no doctor’s degree but it seemed like there was some Olympian religious gymnastics going on here. First of all the text says, “Jesus Christ is the same.”

Now, I was willing to make the Gospel of John leap, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

But beyond that, my professor’s response though sincere lacked basic candor or authenticity. In one scripture God is ordering revenge & genocide and later his Son is teaching us to love and pray for our enemies so we can be like God! Jesus wouldn’t be the first son to rebel against his father, but from all I read they seemed to have a pretty tight oneness.

At this point I committed myself to reading the Bible cover to cover making every effort to forget what my fundamentalist preacher Father and Church had told me it said.

I still have that worn out Harper’s Study Bible, a holy artifact of my spiritual pilgrimage. Before I ever heard of Jung, Campbell, or Process Theology it became clear to me that either God or Humanity had evolved along the way. I have come to believe now we have essentially created God in our own image.

Ever since Emperor Constantine’s dream that envisioned a symbol of Christ on his victorious soldier’s shields Jesus Christ became a warrior God like his Old Testament father. He became the God of Empire.

In more contemporary western history this Christ God imbued and blessed the British and American Empires. The American creed is Manifest Destiny.

How did God’s non-violent conversion come about?

In 1846 a Universalist preacher named Adin Ballou wrote a book titled Christian Non-Resistance. Thoreau read it and penned an essay, Civil Disobedience. Gandhi read Thoreau and was inspired to employ non-violence to bring down the British Empire in India. A Christian Minister named King emulated Gandhi and brought non-violence to the American Empire.

An American Universalist influenced a New England Unitarian Transcendentalist who invigorated an Indian Hindu to set the captive Christ God free from Empire. The zealous Hindu served as a model for an African American Christian to call his nation to conscience through the liberated Jesus.

Here at home the urgent necessity for an evolved non-violent God comes to mind as riled up “Christian nation patriots” throw bricks through windows, spit on elected leaders, hurl vile epithets threaten lives, and “Christian Militiamen” are arrested for plotting to murder police officers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.

All the while our President makes a Sunday surprise visit to Afghanistan with an impassioned defense of the war exhuming the putrefied argument, “We were attacked viciously on 9/11…this is the region where the perpetrators of that crime, al Qaeda, still base their leadership.”

Gandhi declared & then admonished, “Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was non-violence par excellence…I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.”

The Bagram tent revival closed with the ritual Presidential altar call. “God bless you. God bless the United States Armed Forces. And God bless the United States of America.”

Which God will we pledge our allegiance to; the tribal warrior Father, or his “converted” risen Son?