WITH GOD, BUSH IS ON THE RIGHT SIDE
Jack Miles, Los Angeles Times, 12/12/03
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miles12dec12,1,3788700.
story
(Jack Miles is a MacArthur Fellow and author of “God: A Biography”
(Vintage, 1996). A longer version of this article appeared on
Beliefnet.com.)
During his trip to Britain last month, President Bush scandalized some
of
his evangelical fans by innocently asserting that Muslims and
Christians
worship the same God.
Evangelical theologian Richard Land, speaking for the scandalized,
rebuked
the president for what Land calls playing “theologian in chief.” In
Land’s
view, “when President Bush concludes that Muslims and Christians
worship
the same God, he is simply mistaken.”
In my view, Bush is, at least on this point, a better theologian than
his
critics.
Though Land neither confirms nor denies that Jews and Christians
worship
the same God, surely he would concede that the first Christians - Jews
all
- did not understand Christian discipleship to entail switching to a
new
God. But what of the first Muslims? If they too understood themselves
to be
worshiping the god of the Jews, then were they not necessarily
worshiping
the god of the Christians as well?
The Koran identifies Allah as none other than the God to whom Abraham
offered “submission” (or “islam”) in the episode Jews and Christians
know
so well from Genesis 22, the story of the binding of Isaac.
As the paradigmatic Muslim, or “submitter,” Abraham then made the
original
paradigmatic pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims believe, accompanied by the
very
son, Ishmael, whom Allah had rescued so dramatically.
Jews and Christians have always believed that Muhammad got this story
wrong. It was Isaac, not Ishmael, who was bound, they believe, and
Abraham
made no such pilgrimage to Mecca. But have Jews and Christians also
believed, historically, that Muhammad had the divine protagonist wrong
as
well - to the point that he was referring to another deity altogether?
…
I always get these kinds of articles e-mailed to me every week. You really gotta be careful what you read.. there’s alot of misleading hateful propaganda out there that is really well written.
I hope you all don’t mind if I start sharing the articles ( I think are good ) with you guys.