Islam and Christianity
I
IN the history of Christianity no repulse has been more certain, more continuously effective, or more thoroughly disheartening than that which has been suffered at the hands of Islam. The faith of Christianity has been sublime. It still is. We believe now that the dawn is breaking. But, despite this sustained faith, valiant missionaries of the Cross have battered their lives against the walls of Islam and those walls have remained adamant. To the children of Mohammed, Christianity has not yet proved its superiority. It has not won their hearts — hearts that are just as human, just as receptive, and fully as eager for truth as other hearts.
This repulse of Christianity is more amazing in light of the fact that no ethnic religion has been so long or so continuously in contact with Christianity as has Islam. Both were cradled in the same part of the world; both accept fully the Scriptures of the Old Testament; both are theistic; both accept the historical Christ, and accept Him at least as a messenger and prophet of God. Yet the sheer fact is that Christianity, though undaunted, is repulsed and thus far seems helpless before the granite walls of Islam.
But there is a phenomenon that is even more amazing and more alarming — namely, Christian indifference to the implications of this repulse. The basic theory of evangelical Christianity lies in a risen, potent, and invincible Christ who is God indeed, and whose Spirit is willing and able to win the heart of any man of any faith. The uncompromising programme of Christianity as enunciated by the Founder himself involves the evangelization of every nation and every tongue. This basic theory of Christianity cannot possibly be reconciled to continuous repulse or final defeat. The spectacle of an irresistible force being effectively repulsed for thirteen centuries is one so utterly incongruous that Christians should be startled into heart-searching thoughtfulness. It gives occasion for some daring reconsiderations, and demands an answer before we go on with our traditional work of Moslem evangelization.
Nor is it enough to study the peculiar elements of strength in Islam, such as its overpowering conception of God, its rigid law of apostasy, or its carnal gratifications. These things are conquerable by an all-powerful Christ. The question comes nearer home and must be faced more courageously. Either Christ has failed or we have failed Christ! Accepting the first alternative, we surrender our faith. Accepting the second, we must turn to a searching self-examination.
As we begin a self-examination, it would be comforting if we could find that Christianity’s fault had been in the method of its approach to Mohammedanism. But every tried and true means of evangelization has been used in Moslem lands. Personal testimony, powerful preaching, self-sacrificing social service, and the persuasive influence of true and consecrated lives have all been outstanding in the history of missions to the Moslems. Every type of splendid Christian representative is found in the galaxy of heroes who have given their lives to this cause. There have been and are great hospitals with a tremendous outreach of humanitarian service. There are schools and colleges inculcating truth upon the minds of Islam’s finest youth. There are other types of institution representing all that is most winning in our Christian religion. None of those measures which have been found successful in other places have been untried. Neither effort, expenditure, nor life itself has been spared in the sustained effort to establish the Christian Church. The seed has indeed been sown, there have been earnest laborers, the fields have seemed white, but there has been little harvest. No, there is something deeper, something more fundamental than method in the defeat of Christianity.
II
If any religion is to commend itself to the people of another faith, it must have distinctive elements of eternal value which their own religion does not contain. Every religious questioning, whether it be phrased by the learned or by the simple, resolves itself finally to this issue: ‘What does the proposed faith have that is not contained in my own professed religion ? ’
Christianity does have such an element — one that is not contained in any other religion, one that is unique and tremendously satisfying to the human heart. That element is love — love as the interpretation of the universe, love such as men had never seen or comprehended, love such as no Buddha or Mohammed ever revealed, love that is found only in the heart of God and revealed through the life and teachings of Christ. Not only is that powerful and yearning love the distinguishing element of Christianity, but it is supposed to be the distinguishing characteristic of those who are Christians. ‘By this,’ the Master said, ‘shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.’
Right here has Christianity failed. It has not succeeded in revealing to the Moslem world that it has this sublime and unique element of value — namely, the love of Christ. Every other argument and inducement has been brought, but without the fullness of this love the case has been incomplete and no victory has been won. Christianity has presented, for instance, a legalistic plan of salvation, skillfully phrased in heavy theological terms. But Islam has a plan of salvation. Christianity presents prophets. Islam has prophets. Christianity presents a moral code. Islam has a moral code. Christianity presents Christ. Islam accepts Christ, in its own way. But Christianity withholds that supremely convincing proof of an unprecedented love which shall be the greatest force in the world and which shall identify believers as the disciples of God.
As the Mussulman, for instance, looks back over the history of Christian contact with his peoples, he does not see a unique or amazing love in the attitude and actions of Christianity. That history is a black and sordid page of cruel struggle. In some struggles one side was more nearly right; in some the other side had a greater portion of truth. He recognizes this; but the essential fact which does not miss his observation is that, in it all, Christians have been no better fundamentally than Moslems. In the last analysis, each side has attempted to accomplish its purposes by murder, pillage, and war.
In his mind the Crusades stand out more clearly than anything else. Successive hordes of soldiers pouring out of the north, armed to the teeth, bent on war and destruction, attempting by the iron hand of force to win the sepulchre of the Prince of Peace — this was Christianity. In that tragic debauchery of religion run amuck, the Moslem sees none of that tender love of Christ which made Him reject the compulsion of the sword, restrain forces at His command, and submit unbitterly to the horrors of torture and death.
If, in the mind of the Mussulman, the Crusades could be separated and distinguished from true Christianity, much would be gained. But they are not separated in the mind of the Christian! The Church has not renounced them. Still she vindicates them and champions them. Still they are taught with emotional sublimation in her schools and preached from her pulpits! If Christianity itself recognizes no incompatibility between the ruthlessness of the Crusades and the tenderness of the Christ, how can a Moslem be expected to make the distinction?
If Crusades and past struggles could be forgotten by the Moslem world, there would be no forgetting the war that has just closed. Thinking Moslems are not so shallow as to blame that disaster on Christianity; but they see clearly that during the World War Christianity stood for nothing better than Islam, for the Christian Church throughout the carnage put the stamp of divine approval on every campaign of every army.
France, England, and America did their desperate work in the name of Christ. Officers and armies of the Central Powers marched over Belgium and into France with the benedictions of the Church of Christ. On all sides and in all lands, preacher and priest urged on the mighty machines of death, with only an occasional and quickly subdued voice of protest. The essential fact which Islam cannot miss is that Christianity did not disapprove of the war, but instead took the stand that, in the accomplishment of the right, in the performance of the will of God, force must be used, if necessary.
Strange to say, this is precisely the belief of Islam. Islam holds that, when the will of God cannot be accomplished in another way, force should be used. It being the will of God that Armenians should become Mohammedans, they were almost invariably given the opportunity to do so. Argument and threats failing to accomplish the divine will, force was resorted to, and men, women, and children were destroyed. This is the theoretical basis for all Islamic wars, just as it is for all Christian wars. Islam and Christianity stand together, both resorting to the force of war to accomplish what they conceive to be the will of God. And as long as they stand on the same level, committing the same acts of war in the name of the same God, neither will be able to convince the other that he has something superior in his religious faith.
But if the principle of love that is embodied in the teachings of Christ were believed and practised by Christians, the Moslem world would rub its eyes in amazement, and would seek the spiritual source of such sublime faith. Christ believed and taught and based His entire career on a conviction that love without the aid of arms, or armies, or blockades, or poison gas — that love alone could conquer. He seemed to believe that love was actually more powerful, more effective, and ultimately more surely victorious than any physical force.
Christianity has never dared to believe what Christ did, much less to practise it. But until Christianity does believe the teachings of its Christ, and dares to practise them, it will not win Islam. This would not mean the elimination of war; but it would mean the refusal of the Church of Christ to sanction, bless, and abet war, because of a sane conviction that there is a greater force by which every objective of the Kingdom of God can be accomplished — because of a conviction that the power of love can accomplish all things more certainly, more thoroughly, and more quickly than any other force.
III
It might be argued that the love spoken of by Christ was to be exercised within the close communion of the Church itself and not in the relationships of nations. Certainly this much, if no more, was implied by the words and teachings of the Christ. The words quoted above would indicate His expectation that among His followers would be a love so utterly unique that those of other faiths would recognize in it the unanswerable proof of a divine power. Were it possible to see such a love diffusing itself into all the relationships of the Christian communion, Islam would open its heart and mind to Christ, and seek that which it knows it does not have.
Like most students, I was troubled in my college days by the division of the Christian Church and by the bitterness of sectarian strife. I remember asking a missionary how Islam looked on such unloving divisions and whether or not our lack of unity interfered with Moslem acceptance of the Gospel. He replied that this did not interfere with his evangelistic work, ‘because they have precisely similar divisions and therefore understand ours perfectly.’ His answer was intended as an extenuation of Christianity, and it took me several years to realize that it was no extenuation — it was a damning indictment. Instead of being better, Christianity was on the same level with Islam. They could understand our divisions because theirs were precisely similar. Looking into our religion, they found a reproduction of their divisions, their strife, their sectarianism, and they understood.
A winning Christianity must not be understood in such a way. It must have elements that are unique, amazing, and incomprehensible. The love evidenced among its members within the warmth of its own communion should be without a parallel, something before which the Mohammedan would stand with an uncomprehending amazement. Even there, within our ecclesiastical walls, within our ministry, within our own membership, we have an opportunity to demonstrate a love for one another that will win the Moslem world.
But we are not doing it. As long as there can be Catholic and Protestant, as long as there can be Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist, as long as there can be Roman, Greek, Armenian, and Nestorian churches, we can scarcely convince Islam that we have a love more sublime than theirs. They are not anxious to give up their sectarianism for our sectarianism, their strife for our strife, their frenzied theological debates for our frenzied theological debates.
There is one first mile which Christianity must go on its way to the conquest of the world. That first mile is the conquest of itself. The slight creedal differences on which our belligerent brethren base their denominational thunderings will never be accepted as adequate by a rational world or by an awakened Islam. This is particularly true in view of the fact that our own Book gives little ground for division. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, anticipates a unity of the followers of Christ, for which a unity of faith and creed is not the basis but the goal! Speaking of the work of the Church, he says, ‘For the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God.’ Then, at that future time, we shall have unity of the faith; now, and until that time, we must have unity of the Church in a love such as no other religion reveals.
This must come before Islam can be wooed from its prophet or won from its faith. Until that love is evidenced among the groups and sects of Christianity, until it becomes an outstanding feature of Christian ecclesiastical life, until it welds Christianity into an utterly amazing unity, it seems to me that we can never successfully present the Gospel of Christ to the world of Islam.
When the love of Christ and its inescapable implications are presented to a class of Persian Moslem boys, they are amazed and delighted. Never before have they suspected the deeper meaning, the power, or the strange uniqueness of that love. But the joy of discovery is darkened by an inevitable question: ‘Why is that love not demonstrated between Christian nations, or within the Christian Church?’ We tell them, of course, that in so far as Christians fail to demonstrate that unique love they are not Christians. We suggest to them that the day may come when some of the Persians or Arabs or Indians will become true followers of the Christ and demonstrate to the world the meaning and power of His love. But are we not idealistic fools to think that these boys of Islam might catch the beauty of that love and surrender themselves to its power when Christianity after nineteen centuries clings to bloody arms and tears itself with internal strife?