Eyre Lines

Doug Padgitt has posted an excellent discussion featuring himself, Barry Taylor and Ani Zonneveld. Doug and Barry I’ve heard many times, Ani is a liberal Muslim (technically a female Imam), and is a new voice to me.

The explanation of various aspects of Islam which do not tend to get much coverage these days – the tradition of caring for other members of society (which was seen in a major way a couple of years ago when the North of England was hit by flooding in many places, and the most conspicuous non-governmental aid came from Muslim communities) and the insistence on there being “no compulsion in religion” (a literal quotation from the Qu’ran) – was interesting, and very much worth sharing. I was reminded of it when, during the trial of the right-wing terrorist who drove a van into a crowd of Muslim worshippers last year, it was remarked that the Imam of that mosque had protected the perpetrator from an understandably angry crowd, and I thought first “How Christian of him” – but then corrected myself, because what I should have thought is “How Islamic of him”.

Some years ago I was initially somewhat taken aback when, in an internet discussion, I was described as being “a good Muslim” by someone who knew that I was a Christian, or at least an aspiring Christian for some value of that term. The discussion had ranged over a number of topics, religious freedom and “social gospel” being two of them, but what prompted the comment was my writing about the principle of acceptance, working from Twelve Step principles (God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…).

That is, however, the core of Islam, “al-Islam” usually being translated as “submission”, but which could just as well translate as “acceptance”. After the brief period of surprise, I was flattered. I have a lot of commonality with Karen Armstrong (an excellent writer, particularly on the intersections between the three main “religions of the Book”, Judaism, Christianity and Islam), who these days describes herself as a “freelance monotheist”. From all I know of Judaism and Islam, I could readily fit myself into, say, Reform Judaism or Liberal Islam (or the Sufi tradition). However, my upbringing was in Christianity, and that is the language of religious expression with which I am comfortable and in which I was steeped at an early age, so that is the logical place for me to be (the Dalai Lama would agree – he seems fond of telling people from other traditions who come to him and talk of converting to Buddhism that they should first go and become the best practitioner of the system they were raised in).

That illustrates the one point on which I have a major disagreement with a point raised by Doug – he suggested that whereas you are born into Islam (in most cases), Christianity is something which you elect. Doug comes from the evangelical tradition, of course, and fundamental to that tradition is the need to be converted (even if, as I’ve heard from a number of evangelicals, that is from, for instance “Anglican” – a position which grates horribly with me, as I regard “Anglican” as already Christian, just as I do the other 40,000 or so Christian denominations). Maybe, indeed, for him there is far more choice – most of those 40,000 are Protestant denominations, and people shift between those with considerable ease. That isn’t all that surprising, as some of them are separated only by some point of abstruse doctrine which doesn’t actually concern most people at all. There are, however, a number of Christian denominations which are much more like Islam (or Judaism) in that you are born into them and are, in some way, that denomination forever, even if you lose all faith, even if you become an evangelical atheist. Catholicism is the obvious one – once christened, you are either a Catholic or a lasped Catholic. The Amish, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and Latter Day Saints seem to have the same tendency, and I suspect that the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Christian churches are similar, although I have little to no experience of them.

And, despite the fact that I was brought up Methodist and am now Anglican (displaying the kind of shift Doug would be very familiar with), I am also working from the fact that I was born into Christianity, into a Christian culture, and even if I were to start self-identifying as, say, Muslim or Buddhist (Jewish would be more difficult), I am still going to have at least a degree of Christian identity burned into my subconscious, if not my conscious mind. Even though the culture I live in has moved a long way from where it was in my youth, when some form of Christian identity was the norm, to one where a sizeable majority of people self-identify as atheist, agnostic or just “none”, it is still a Christian culture in very many ways.

I’m reminded of the story told by Rabbi Lionel Blue (and which I’ve heard told by an atheist as well), of a visit to Northern Ireland, when he was asked if he was a Protestant or a Catholic. He answered “I’m a Jew”. There was a pause, and then came the question “But are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?”.

You can’t escape your cultural matrix entirely…