He has a point: for the most part, Anglican bishops have failed dismally to understand Christianity so they might as well have a shot at interpreting another religion. If God smiles on their efforts, perhaps they will do for Muslims what they have done for Christians: make them doubt everything about their faith. It could even be the tipping point for mass conversions of Muslims to Christianity.
From here:
Anglicans need a deeper understanding of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations so they can better pray and respond to interfaith situations.
Chair of the Anglican Network for Inter Faith Concerns (NIFCON) and Archbishop of Dublin the Most Rev. Michael Jackson made the comments in a letter to primates and provincial secretaries of the Anglican Communion.
Writing to promote the latest NIFCON Christian Muslim Digest he said, “As the events in Syria and Iraq, and in other countries where Muslims are in a majority, impact upon increasingly wider areas, we are reminded that within all of the provinces of the Anglican Communion we need to have a deeper knowledge of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations so that we can reach a better understanding of the issues and how they might impact upon us and other Anglicans, and will be able to pray more effectively.”
I get the impression that this Michael Jackson thinks that the difference between Christianity and islam are shades of grey when in fact the difference is night and day. Has he forgotten that no-one comes to the Father but through Jesus Christ? Does he not realize that Mohammed is therefore a false prophet? Why is he bothering to have “inter-faith dialogue” when islam is in fact not a faith at all but is actually a deception sent into this world to trick people away from Jesus?
Yes, it obviously is the Anglican Church’s fault that people born to Muslim parents in Muslim areas of the world become Muslim.
Matthew 28
“18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”
Reductio ad absurdium!
However, I see no concomitant attempt on the part of the Anglican Church to understand conservative Anglicans in prayer.
I’m not sure that I was doing a reductio ad absurdium.
It is a fact that most people adopt the religion of their parents. If Christianity was so compelling — and if God was doing His Own PR instead of leaving it to us — it would easily trump such cultural structures, surely?
Matthew 13
“1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
2 And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore.
3 And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:
8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.”
I’ve never heard that parable used to blame Muslims in the Muslim world for not converting to Christianity before. It’s… Interesting.
Hello Vincent,
I think that what God is teaching us through this parable is that we are to spread His Word to all people in all places, but to be prepared to accept that there will be only a few who will receive/accept it. That there shall be various reasons why this is. Is there “blame” to be attached to anyone for this? I don’t know. But getting back to my original comment I do believe that God has made it very clear that we are to offer Christianity to as many people as we can, and not to co-operate with false religions.
That’s fair enough. But be honest: if you’d been born in Iraq, do you really think you’d be a Christian now?
Were or are your parents Christians? If stats are to be believed, chances are very high that not only are you of the same religion as your parents, but of the same denomination as well.
I’m really not being flippant here. If the road we’re taking is true religion against false religion, the deck is really horribly stacked against entire populations, and that doesn’t sound like the way God would set things up to me.
Vincent:
1. There is a reasonable chance that if you were born in Iraq you would be Christian. There were many Christians in Iraq. Now, however, they are being killed or driven out by ISIS. In fact, in the years following the overthrow of Saddam the Christian population had already decreased dramatically because of persecution by Muslims.
2. There are lots of Christians whose parents were not Christians.
3. There are lots of Christians who were brought up in one denomination and are now part of another.
4. You assume you can understand how and why God has set up things the way they are. I suggest you may want to reassess your tendency to make such assumptions.
Most Anglican clergy are afraid to share the true message of the Gospel because they think the statement that you have just made would be offensive to Mohammed’s followers. To do so could potentially cost them their heads. They would rather keep their heads and hope that the message of the Gospel as given by the Prophets and the Disciples is not truth and is therefore in need of correction. Being politically correct is the rock on which they have chosen to stand and be judged before the Father. I fear that rock will become a millstone around their necks.
I recommend The Reliance of the Traveller for a realistic view of mainstream Islam. Widely endorsed by North American Islamic groups, it reveals that Islam has no tolerance for enlightenment civilization.
Send him Muhammad’s breviary from TEC’s National Cathedral
– to follow along more closely in their inclusive goal of being all things to all people
and nothing to Jesus Christ.
+ Galatians 1:6-12.
This week in Washington D.C.:
On the 100th anniversary of the religiously-motivated genocide of Christians, several Islamic groups, all of which have alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, hosted the first Muslim prayers ever at Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral.
As Breitbart’s Dr. Sebastian Gorka reported earlier, two of the Islamic groups who organized the event–CAIR and ISNA–were documented by U.S. federal officials as unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism financing trial in United States history. Additionally, evidence exists that each of the five Islamic groups who helped organize the event have deep connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to federal prosecution documents, is to wage a “grand jihad [holy war] in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…”
Breitbart News was on the scene at Washington’s National Cathedral, hoping to get some answers to concerns about Islamic prayers being hosted at the Cathedral on such a painful anniversary and why the event was sponsored by alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Breitbart News asked Dean of the National Cathedral, Gary Hall, whether it was appropriate to host Muslim prayers on the 100th anniversary of the last Caliph’s call for Jihad against nonbelievers, which resulted in the slaughter of innocent Christians.
Hall responded, “I did not know that it was that anniversary. But knowing it now, it actually seems to be more appropriate to have an event that is on an anniversary of a hard time… There have been atrocities on both sides. There have been extremists on both sides.”
He added: “The second thing, is that, the Christian church… a few centuries before was doing similar kinds of things in the holy land with the Crusader states and the Crusades themselves. Almost every religious tradition is guilty at some point of fostering violence in the name of that religious tradition.
Breitbart News asked Hall whether he knew that all of the Islamic organizers of the interfaith prayer event have been associated or direct members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“No, I’m not aware of that,” said the Dean of the Cathedral. “We’re a faith community… This essentially was the time to come together and pray. I have not heard those allegations. I don’t think that they are germane to an event that is just essentially a prayer event.”
This reporter asked Mr. Hall whether he was troubled by the possibility that the organizers of the interfaith event have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, when the MB has previously been connected to prominent terrorists such as Osama Bin laden and Abu Bakr.
Hall responded, “No more so that it would alarm me that people in my own faith and tradition have links to other kinds of… inappropriate or unethical or immoral kinds of behavior. In other words, if I have a congregant that I would find unseemly, that’s guilt by association… I hear people’s concern, but it seems to be that the role of a faith leader is to try to bring people together.
“We always have to remember that Menachem Begin was a terrorist,” said the Dean of the National Cathedral. “Many of the early generations of Israel’s government were terrorists,” he added.
“Everyone’s hands are dirty at some point… There’s no one in the world who has absolutely clean hands,” Hall alleged.
Breitbart News questioned Hall about whether he knew about the Muslim Brotherhood’s extensive history of subversion in order to achieve their ends.
“I’m aware that they are the legitimately elected government of Egypt,” Hall stated.
When questioned whether he knew that the Muslim Brotherhood was started by devout Hitler admirer Hassan al-Bana, Hall said, “This event is not about the Muslim Brotherhood.”
“The kinds of things you are bringing up are the kinds of extremism that we are actually trying to disassociate with,” he said, accusing this reporter of being an ‘extremist,’ simply for mentioning the roots of the group who organized in his Cathedral.
Hall then accused this reporter of being a “McCarthyite,” because this was nothing more than “guilt by association,” he concluded.
WOMAN INTERRUPTS MUSLIM SERVICE AT NATIONAL CATHEDRAL: ‘JESUS CHRIST IS LORD’
She is quickly escorted out of iconic D.C. church
The Muslims attending this farce, adverted their eyes from the Cross of Christ, and were turned so they would not see any Christian symbols. Billy Graham commented on the shame of this, with tears in his eyes I am sure.
Thank you for the Ummahpolitick.
The sword that the Crusaders wielded was as evil as the scimitar Islam has wielded and continues to do so in the name of its moon-god:
and savagely did wield against The LORD’s Ingathered centuries-long persecuted Jewish people ( Menachem Begin and all other innocent victims of Euro-Russian pograms ) during the ‘Palestine’ Mandate, 1920 -1948;and continues to do so! + Genesis 12:3.
The only GOD-ordained sword that the Cathedral Dean is to wield is the one that he yet has to pick up but refuses:
The Sword of The Spirit, The WORD of GOD + Ephesians 6:17.