A Letter to Global South Anglicans

The Episcopal Church Fails to Stand for the Uniqueness of the Gospel: National Cathedral Sanctuary offered for Friday Islamic Prayers

Dear Brother and Sister Anglicans:

It is a beautiful building, isn’t it? Those white spires reaching into a perfect blue sky! Today, November 14, 2014, that building, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington’s National Cathedral, will for the first time offer Muslim Friday Prayers (Jumu’ah) within the sanctuary.

The prayers, which the Cathedral will proudly webcast live from their website, will be co-sponsored by the leaders of such Muslim organizations as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), and Masjid Mohammed (The Nation’s Mosque), as well as South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool and the Cathedral’s Director of Liturgy, the Rev. Canon Gina Campbell. CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, and ADAMS are all affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (the Ikhwan).

I took the photo of the National Cathedral in 2006 while I was with hundreds of Iranian Americans — both Christian and Muslim — protesting the Cathedral’s invitation to former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami to speak there. Family members of those who languished and/or died in Iranian prisons held posters with their loved ones’ pictures. Other signs showed women being stoned — during the years of Khatami’s presidency or tenure as Minister of Culture.

It seemed a betrayal of the Church in Iran, and of the Persecuted Church in general. As I stood with the Iranian protestors looking at that lovely white cathedral, I thought of Jesus excoriating the Pharisees, saying, “You hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

You are well aware of the actions of the Episcopal Church that have led to “tearing the fabric of the Anglican Communion.” In that respect, it will not come as a complete surprise that the National Cathedral has conducted both same-sex blessings of relationships, and, more recently in 2013 began conducting same-sex marriage ceremonies. I wonder if the Muslims who will be praying there tomorrow are aware of that?

It is difficult to find many mentions of Jesus in the context of Lord and Savior at the Cathedral. Cosmic Christ maybe. Or there is a program exploring the topic “Who is Jesus?” (with no definitive answer). But that is the logical outcome of embracing a different gospel, a gospel that denies the authority of Holy Scripture and the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all of life — including sexuality — and that sees no theological conflict between Christianity and Islam.

The Cathedral has not offered any educational or inspirational programs focused on persecuted Christians around the world. But, sadly, they did have a lecture entitled, “You’re Such A Martyr! The History and Controversy of Persecution in the Early Church” by Dr. Candida Moss, the author of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Here is part of the description of her lecture (bold type mine):

In spite of these horrors, so the story goes, these heroes of the early church chose to die rather than renounce their faith in God. Such stories form part of the teaching of the church to the present day, inspiring some to acts of like courage in the face of modern hardships. Yet there is also the troubling use of this heritage to silence the voices of those who act outside the perceived orthodoxies of the day.

In this lecture, Professor Candida Moss will address the true history of persecution in the early church, and show how this history includes exaggerations and forgeries that eventually became part of the rhetoric of the church. Moss will also address the question of the legacy of this history; a legacy that has animated the acts of some within the religious world to exclude those who would challenge their hegemony.

That last bit is aimed directly at you and me. Our hegemony — meaning our orthodox faith in Jesus Christ — renders us “exclusionary” and must be challenged. Therefore, the suffering of Christians around the world — your suffering — must be diminished, while those who approve of and would like to impose the Shariah and Islamic supremacism are given preferential treatment, by those who have embraced a different gospel.

And so now the Cathedral is offering its sanctuary for non-Christian prayers. In their press release, CAIR assures Muslims, “The prayers will be offered in the north transept, an area of the Cathedral with arches and limited iconography that provide an ideal space–almost mosque-like–with the appropriate orientation for Muslim prayers.” One wonders how far the Cathedral will go to accommodate the service. Will they remove the Cross? Will they cover stained glass windows? Will they paint the red doors green?

The Cathedral staff and Muslim leaders say that they believe that “offering Muslim prayers at the Christian cathedral shows more than hospitality,” that it “demonstrates an appreciation of one another’s prayer traditions and is a powerful symbolic gesture toward a deeper relationship between the two Abrahamic traditions.” But the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC today released a letter to the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Reverend Gary Hall and copied to the Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, urging them not to allow the prayers to go forward. The letter, which I signed onto, and to which several bishops of the Anglican Church in North America have also indicated a desire to have their names added, points out the deeper significance of this event and the truth about the Muslim organizations sponsoring it.

First, as I previously mentioned, there is evidence to connect each of the participating Muslim organizations to the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not conjecture. This is according to documents seized by law enforcement (in a secret basement in a house just blocks from where I live!) and submitted as evidence in the largest terrorism finance trial in American history. And the document in which these organizations are listed as under the umbrella of the Muslim Brotherhood states the purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates in the United States is to wage a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house…”

Unlike American Christians — some of whom are still breathtakingly naive at this point in history — you understand this. Your friends and family have been persecuted and killed for this.

The second important point made in the letter to the Cathedral is that it is likely no coincidence that November 14 was chosen as the date for the first Muslim prayer service in the National Cathedral. “November 14th, 2014, will be the 100th anniversary of the last sitting Caliph of the Ottoman Empire’s call for jihad against non-believers,” the letter explains. It goes on to inform that this call for jihad led directly to the genocide against the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek residents of Turkey!

Westerners don’t have a clue how important these kinds of associations of dates are to Islamic supremacists, but once again, you will understand. “To permit such a public display, and permit such groups to occupy the National Cathedral of the United States on this date represents an affront to the memories of those who were killed as a result of this genocide, and an affront to those Christians across the Middle East who are currently under threat by those who seek to emulate it,” the letter declares.

Finally, the letter states that there is “a probability that participants may purposefully invoke supremacist and aggressive religious verses or sayings.” The letter includes examples of this taking place in the not-too-distant past. There was “a prayer service at the Vatican where the invited imam recited a quranic verse calling for ‘victory over the disbelieving people’” (Surah 2:286). In addition, “at a funeral for Navy SEAL team members killed in the “Extortion 17” incident, an Afghanistan Imam recited: Not equal are the Companions of the Fire and the Companions of the Garden: it is the Companions of the Garden, that will achieve Felicity. (Surah 59:20), leading some family members of the slain to believe their love one’s had been condemned to hell by the Imam for being Christians.”

Given that many of the Cathedral leadership do not have a very high view of Scripture, they probably believe that this is “just rhetoric.” But being “wise as serpents” does not include inviting those who follow an ideology that is antithetical to the Christian faith to invoke curses on Christianity in what is supposed to be a Christian church building.

The letter to the Cathedral ends by urging them to reverse their decision to allow the Friday prayers, and to instead issue a statement of solidarity with Christians under threat from violent jihad today, and a statement in remembrance of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocide. Don’t hold your breath for this to happen, my dear friends, given the current worldview of much of the leadership in the Episcopal Church in the United States. And I am very sorry for that. I am sorry for their dishonor of those martyrs for whom this world was not worthy, and sorry for them — that they do not recognize the scarred and bruised trophies of Grace, persecuted for the sake of the Cross. Please know that there are many of us here — both Christians and non-Christians — who do honor you and pray for you.

Although to worldly eyes, you are the needy and poor ones, the truth is that those who have embraced a different gospel are the ones who are “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.” To you, as to Smyrna, Christ has no rebuke, only comfort and encouragement to be faithful unto death. To them, He is still knocking. I know that you continue to pray that they will hear His voice and open the door and I love you for your faithfulness.

Your sister in Christ,

Faith J. H. McDonnell, Anglican