This article first appeared in the March/April 2010 issue of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, and is linked with permission.
The National Council of Churches (NCC) has not always seemed sure of itself when addressing Islam. Eager to please its interfaith partners and to counter alleged Islamophobia in American society, it has often exercised self-censorship. Islam, in its account, is a religion of peace and justice—not a cause of war and oppression. At the same time, this American ecumenical body cannot dismiss the cries of partner churches overseas suffering persecution under Islamist regimes.
“My life could be in danger,” the Reverend Dr. Charles Amjad-Ali told the gathered church delegations at the NCC General Assembly in Minneapolis in November 2009. An Anglican from the (United) Church of Pakistan who now teaches at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Amjad-Ali explained that his family had a Muslim background; thus, their conversion to Christianity made them apostates in the eyes of Islamic radicals. Amjad-Ali made these comments in the course of leading a Bible study on 1 Thessalonians 5, a passage that the Apostle Paul addressed to a church that was undergoing persecution.
Amjad-Ali noted that at least 234 people were currently being held in Pakistani jails for alleged blasphemy against Islam. Under Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy laws, these prisoners could face the death penalty. And not only prisoners’ lives are in danger: Sometimes Islamist-incited mobs don’t bother with the law, but take matters into their own hands. Amjad-Ali told of “nuns raped [and] people burned” in recent attacks on Christian villages.
He noted that the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches assuming that they would be under some degree of persecution. Then, strikingly, he argued that if today’s churches are not encountering resistance, then they are probably in some way compromising the gospel.
Read the rest of the article at the Touchstone web site by clicking here.
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