Church Complex
James M. Harrison on the Value of Being Uncomfortable with Others
As we entered the building, I felt both familiarity and a distinct sense that I did not belong. Not all of the people seemed so very different from me. By outward appearances, some would have fit in quite well on a Sunday morning at my church. Others, however, appeared as if they had stepped into my world from a place quite foreign.
Much of what then occurred seemed both familiar and foreign, as well. There was prayer, scripture reading, and a sermon that, with a few key alterations, could be heard in any number of Christian churches across the nation on any given Sunday.
This particular service wasn’t taking place on a Sunday morning, however, but on a Friday afternoon. I was not in a church, but in a mosque near the campus of Wayne State University, in Detroit, Michigan. The scripture being read was not the Bible, but the Koran.
The prayers were not addressed to the Father, in the name of the Son, but to Allah, with the attendant proclamation that Muhammad is his prophet. The sermon, focusing upon the dangers of sending children to public schools where they would be indoctrinated with secular humanism, proposed the alternative of Muslim, not Christian, schools.
A True Rainbow
The people themselves made the greatest impact. Here was a true “rainbow coalition.”
To be sure, many fit what most Americans consider Muslim. They looked vaguely “Middle Eastern,” wore skullcaps and had scruffy beards.
But there were others who did not. Americans of European ancestry, or who were European-born, sharing something akin to my Irish complexion, knelt beside African Americans, North Africans, Persians, and Arabs of various stripes. It was apparent that they were converts.
From my visitor’s perch in the rear of the room, one young man in particular caught my eye. He appeared to be in his early twenties and as American as apple pie.
He stood out for two reasons. First, he did not match my ill-informed idea of what a Muslim should look like. Second, he clearly did not yet have a clue about how to be a Muslim. This was made evident when, in the middle of the service, one of the older Middle Eastern men made quite a scene loudly and harshly rebuking him for placing the Koran on the floor as he knelt for prayer.
James M. Harrison is the pastor of Red Mills Baptist Church in Mahopac Falls, New York. A graduate of Denver Seminary, he serves on the executive committee of the Conservative Baptist Spurgeon Fellowship (www.cbspurgeon.org).
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