Distributing Qur'ans - A Christian act?

A recent news story caught my eye. The Massachusetts Bible Society has recently announced that it will purchase and distribute copies of the Qur'an - the holy book of Islam - to Muslims in prisons, hospitals, homeless shelters, and other locations.

The Massachusetts Bible Society claimed originally to be undertaking the project as a way to distribute two Qur'ans for every one that would be burned in the planned demonstration by the Rev. Terry Jones and his congregation at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. Rev. Jones ended up deciding against burning any Qur'ans, yet the the program of the Society has moved forward anyway.

[Before I wade any deeper into these troubled waters, let me say this at the outset: The whole issue raised by Rev. Jones' intended book burning is volatile and complex, and it calls for Christians to reflect on it with an appropriate level of sensitivity while also practicing rigor in the way we think about inter-religious dialogue and our own faith witness.]

The Authority of Scripture
Like most Christians, I am categorically opposed to the kind of book-burning that the minister from Florida was planning until he was persuaded otherwise. It does not seem to me that intentionally inflammatory actions like destroying the sacred text of another religion can do anything for the Christian witness to the truth of the gospel. Even beyond that, it strikes me as an act of extreme symbolic violence. And violence - whether symbolic or actual - is simply counter to the love we find in Jesus Christ (and with which we are called to love one another).

My opposition to such actions doesn't mean that I think it is an acceptable Christian practice to evangelize by purchasing and distributing another religion's sacred text, though. In fact, I think it is a fundamentally incoherent act - and by that, I mean "incoherent" for an evangelistic organization whose proclaimed mission it is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Part of this simply has to do with how we view Scriptural authority - both related to our own Bible and any other religion's scripture (including the Qur'an). If we confess a canon of Scripture that we understand to be the definitive revelation of God, and if we believe that other claimed revelations of God that are contained in texts and themselves assert to be authoritative are thereby false or at least deeply flawed, then it makes no sense to evangelize by distributing those other texts as Christian people. To "evangelize" is to spread the good news. If we do not believe the Qur'an contains the good news (i.e., the gospel), then why would we give it to anyone - Muslim or otherwise?

Ah, but what about the issue of compassion? I imagine that's the response some would use to counter what I'm saying about evangelism: It's not evangelism, it's compassion, they might say. It's a sign of our peacefulness and of our desire for hatred to not be associated with anything Christians say or do.

And here's the way I would respond to that: I agree that Christians should not hate; I agree, moreover, that Christians should be peacemakers. But to suggest that the only way - or even the best way - to show compassion and practice peacefulness is for one group of Christians to pass out Qur'ans when another group burns them is to posit a zero-sum game where one does not exist. There are plenty of other ways Christians can show compassion toward Muslims other than doing their missionary work for them. And to persist in such activity even when not a single Qur'an was burned by the Florida pastor and his church is to take the reasoning of the zero-sum game and extend it to even more bizarre lengths. ("Well, he didn't burn the Qur'ans and so our professed need to give out new Qur'ans no longer holds, but we are still convinced it is the right thing to do.")

Even more bizarre is some of the reasoning offered on the Mass Bible Society's website. They say, for instance, "As people of the Book, we are joined to Islam and Judaism in a special way and as an organization that has sought to put that Book into people's hands for 201 years, we cannot stand idly by while the sacred text of a sister religion is burned as our beloved Bibles once were ... For 201 years we have given the Bible to those without access. In response to Rev. Jones['] despicable act, we are prepared to give two Qur'ans for every one that Rev. Jones burns."

Leaving aside for the moment that Rev. Jones' "despicable act" never occurred, how does it follow that a Society whose mission is understood to be the distribution of the Christian Bible should feel compelled to distribute the sacred book of another religion and one - moreover - that believes much of what is claimed about Jesus Christ in the New Testament is false?

Muslims as a rule take their own Scriptural text very seriously. And I would guess that few, if any, Muslim organizations would even consider passing out Christian Bibles - regardless of how many got burned in some other location by Muslims not affiliated with them. In fact, if I were a Muslim and read about the Massachusetts Bible Society's program, I'd find it incredulous. How can you take a people who claim to be constituted by the revelation of God contained in a particular holy book seriously under those circumstances?

A Better Option: Scriptural Reasoning
Those concerned with the way adherents of different religions should treat one another (and one another's sacred books) should take a look at the practice that Peter Oochs at the University of Virginia and many others have been developing over the past couple of decades. It's called Scriptural Reasoning, and it intentionally brings together Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers so that they can spend time reading carefully with one another. (Oochs himself is Jewish.)

In Scriptural Reasoning, the idea is not that we sink to the lowest common denominator and toss out those parts of our holy books that are at odds with one another. On the contrary, those involved with this practice don't shy away from the tough issues at all. The Scriptural Reasoning website describes the kind of interaction that goes on between Jews, Christians, and Muslims as akin to the biblical idea of the "Tent of Meeting."

I have a close friend who has engaged in Scriptural Reasoning groups with Oochs, and he has told me how remarkable it is to see what happens when the adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths get together in this kind of forum. The conversations can be pointed and even argumentative, but they are conducted in an environment of mutual respect and good will. That's responsible interreligious dialogue, in my opinion.

Citizenship and Discipleship: There's a Difference
It's interesting to me that - as of this posting - the running story about this whole issue on the Massachusetts Bible Society's website still features a photograph of a book being consumed by a raging fire. And the story continues to be entitled, "They Burn One, We Give Two!" This is the case, despite the fact that nobody burned anything at all. And even though the original impetus for the "Burn One, Give Two" program no longer holds, the Society's updates continue to use it as the reason for their activity.

Dr. Stanley Hauerwas at Duke Divinity School is a theologian famous for his aphorisms. I have heard him say on many occasions that "The story of Christian ethics in America is not about Christianity; it's about America." There are a lot of Hauerwas' core convictions about theological ethics wrapped up in that sentence, and he unpacks them in numerous ways in his many publications. At least one of those convictions is this: American Christians typically take the socio-political structures and norms of life in a liberal democracy (America) much more seriously than they do their professed faith (Christianity). And that shows up in what they are willing to say, what they are willing to do, and how they are willing to live.

The program of the Massachusetts Bible Society might well mark its members as good Americans in this regard. But it doesn't mean that there's anything coherently Christian about what they're doing. That's probably the sign of an organization that has either stopped thinking rigorously about its theology (as opposed to its citizenship) or doesn't have a strong enough ecclesiology to allow it to think intelligibly about its form of life as it is constituted in distinction to other options available in society at large.

Or it could be a combination of both.