By John A. Azumah, First Things.
As an African and an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana teaching at a seminary of the Presbyterian Church (USA), I have keenly followed the fractious debate on the subject of same-sex relations within the Presbyterian family of churches. It is hard to generalize about African and American societies and cultures in all their respective complexities and contradictions. But one distinction can be sharply maintained: The mainstream acceptance and promotion of same-sex relations in the West and America is solidly opposed in African societies.
My first “welcome to America” moment occurred when I invited an imam to my Introduction to Islam class at Columbia Theological Seminary.The imam talked about the basic tenets of Islam for an hour and asserted, among other things, that Jesus is not the Son of God, denied that he was crucified, and maintained that the Bible has been falsified. My students listened respectfully throughout the lecture. When he paused and invited discussion, the students replied with rather timid and politically correct queries, at which point the imam said: “Why are you not asking me about jihad, about terrorism, women? I know you have all these questions. Why are you not asking me the hard questions?” So one student queried him about Islamic teaching on homosexuality. The imam answered by defining the practice as un-Islamic, not of God, unnatural. Suddenly, the faces of a good number of the students went red with shock and rage. I stepped in and gently steered the discussion away from the topic.
After the class ended, the few conservative students in the class approached and slyly suggested that I invite the imam again. Other students urged me to cancel a scheduled visit to the mosque the following Friday. I resisted those efforts and we all visited the mosque, after which the imam and his elders unexpectedly hosted the class for an Ethiopian feast. A lesbian student who had been most upset after the class confessed that she was glad she came, because she saw a hospitable and warm side of the imam.
As I look back upon the whole episode, I think I ended up more unsettled than my students. They were agitated by what the imam said about homosexuality, but seemed wholly at ease with his negation of fundamental Christian beliefs. If this were a seminary in Ghana, my home country, the reverse would have been the case.
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What did one learn from visiting the mosque? Can these visits edify the faith of his students? I doubt it very much. It is like another visit to Disney.
Mr. Azumah needs to read and comprehend what the Scripture says about Christ as the Only Son and true God. This is a main problem in PCUSA because seminaries are not teaching the Bible and how to interpret as THE WORD OF GOD.
I have met Dr. Azumah personally a couple of years ago, and have no doubt that he is committed to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the only-begotten Son of the one true God. And there is really nothing in this article that would bring this commitment into question. Like it or not, Islam is the chief competitor or alternative religion to Christianity, and trying to understand Islam (while not minimizing differences) is important for followers of Christ.
Islam is only one of two “chief competitors or alternative religions to Christianity”; the other is Pluralism. It would seem that the majority of the students in Dr. Asumah’s class are adherents of the latter.
The main point is the absurdity of American liberal protestantism in its dealings with reformed traditions outside the U.S., because their ethnocentrism and paternalistic attitudes are unchanged from the colonial era. Only the content of the message has changed. No wonder the global south is breaking ties with mainstream protestantism. I heard Rev.Azumah preach to the Presbytery of Chicago earlier this year, specifically on the wheat and weeds of Matthew 13. While I estimate 90% of it went over their heads, they were outstandingly polite. If they really understood it they would have the same shock and rage as Rev. Azumah’s students. I wish he had been more direct on the heresy of the PCUSA and the POC, but it also proves the verse “those that have ears, let them hear.”
I, too, have met John personally and talked with him at length about his faith…..in Istanbul as part of The World Reformed Fellowship Islamic Consultation, where Muslim-background Christians ( of which John is one ) were given a forum in which to address the global Church. John takes students to a mosque to have their eyes opened to the radical differences between Islam and the Gospel of grace. John is a thorough-going Biblically orthodox Christian with a passion for Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
I would suggest the major competition to Christianity in the West is consumerism.