Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots of the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together we research politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Hey, friends. Welcome to another episode of Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk and I’m joined here with my co-host, Dr. Shadi Hamid.
Shadi Hamid:
That’s me.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together we research religion, politics and the future of democracy. Today we have a rather spicy topic, a topic that was imposed on me by my co-host, and I am after thinking about it for this last week, Shadi, I am excited to get into it, but I have been avoiding it for a little while.
Shadi Hamid:
For a year or two years, I think.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I’ve been avoiding this question and I will talk at some point about why I don’t like the question, but as I’ve been thinking about it more and more this week, I do think it’s important that we talk about this thing and there’s actually more layers to this than I had previously thought out. So anyways, with all that said, Shadi, why don’t you introduce the question we’re going to be tackling and tell us all why you’re pushing this on me, I suppose?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, to put it bluntly, the question is do Muslims and Christians believe in the same God? Question mark. I got to be honest too, that as I was thinking about recording this with you, I have felt a little bit nervous about it more than I would for a normal episode, not because I’m particularly conflicted about my own views, but I think that this is an example of deep difference, and I think it’s worth noting that even people like me and you who talk about deep difference for a living and the whole podcast is oriented around that.
I think it’s just worth saying that even we feel uncomfortable with deep difference sometimes. It’s not easy, and that’s a thing. It’s probably not easy for a lot of you as well. It’s like imagine bringing up this topic with your Muslim neighbour or your Christian neighbour, if you’re Muslim, and obviously no one’s going to be thrilled about bringing this up, but it is a pretty philosophically and intellectually rich and theologically rich topic. And I do think there are a lot of layers.
I’ll just say from my own standpoint that it never even occurred to me to ask the question until I started talking to you, Matt, about it. And I didn’t realise it was a controversy. Maybe I have some vague recollection of something after 9/11. I was looking back at some of these debates and I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” There was a couple Evangelical leaders and pastors who didn’t like it when George W. Bush said that Muslims and Christians believe in the same God. But I don’t remember it being a really big controversy.
And I think from a Muslim standpoint, it’s more resolved than it is from a Christian standpoint. So I think there’s also a imbalance and we can delve into that. But I guess I was surprised to find out that there are actually a lot of Evangelicals who don’t feel comfortable saying that we believe in the same God. And that I guess I’ll just say just to put my cards on the table, it kind of hurts. It bothers me at a fundamental level, and we can maybe talk about why it bothers me. Should it bother me?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I want to hear. And I think it hurts you in a number of different spots, but talk us through it first. Why does it hurt? Before we talk about the ideas, share your feelings.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Sure. Well, I think for starters, I like the idea of Muslims being part of the Judeo-Christian fabric of American public life. And it doesn’t have to be Judeo-Christian-Muslim, but I don’t love the idea of being completely left out.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So it’s like the national community, a sense of wanting to belong to the national community for you?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. And not feeling comfortable with the idea of Muslims being singled out of the Abrahamic faiths. I mean, there’s three of us. I sort of see us as being part of the same family of faith traditions.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
And then to hear that actually the little brother is going to be like the black sheep and pushed out and it’s just going to be you guys, so that Christians and the Jews doing their own thing.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
So there is that sense of how do we as Muslims belong? And obviously, our situation in American public life is more recent and is more fraught. We have less of a history of being accepted. And obviously in the context of post 9/11, Trump’s Muslim ban, there are a number of examples where prominent politicians try to push us out and say that we’re not good enough or we’re bad. And it’s also worth noting that as we’ve talked about in previous episodes, Evangelicals tend to be the most anti-Muslim group. I think they are actually.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I think we’re number one.
Shadi Hamid:
Number one. Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
So I would want that to change and I would want to make the case to my Evangelical brothers and sisters. “Hey, bring us in a little bit. You don’t have to see us as other. You don’t have to be afraid of us. You don’t have to see us as being adversaries or enemies.” And I think it becomes harder to make that case if I don’t have the argument of us believing in the same God in my arsenal of argumentation.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So part of it is wanting to belong to the national community of America, but then there’s also a theological or a spiritual concern as well, would you say or no?
Shadi Hamid:
Say more about what would qualify as a theological or spiritual concern?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, very early on, it might’ve been like our third or fourth episode, we had a very touchy point around does a Christian think you’re just worshipping a false God or that you’re an idolater or just completely lost? So within Islam, as you alluded to this earlier, Muslims see Jews and Christians as people of the book, as close cousins. And there was this longing that I would say something similar to you-
Shadi Hamid:
That you would return the favour basically, and that we would be, not that we have to be to you people of the book as Muslims, but the sense that there isn’t a reciprocal… If favours aren’t being returned or there’s some imbalance, and that makes some of these discussions more difficult and more fraught because then you have to confront the fact that, “Oh, wait, actually, Christians aren’t going to see us in a comparable way.”
And what does that mean for us as Muslims considering that the majority of Americans are still Christian or come from a Christian background? And to have this being an obstacle and the idea that we might even believe in a false God, that hurts. If that is what some people think about us as Muslims, a false God, those are fighting words right there.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
That is no small matter. Idolaters? God forbid. Literally, God forbid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
God does forbid that. So there’s just so much that’s tied into all of this. And I think that I’ve alluded to this earlier in this season of episodes, this idea that because Muslims come after Christians, Christians see us as a threat because we supersede Christian revelation in some way.
And I made the comparison that for breakaway groups that came after Islam, like the Baha’is or the Ahmadis. That these sects are seen very negatively, sometimes by Muslims precisely because they claim to have something better. They claim to go beyond what has already come.
So I think, also, our positioning in the Abrahamic story makes it more difficult for Christians to accept us because we are claiming openly to be better, to have something more than Christians have. And I think that Christians are more comfortable with Jews because Jews came before. And Jews aren’t also universalist faith.
I mean, Jews aren’t really competing with Christians for believers. They’re not trying to go out and convert people. So in some sense, Judaism is easier because Jews and Christians aren’t competing on the same plane, where in some ways Christians and Muslims are competing on the same plane-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Right.
Shadi Hamid:
… for the same potential converts in places like Africa, for example.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So give us all your first blush try at this. Do we worship the same God, Shadi?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yes. Okay.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Now tell me why.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Why do you think you and I worship the same God?
Shadi Hamid:
Well, I mean there is the very straightforward theological and scriptural argument that it says so in the Quran. God says so explicitly. So this is actually in verse 29, 46 where God says, “Believers argue only in the best way with the people of the book, except with those of them who act unjustly.” Say, quote, “We believe in what was revealed to us and in what was revealed to you. Our God and your God are one. We are devoted to Him.”
So the key part there obviously is our God and your God are one. And this is Muslims vis-a-vis the people of the book. So it’s right there in a prominent, well-known verse. It’s hard to argue against that. There are, I would say, some less mainstream views that argue that this is in reference to the original people of the book that Christians before they were corrupted and before they embrace things fully like the Trinity. But that’s pretty questionable, even if you look at it chronologically, because the Nicene creed was already embraced when Islam came, and Prophet Muhammad would’ve been aware of Christians who were properly Christian by then and so on and so forth.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So if I were to ask Muslims all over the world this question, you would say the vast majority of them would say yes?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Yeah. And certainly I would say even a larger percentage of American Muslims. In fact, I think it’s been very rare in my own experience to hear American Muslims question this or suggest something different. That’s why when we first started talking about it, and you brought it up as an issue on the Christian side, I was like, “Wait. What?”
It hadn’t even really occurred to me. And granted in my field work in the Middle East, this wasn’t something I focused on. So it’s not as if in my interviews I was asking people. |”ell, do you believe that Christians believe in the same God?” So I don’t know for sure what people would’ve said if I kind of push them to expound on their views.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Sure.
Shadi Hamid:
It’s also worth noting that Christians in the Middle East will often use the same words for God. So inshallah, for example. God willing, that Christians would still say things like inshallah. It’s part of the common cultural language that belongs to everyone. If you’re part of the broader Arab culture where these things are said, you’ll say similar things and you won’t think like, “Oh, my God. I have to use a different word here in Arabic, because Allah represents a different God.” At a very basic level Allah is God in Arabic.
Matthew Kaemingk:
For the Christian and Jewish, it’s related to Elohim and El-
Shadi Hamid:
Yes. That’s right.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… in Hebrews. So Elohim, Allah.
Shadi Hamid:
Exactly.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You can see the connection there. Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes. I guess the issue that many Muslims do have is the nature of God being different. And I do think it’s worth distinguishing between God’s fundamental essence and how we describe His attributes or how we describe His manifestations. That’s where there are clear divides because Muslims do obviously feel quite strongly about the Trinity. That we don’t believe in it. We think it’s not good and major theological error.
One might say that Muslims think the Trinity is even bad, although what the implications of that badness might be is something that Muslims themselves debate. But it’s certainly seen as a corruption of the original purity of the message of scripture. It’s seen as something that is false, unequivocally false.
So then the question is how much does that sort of impinge on the fundamental essence of God?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Because I think Christians would say that Jesus Christ is God. God is Jesus. God is three. Not to get into the metaphysics of the Trinity and all of that, but that is a very fundamental aspect of the Christian conception of God.
So if we, as Muslims, don’t believe in the Trinity, then that seems like a pretty big deal. I think we would say at some fundamental level, God is God, and if we say that God… Well, I don’t know. This is where it gets confusing. Now I’m just trying to think it through.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
But go ahead. There’s a lot there that I put on the table so…
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. You put a lot on the table. I would say-
Shadi Hamid:
And just be open. Don’t worry about offending me.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think the question is easy as long as you don’t think about it. But the moment you start taking these two faiths really seriously, the moment you start really digging down into their stories, into their characters, into the things that are important to them, it gets more complicated. Just kind of saying, “Oh, we both worship the same God.”
But in general, I want to give six different answers to this question.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, nice. I am ready for this.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So as an Evangelical Christian, I’ve got Evangelical listeners who are all waiting their sense of, is Matt going to say that the Orthodox Evangelical thing? And so, yeah. There’s six answers I want to give to this question. Do you and I worship the same God?
I want to say yes. I want to say no. I want to say I don’t know. I want to sit in silence with this question. I want to change the subject. And then the last thing I want to say is it’s a really stupid question.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, wow. Those are actually six different responses. Okay.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And I want to say all of them, and I’ll talk through each of them as we go along. Not all in one big row. But just to kind of preview that for listeners, I think each one of those six is an important thing. But I mean starting with yes, why do I want to say yes that we both worship the same God?
Well, in a sense, I want to say yes because I’m a monotheist. I believe there’s only one God out there. And so who else would be listening to your prayers, Shadi? When you pray, when you worship, who else would be receiving those things other than the one God, being a monotheist, right?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And even if you listen to say a conservative Christian getting into a fight with a conservative Muslim, the conservative Christian would say, “God is triune.” And the Muslim would say, “No, He isn’t.” And they’re both assuming the same God even in that fight.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So in the battle back and forth, there is the assumption that we’re talking about the same thing and we’re fighting about God’s attributes. So if I were to say, “Joe Biden is handsome.” And you were to say, “No, he’s not.” We’re still fighting about the same person even if-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Joe Biden. Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… we disagree about his attributes. Another way is to speak of God as an office, like prime minister. And so you and I agree that there is this office we call God, and we would describe the person who holds that office in different ways. And so that’s another way of thinking about these things.
Another reason why I would want to say yes is that a little bit differently. Christians believe that all human beings have what we would call the semen religionis, the seed of religion in Latin is semen religionis. So every human being has a longing for God, and that manifests itself in a wide variety of ways.
So when a Buddhist is pursuing transcendent peace, when a Muslim is praying to Allah, when a communist is seeking justice, as we seek these things, we’re all yearning for God in a different way. We’re yearning for the goodness that God provides.
And so in a way, an important aspect of being human is that longing for this one true God. And so in a way, I have no problem saying, “Yeah. We all long for that same God,” though we might direct it in all kind… That might manifest itself in a wide variety of ways.
And I would also say that we definitely have a similar origin in Abraham. Muslims, Jews and Christians, we’re all battling over who is this God of Abraham? And we all in a way worship the God of Abraham in very different ways. So those are some of the reasons why I would want to say yes-
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. Good.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… to the question.
Shadi Hamid:
Let’s get to, I guess, no is next, right?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Why do I want to say no? So why I want to say no is I don’t understand God to be just a philosophical idea. I understand God to be a living and moving character in the world that has manifest himself in the people of Israel and the person of Jesus. So He has incarnated in a human being, in the form of a human being, and in a particular people.
So He’s not just an abstract philosophical concept of justice or love, He’s not a vague law, but He has a real story. Moreover, I see the denial of differences as the denial of the deep differences between Islam and Christianity to be… Well, it’s just inaccurate. It’s also disrespectful to both faiths and it’s counterproductive.
So one of the things I think rushing back, the people who want to say… This is what I often encounter, Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Often what’s driving that is their desire for peace and harmony. They want people to get along, and they think that the way to get that is to say, “Well, we all worship the same God.” If by emphasising our commonality, we can deal with this uncomfortable difference.
So to me, I see it as short-circuiting debates and discussions that have to happen. And I don’t think it’s particularly helpful. There’s this belief that difference drives conflict, and so we just need to deny the difference and then the conflict won’t happen. So that’s another reason why I want to say no it’s just because the differences are there and they’re important.
Shadi Hamid:
It could very well lessen the conflict though. I mean, isn’t there a pragmatic argument that certain things are very difficult to talk about something as fundamental as how we perceive God? And we have a lot of other differences that we can talk about, we don’t necessarily need to add this one to the ledger. And if that can help make things easier in certain discussions so we can focus on more tangible issues or differences that are unequivocal, like the Trinity, for example.
I mean, that’s something that we all very clearly disagree on and we can talk about it in a tangible way.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
So what would you say to that?
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think what I’d say is we want to lower the temperature. We want to get along. We want to get rid of things that are dividing us. What I hear there is a discomfort that I want to get rid of, rather than being willing to say, “Hey, we have these deep differences. Let’s try to navigate them well.” Rather than denying them or saying they’re not important.
So you can get rid of this difference. You can say we all worship the same God, but we’re going to find something else to fight about.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I don’t respond well to the pragmatic argument of, “Hey…” It’d be better if we all just said we worship the same God.
Shadi Hamid:
Right. Right. Yeah. So we got yes and no, and now we’re on to silence.
Matthew Kaemingk:
No. The next one is I don’t know.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh. Oh, sorry. Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So the next one is I don’t know. So there’s a couple of things I want to say on this. One is, “Shadi, I don’t know what’s going on in your head.” You and I can talk and be friends for our entire life, but ultimately there are parts of your heart and soul that are not accessible to me.
And so ultimately, it’s not a question I should proclaim to know. And furthermore, I would say that there are people who call themselves Christians, and we see this in the Bible, people who call themselves Christians who don’t actually believe in God. And an important part of Christianity is the sense that only the Lord knows the heart.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Even there’s parts of the Bible that says, “There will be some out there who say, ‘Lord. Lord.’ And Jesus will say to them, ‘I never knew you.'” And so there’s a mystery in terms of who is this person next to me who’s praying? That I think we have in scripture that encourages a little bit of humility.
So when someone says, “You and I worship the same God.” There’s a part of me that wants to say, “I don’t know.” That feels like it’s important for me to say I don’t know. I can’t possibly know what’s going on in your head. And there’s another part of the Bible that talks about how, um, when you cared for the poor, you were caring for me. When you visited the sick, you were visiting me, which is the sense of we don’t always know what we’re doing actually.
So not only do I not know what you’re doing, you don’t know what you’re doing. There is a sense, Shadi, in which you might be surprised about the God that you served when you did this or you did that. And so I would want to cultivate a level of humility about how I talk about myself and how I talk about others. Because if you think about that statement, you and I worship the same God.
There is a lot of confidence in that statement. There’s a lot of confidence about you. There’s a lot of confidence about me, and there’s a lot of confidence about who this God is. That I feel like a little bit of maybe let off the gas about that.
And that leads into my last one, which is silence. A response to that question which is silence. And that’s the sense that it would be almost wrong and blasphemous for me to claim that I know exactly how God responds to your prayers and to your worship. That ultimately that is going to be God’s sovereign decision.
And so I want to have a level of humility that would actually be somewhat silent in the presence of that question. You know what I mean?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. And then you also think that it’s a stupid question. I think you’ve already alluded to why you think that is, but anything more on that? I mean-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, it’s a stupid question that it is not the important question. The important question to me is how are we going to navigate these deep differences that are still in front of us? It feels to me like a cheap thing that doesn’t get us nearly as far as we want, or we hope.
It’s similar to Christians who are universalists. And you say everyone’s going to heaven. Well, that’s wonderful, but you’re still going to have to live with the deep differences that we have right now.
Shadi Hamid:
Right.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You’re still going to have to figure out what to do about the fact that somebody hates you and that somebody is your enemy, and how you’re going to share this city and this country with people who deeply disagree with you today. So I think the thing that frustrates me about the question is people imagine that it can be a shortcut to peace when it can’t.
And actually there are other theological ways to get to solidarity that don’t involve this. So here’s just one of them. Like, “Shadi, I believe you’re a human being.” And just by saying, “Shadi, you’re a human being.” I have a lot of obligations to you.
I can’t lie about you. I can’t attack you. I can’t disadvantage you. I have to pursue your justice and your freedom, and I have to include you as an American citizen and love you as a neighbour. All of those things I have to do. I don’t have to say you and I worship the same God-
Shadi Hamid:
To get to that. Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… to get all those things.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. But the problem is there are a lot of Evangelicals who do have trouble getting to all those things that you mentioned when it comes to Muslims.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
They aren’t going to pursue justice on our behalf. They aren’t going to see us as equal citizens. And we know this for the reasons that we alluded to, that Evangelicals for a number of reasons just don’t view Muslims very positively.
And it’s also worth noting that there is a Catholic, Evangelical divide because several popes, Francis, but also Pope John Paul have affirmed that Catholics and Muslims believe in the same God. Also, in Vatican II, there is a specific line in one of the dogmatic constitutions of Vatican II called Lumen Gentium, that includes this line. Quote, “Muslims who professing to hold the faith of Abraham along with us, adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.” End quote.
So things like that, so there’s a couple interesting things. I mean, one is talking about similar attributes that because Muslims emphasise God is the most merciful. That’s one of the names of God that we say many times over the course of the day during our prayers. It is one of the fundamental attributes of God. Some scholars have even said that the merciful nature of God is the predominant attribute.
And then also this Catholic teaching is saying that this is the faith of Abraham. So it goes back to this idea that we share a common story, that we share an intellectual, historical, and even theological lineage, and that we all derive from this Abrahamic origin, which gets me to, I think, a point that I want to emphasise and put back to you, which is the question of how Christians view Jews versus how Christians view Muslims. Because if you guys were just equally exclusivist and you said, “Hey, Jews are out too. Jews don’t believe in the same God.”
Then I’d be like, “Okay. At least you guys are being consistent. I can live with that.” I think what is difficult, and it goes back to what I said in the beginning about the Judeo-Christian-Muslim, but it gets to something specific that Jews also don’t believe in the Trinity. Jews don’t believe that Jesus is God and that Jesus is divine.
One might even say that Jews are further away from Christians than we are in so far as they don’t even attribute prophethood to Jesus. Yet, despite all of that, Christians still consider Jews to be believing in the same God. So it can’t just be the triune nature of God that becomes the issue, otherwise Jews would be outside the fold as well.
And I think that’s the part, if I really had to boil it down, that’s the part that hurts the most. It feels like a certain Muslim specific discrimination. And I know you have an answer to that because we did talk about it once before, actually just two months ago, give or take, and it was like a tense exchange. I remember being uncomfortable as you were discussing it, but just remind me about what would you say to that, the Jewish-Muslim aspect?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Well, I think for most Orthodox Christians, Jews, Judaism is different than every other religion on earth for us. And that is because of the New Testament and the witness of Paul. We believe that we need to have a posture of deep, deep gratitude for the Jewish faith and the Jewish scriptures, because of the sense of the New Testament used the language of grafting.
That like a plant, you would graft a branch onto a plant. That we have been grafted into the covenant of Israel by way of Jesus. So we don’t see ourselves as a wholly different or alien thing. But I think that an important aspect of this, Shadi, is that a Christians and Jews share a holy book. And Christians and Muslims don’t. You and I don’t share a revelation. You think of the Old and New Testament as corrupted, whereas Christians and Jews look at the Old Testament and don’t see it as corrupted. So we share a common divine revelation.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. But we don’t agree with that assessment because we, as Muslims, believe ourselves to share scripture with both Christians and Jews. That’s why we call Christians and Jews people of the book. The book here referring to the books in question, Old Testament, New Testament and-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh, yeah. But don’t you understand those things to be corrupted though?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Sure. But we still recognise that scripture and we see a lot of truth in that scripture, and we know that it comes originally from God, but that it’s not perfect.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay.
Shadi Hamid:
That it isn’t God’s exact word. It’s not His exact speech. There’s human mediation, and that’s what caused there to be errors or falsifications, whatever word we want to use.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Right. But what I’m saying though is that of the three faiths, the only ones that can agree on a specific text as God’s word unadulterated are Jews and Christians. Jews and Christians can agree that the Old Testament is God’s word given to the world.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Okay. But not to get on a little sidetrack here, but I think that if you ask a lot of Jews and Christians, do you consider the Old Testament to be the unadulterated word of God? You’d have a lot saying no. They would say it’s not perfect. There are flaws. There’s a human role here.
And then you get into the differences between Orthodox Jews and reformed Jews and how they actually view scripture. It’s also worth noting that many Jews don’t believe in God. You can be Jewish and be committed to the ritual. You can even be an Orthodox Jew and not believe in God, which for reasons, again, that are somewhat complex. And there are of course Christians who if you actually-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I’m talking about Judaism, the faith as a… I mean, that’s-
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. But sharing scripture is different than sharing the same conception of God. So let’s grant what you just said that Jews and Christians share scripture, the Old Testament and so forth. How does that extend to sharing the same God? Because again, the main point that you raised earlier is that the triune nature of God is what makes the Christian God potentially, fundamentally different.
Jews don’t believe in the triune God. They don’t believe that Christ is king. They don’t believe that Christ is divine. So I just want to be clear about where we’re talking about because you’re talking about scripture, but then ultimately we need to talk about the nature of God.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Well, I’m sorry. Can you state that question one more time for me? I mean, what are you picking at? What do you really want me to focus on here?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. So when I brought up the Christian-Jewish relationship, you said that you share scripture. Fine. You share scripture, that’s a different question than whether or not you believe in the same God.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I think what I would say is that Christians and Jews would use a lot of different words and different stories to talk about God, but we both fundamentally agree that God spoke and worked through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. We believe that too. I mean, we share many if most of the same prophets.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m a little stuck right now-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Yeah. No. No.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… to be honest with you.
Shadi Hamid:
It’s fair. It’s fair. We can shift gears a little bit to get to some more practical issues. So even if we don’t think this is the most important question, and I’m willing to grant that it isn’t the most important question, and I think it’s fair to see it sometimes as a distraction from what actually matters.
That said, it matters in practise. And just to give one example, there was the big controversy in an evangelical university, Wheaton College, and some might even say that Wheaton College is the Harvard of evangelical colleges, although Fuller Seminary also has a claim to that. I don’t want to get into some internecine warfare right there.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I appreciate that.
Shadi Hamid:
But there was a professor of political science at Wheaton College named Leticia Hawkins, also I think the first tenured Black professor at Wheaton. So there was also a racial dimension there. And you know the story better than I do. But basically she said that Christians and Muslims believe in the same God.
And then the Wheaton College administration or whoever judges the statement of faith. Because to be to faculty at an evangelical college like Wheaton, you have to sign on to a statement of faith. And it was perceived that this statement that Leticia Hawkins made could be considered a violation of the statement of faith that affirms the trinitarian nature of God and some of the things that we’ve already talked about.
So she eventually had to leave. And this is still something that weighs on Wheaton College, and it was seen as a very controversial moment, and even faculty were divided about whether this was the appropriate approach to take. Do you want to just say a little bit more about that because there’s probably aspects of it that I haven’t been able to capture as well?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, yeah. It’s Larycia, not Leticia. Larycia Hawkins.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh. Oops. My bad.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, man.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Don’t worry about it. But yeah, this was a big topic within evangelicalism, and this happened in 2015, and there were a number of op-eds that came out afterwards of Evangelicals trying to suss out these things. And so in our conversation so far, Shadi, I’ve been more pounding the no side of the question. No, we don’t worship the same God.
But here I’ll be critical of my fellow Evangelical brothers and sisters on this kind of thing. In that I feel like quite often when Evangelicals say, “We don’t worship the same God.” There are some motivations beneath that statement that are not theological. And they can be driven by fear or hatred or racism or a desire to be special, I think.
So on the race side of it, it can be a desire to say, “These brown people from the Middle East worship a different God and they don’t represent our white religion, and our white religion is special, or we can’t possibly admit commonality with Muslims because that would make our faith less special.”
If we admitted that we worship the same God, then our faith wouldn’t be special anymore. It would just be like Baskin and Robin’s flavours, and you pick any flavour you like and it doesn’t really matter because it’s all the same God. So beneath the no answer can be a thing of my faith is only true if it’s different. My faith is only true if it’s special. If it’s just one of many flavours, then it’s not really real.
And when you say, “No, we don’t worship the same God.” Beneath that can be fear or hatred or pride or a variety of emotions that have nothing to do with Jesus.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And in this particular issue with Wheaton College, I think there are people on the campus who would admit that those things were going on, or hopefully they would admit that some of those things were going on as well in that. And I will mention for our listeners that Shadi and I have been invited to Wheaton College a couple of times to speak since then.
And the organisation Neighbourly Faith, which brought Shadi and I together a number of times and does a tonne of great work on Muslim-Christian relations, that organisation came out of two Wheaton graduates who experienced that conflict and who wanted to present a different and a better evangelical response to those things.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, I didn’t know that was the origin story.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Wow. Okay.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Kevin Singer and Chris. Yeah. So Neighbourly Faith, which does amazing work on evangelical college campuses and has done that for the past eight years came in large part out of those conversations so…
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. But I suppose it raises the question, what ultimately was motivating that? So you have alluded to the fact that other motivations might be at work, but isn’t that precisely the issue is that saying no to the question opens the door for some of these subconscious or even conscious motivations to be expressed more strongly, publicly, or vigorously?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I mean-
Shadi Hamid:
And this is one example of that happening.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Sure. I mean, another thing that can play a role in situations like that are potentially really conservative donors who are giving to a school and want to make sure that school is not sliding into liberalism. And so-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. That is a real God forbid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Right? And so the fear would be, “Oh, this professor is part of Wheaton College becoming liberal.” And so there’s a desire to maintain the boundaries, maintain the fences of orthodoxy. And one of the ways you can do that is by saying tough things about Islam.
Shadi Hamid:
Right. So it’s a almost like fence policing or gate policing, or even policing the pale, if you will? And this is where the phrase beyond the pale comes from. A pale is a wooden stake that you put into the ground to keep the Irish out. I’m joking, but that’s how it came about. The British saw the Irish people and the Irish realm as being beyond the pale because this was a world of barbarism and backwardness. And so when you say-
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I mean to make it clear, I have problems with people who say yes and people who say no-
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Totally.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… on this.
Shadi Hamid:
Totally.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Those on saying yes, they’re often just trying to get to peace and solidarity and not taking the differences seriously. And those who want to say no, they are trying to emphasise often their specialness or their sense of fear or othering, and they’re trying to police boundaries because they’re worried.
Shadi Hamid:
And to be clear, I think that you’ve established a nice middle ground. I can live with this.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay. That’s great.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Hey.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, but I also would say I’m not doing this pragmatically. I just think theologically, Shadi, I have to say that-
Shadi Hamid:
You have to be true to your theological convictions.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
I would never want you to suppress them or otherwise dilute them for my benefit.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. But I mean, I do think theologically, a lot of this drives me towards commonality and solidarity with you. I believe that you are made in God’s image, that God made you to connect with Him, and that your desire to pray, you desire to pray, Shadi. And I don’t think that’s the gift of the devil. I think that’s the gift of God, and that’s a part of your longing for God.
And so that’s why I tell you to fast and pray even when you don’t want to. Because if I thought… Honestly, I had a friend ask me, “Why do you tell Shadi he should pray more when he’s not a Christian?” Well, that’s because I think prayer is a gift from God, and I want him to pray.
Shadi Hamid:
Well, that’s really interesting that your friend brought that up.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure.
Shadi Hamid:
And the concern, just to be clear for listeners, how would you describe his concern?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, for Evangelicals, we want to evangelise. We want people to know Jesus. And so then the question is, if someone wanted to help you really know Jesus and become a Christian, should they try and loosen your grip on Islam in the hopes that you would eventually come to Jesus, or should they encourage you to deepen your walk with Islam?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. It seems obvious that the answer would be the former and not the latter, but you have a different view which is really interesting.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I do. I do.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And that’s because I believe that the desire to seek God, the desire to pray, the desire to be faithful, that those are gifts from God, and ultimately they find their resolution in Jesus.
Shadi Hamid:
But wouldn’t that make it harder for you and other Evangelicals to evangelise me? So the more I deepen in my own faith, practise and ritual, presumably that it’ll be harder to convert me to Christianity, right?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, here’s the thing. I mean, oh gosh, this is so fun, Shadi. Now I love this conversation. So I started off in a bad mood, because I was like, “I hate this question. I don’t want to talk about this.”
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. You were sulking a little bit.
Matthew Kaemingk:
But now I like this. I mean, this is important for our book in that we argue that religion is good for human beings.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So I would say that prayer and the pursuit of wisdom and peace that I think is evident in prayer, people of all faiths, when they seek peace and they seek wisdom through prayer, that’s a good thing for human beings to do. That God made human beings for prayer.
And so there’s all kinds of secondary benefits to this in terms of emotional, spiritual, familial health. And I want you to flourish, Shadi. I don’t simply want you to know Jesus, I want you to flourish. If you just binged on Netflix every night as opposed to praying, I think one activity would be much better for you than the other, and just loving you as a human being, I want you to flourish, if that makes sense?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I appreciate that, man.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And fasting, it helps your tummy so there’s that too.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, wow. No. That’s a really good point to emphasise because I think it’ll come across maybe as counterintuitive to some listeners that you might want me to pray more and deepen some of my own faith practises.
You know what? Before we close up, I wanted to ask not a super personal question, but semi-personal one, which is how you navigate talking to different audiences on sensitive topics like this because you are an Evangelical, theologian who is ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church, you are a figure of authority in some way, at least. And you’re also a professor at Fuller Seminary, which means that as teaching faculty, you have to uphold the statement of faith.
I’m research faculty, which means I don’t need to, but if I did want to teach seminarians at Fuller Seminary, I would have to effectively convert to Christianity. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It makes actually a lot of sense. I mean, that’s a point of a seminary. So you have one set of pressures on you that there’s a expectation coming from other evangelicals for you to hold to the orthodoxy.
And on the other hand though, you are an individual person who has probably complex and maybe seemingly, I don’t want to say unorthodox, but maybe views that may be seen as touching on that might be difficult for some more conservative Evangelicals to accept. Just maybe say more to me and to our dear listeners about how you think about that and those different pressures.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I think those pressures are real. I think in large part, in order to inhabit these spaces of my own evangelical subculture and a pluralistic world, I think of, yeah, the analogy of a tree. In that a healthy tree is going to have deep roots. Deep roots in something beyond itself, but it’s also, its branches are going to extend out, and they’re going to be able to wave in the wind and flex a bit, as opposed to a dead tree that gets dry and brittle. And when the wind comes, the branches snap.
So I look at my Evangelical community, my scriptures, my church as my roots. And I don’t look at them as something that’s primarily oppressing me or pressuring me or watching over me, but I look at them as my roots where I derive my strength, but also my flexibility. So they tell me to be humble.
My church, every single week we confess our sins. And so my church makes me do that. So it’s hard to come out of that church really prideful because they’re constantly reminding me that I’m broken and I’m making a change.
Shadi Hamid:
Wait. How do they make you do that each week?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, make me.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh.
Matthew Kaemingk:
But in worship, during a worship service on Sunday morning, we step aside for five minutes in the worship service and we pray a special prayer of confession, that sort of names that we have all fallen short this week. We have left things undone and we have done things that we shouldn’t have done. And we take a moment and we reflect on that and we offer those confessions to God.
So then when I go into the public square and I talk to you and I talk to atheists and whatever else, I come with, hopefully, with some level of humility, but also I think curiosity because I believe that God is out in the world and is active. And so I think God is active in your life, Shadi, and has blessed you and in a lot of ways that He has not blessed me.
He’s made you brilliant in a wide variety of ways and insightful and you have taught me a lot of things. And I actually, I don’t think that’s like an accident. I think God has decided to teach me through you. And so I have to talk to you, not with the sense that you’re a project that I’m working on, or I’m here to fix Shadi or convert Shadi, or I have all the answers, but actually the sense of you’ve got something to teach me.
So I don’t just use a microphone, I use headphones so I can listen to you. And I think that we had an early episode, Shadi, where we talked about learning from heretics.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. That was great.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And I think every religion needs to have some concept of how you can learn from outsiders and why you should, and a belief that God is active in the lives of outsiders that you could be surprised.
Shadi Hamid:
Amen, brother, right back at you. And I’ve said this before and I hope it won’t get you in trouble with some of your Christian buddies. But I think you have made me a better Muslim and I can say that. I think it’s really cool that we can both help and teach each other in these different ways from our respective faith traditions.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. And one last thing. Gosh, I appreciate that. I’m going to need to process that with my students and how think they feel about that, that I made someone a better Muslim. Is that something I should be happy about or not? But the last thing I would say is how I talk with my evangelical friends about these kinds of issues is I am very clear that my roots are an orthodoxy. That while the boundaries sometimes are not always clear, like with this particular question, I had six responses to the question.
And I’m exploring all these different options. And there are some Christians who are going to be mad at me about how I responded. They will want me to just say one thing, which is, no, you and I don’t worship the same God. They have nothing to do with one another. Right?
Well, what I say back to them is, while the boundaries of my faith are not always perfectly crystal clear, the centre is, that the centre of my faith is Jesus Christ, His cross, and the scripture. And there is no waffling from me on that centre.
And if I’m clear about the centre, if I’m clear about where my roots are, then I am a healthy tree which can handle a storm. So I’m not brittle. I’m not cracking because my roots go down deep. And I think that in a pluralistic society, we need Christians who are like that. We need Muslims who are like that. We need Jews. We need atheists actually who are like that.
We need atheists who are clear about who they are, who’ve thought about who they are, but who are not just shattered when they encounter religious conservatives, but they can engage with religious conservatives with a level of humility and curiosity. That maybe these religious people know something about what it means to be a healthy family and what it means to be a healthy human being.
So I think when I’m hanging out with my Orthodox people, my Orthodox Evangelicals, I’m very clear with them about where my roots are and what my centre is. And I think that’s important for all of us to think about.
Shadi Hamid:
I do love the tree analogy. So to all you listeners and viewers, be a deep-rooted tree if you’re going to be a tree to weather the storm. And with that, I would just want to say thank you to everyone for joining us. This season is really shaping up to be cool. And if you missed it, make sure to check out our episode on the case for hell.
I mean, we really are taking on some sensitive, difficult topics head on, and you got to do it. Hell, do we worship the same God and more to come God willing. If you like what we do, if you like this episode, do remember to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. And, hey, be Evangelical. Share the good news with others on social media and so forth. Be an evangelist.
Shadi Hamid:
Tell your friends, family, enemies too. If you want to join the conversation or ask us questions, you can do that by using the #zealotspod on Twitter, or you can feel free to email us at zealots@comment.org. And you can also learn more about our intellectual sponsor and seedbed at Comment magazine and the address there is comment.org where you can find great essays on politics, culture, and faith.
You can also find us at our individual handles on Twitter @ShadiHamid, my name, and @MatthewKaemingk, do note the Dutch spelling and you can expect a sincere exchange.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And our thanks to our sponsor, Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. Friends, Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment magazine, produced by Allie Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, editorial direction by Ms. Anne Snyder. Until next time, friends, I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Later.
Shadi Hamid:
Peace.
