During the school year, I am both the middle school teache rand the student ministries coordinator for Windham Christian Academy in Windham, Maine.  I enjoy both roles, but the ministries coordinator is a special role because there is nothing more rewarding than seeing young people catch a vision for serving the Lord in a big way.  This has never been more true than with a young lady who just finished her Sophomore year.  Her name is Lauren, and she’s an amazing Christian-neohippy-artsy-juggler-woman who follows Jesus’ example of loving‘the least of these’ better than most adult believers I know.

So, as the school year ended, it was no surprise that she organized the middle school girls to do a clothing drive for an inner city ministry called Hope House.  The girls collected over 3000 items for Hope House, and they delivered it in person to Bruce and Jan Wilson, the directors.  While I don’t see them much, the Wilson’s have crossed paths with my family and me for 25 years in a variety of ways: a radio interview Bruce did with me and my old partner, performing at Christian festivals, bringing them in to speak at my school, performing benefits for Hope House, etc.  They are our friends.

The Wilson’s started their ministry in the 1970’s as a support program for single moms in Lewiston, Maine’s poorest neighborhood.  While they still continue to ministry to this population, God brought an additional component to Hope House.  The demographics of their neighborhood has changed, and now many of their neighbors are immigrants and refugees from Africa.  There is now a large Islamic presence in their community, so they have included assisting these new neighbors in their transition to America as one of the roles of Hope House.  This certainly matches up nicely with Leviticus 19:34: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

And yet, this is exactly what brought out concerns among some parents of girls going on this mission of mercy.  I received a call from one parent concerned that, since the shift in focus of Hope House, there was compromise in what the Wilsons were doing.  This lady,a former Hope House volunteer herself, was very polite during the whole conversation, but most of what she had to say indicated a lack of cultural understanding of the immigrants.  “They are loud and push while waiting in line for donations,” etc.  The one thing she said that got my attention,though, was that Bruce was now praying in the name of Allah.  Hmmm?

So, I e-mailed him about this.  In classic Bruce form, he did not get defensive or angry.  Instead, he spoke to my aide who drove the girls to Hope house the next day (I stayed at school with the boys that day).  Then he sent me a book to read.

The book is Muslims, Christians and Jesus by Carl Medearis, a career missionary to Lebanon.  He knows the Arab culture well, and, more importantly, he deeply cares about the people. While making it clear that Christianity and Islam are different religions with mutually exclusive ideas regarding the nature of God, eternity and salvation from sin, he emphasized what we have in common all the more.  The Koran, I learned, speaks very highly of Jesus, without recognizing Him as the Messiah or Savior, of course.  Nonetheless, Jesus life is a great starting place to build bridges with the Islamic community. 

Furthermore, he discusses the high place both religions put on family and morality.  These, too, are places on which we can build bridges.  He pointed out, as I’ve read before, that the Arabic word ‘jihad’ translates into ‘holy struggle’ in English.  While those in the Islamic world who mistranslate this to mean ‘holy war’ are very real dangers, they are a tiny minority of Muslims on the fringe of their religion.  (Just today a Pastor friend of mine said, “Terrorists are to Islam what the KKK is to Christianity.”)

As for Bruce praying to Allah, the author points out that “Allah” is the Arabic word for “God”.  In fact, “God” is from a pagan Germanic word,whereas “Allah” is probably from the same root as the Hebrew (ergo Old Testament) word “Yahweh”.  Bruce has explained to me that, if he were working with Spanish immigrants, he would probably – specifically when praying with them – pray to “Dios”.  He went on to say that, as the refugees in his neighborhood learn English better, he no longer sees a need to pray using the name “Allah”.  His friends understand that our word “God” means the same thing.

The fact is, Muslims are moving to America, and they are our neighbors and co-workers.  In fact, Portland and Lewiston, Maine have some of the highest populations of African immigrants per capita of any cities in the United States. I want to be clear that I am not saying that our faiths are ‘two sides of the same coin’ or ‘two roads to the same place’, and I believe Jesus’ words when He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, noone comes to the Father except through me,” I also believe we can respect each other, love each other and learn from each other, just as I try do with my atheist,deist and Jewish friends and acquaintances.