Better in their words…

I side with Wheaton. Christians and Muslims – worship the same God? That is such a stretch.
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By Stephen Prothero
WSJ Jan. 7, 2016 7:09 p.m.

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? For a month, controversy has swirled over that question at Wheaton College in Illinois. In December, Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science, was placed on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that she was donning a head scarf through the pre-Christmas season of Advent. She wrote: “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book.” Earlier this week, Wheaton began termination proceedings against Ms. Hawkins after a series of talks.

Wheaton is a Christian liberal arts institution; every year faculty and staff sign a statement of faith that affirms their shared evangelical Protestant identity. The day after Ms. Hawkins’s post, Wheaton issued a statement underscoring the “fundamental differences” between Christianity and Islam, “including what they teach about God’s revelation to humanity, the nature of God, the path to salvation, and the life of prayer.” The school placed her on leave not for wearing the hijab, the college later explained, but for her “theological statements,” which included the claim that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God.”

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler defended Wheaton’s administration on his website, noting that Christians worship “the triune God”—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “The Quran claims that to confess Jesus Christ as the divine Son and the second person of the Trinity is to commit blasphemy against Allah,” he wrote, concluding that “one cannot deny the Son and truly worship the Father.”

Not everyone was convinced. Yale Prof. Miroslav Volf, who in a 2011 speech at Wheaton contended that Christians and Muslims worship the same God in different ways, wrote in the Washington Post that Ms. Hawkins’s suspension was about “enmity toward Muslims,” not “theology and orthodoxy.”

Should Ms. Hawkins keep her spot on the faculty? It isn’t clear that she committed a plain violation of Wheaton’s statement of faith. And the theological issues are confusing. Does the question concern who is listening when a man bows his head in prayer? If so, then all monotheists must agree that there is only one God to do the hearing. Or is the question whom we envision when we pray? In that case, consider that Christians today do not picture the same God that Constantine worshiped at his deathbed baptism in 337.

Islam and Christianity both affirm that there is one God, creator and judge, who speaks through prophets, whose words are written down in scripture. Still, they are not two paths up the same mountain. Christians do not believe in the divine inspiration of the Quran. Muslims do not believe that Jesus is an incarnation of God.

Ms. Hawkins may have hoped to respond creatively to hateful rhetoric against Muslims, which is admirable. She enjoys the liberty to believe what she pleases about God under the First Amendment. But Wheaton shares the same liberty to defend its Christian identity in a nation in which the “Star Wars” saga is more widely known than is the passion of Jesus.

No doubt Christians should strive to understand the Islamic faith fully, and vice versa. But pretend pluralism, feigning that all or most religious traditions hinge on the same truth, is no solution for the squabble at Wheaton or anywhere else.

Mr. Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and the author of “Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even as They Lose Elections)” (HarperOne, 2016).

http://www.wsj.com/articles/are-allah-and-jesus-the-same-god-1452211747