WINNER TAKES ALL
I remember a conversation in a Chicago taxi cab about five years ago. Actually, to call it a "conversation" is a stretch. It was a rant like I had never
heard before.
I asked the driver a simple question, something about the place from where he had immigrated.
He said, "Jerusalem."
Knowing that people living in Jerusalem could be Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Christian, I asked him what religion
he followed.
He was Muslim and he launched into a loud and angry lecture that lasted at least ten minutes as we swerved in
and out of city traffic. His diatribe finally stopped when I paid my fare and stepped out of the cab.
Obviously I had encountered a rare Muslim that day who had no tolerance for other religions and believed Islam
should dominate the religious world.
He was angry that he had to live in America where people of all faiths were striving to live together in peace.
He wanted to return to an Islamic country where his narrow faith could be supreme.
He was a fundamentalist - a man who believed only his religion deserved to exist. He had declared war on all
other religions. I felt certain he would have kicked me out of his taxi for being a Christian, except he
needed my money.
Scratch the surface of any religion on earth and you will find fundamentalists. We tolerate them because we
think God wants us to be polite. But more and more we see how destructive they have become over the years.
Now we wonder, if it is prudent to allow fundamentalists to operate without restraint even at the peril of our
faith.
Our acceptance of them has given them permission to become increasingly militant. They now speak in
unbridled anger when religious topics come up for discussion. And we can see, they're not kidding.
We once thought of fundamentalists as nut cases who got their religious trolley a little off track and seemed to enjoy a
lop-sided run. But now we know they want to take it all - freedom, mercy, love, and tolerance. And when they
finally take it all, we will never see those marvelous concepts again.
Fundamentalism has been our enemy for more than forty years. It normally takes centuries for a religious
movement to gain enough strength to begin talking about worldwide dominance. But in this case, the radical
fringe of religion came into being faster because of desperation generated by widespread hunger and famine across the
world.
It was a need that most mainline religions tried to answer with massive relief efforts. But the food lines could
not stretch far enough to stop the teaching at the edges where radical clerics pushed the people into
fundamentalist and totalitarian beliefs.
Preachers don't like to talk about this stuff. But once religion has stepped over the thin line into
fundamentalism, anyone with a public voice ought to be responding.
In a few days Christians will be celebrating the birth of Jesus. I long for you to cling to the promise of the
incarnation, the good news that God became man. But at the same time, I hope you consider the possibility that
God invested some truth in other religions.
Clark D. Morphew
Posted 12-11-01