The proposed Ground Zero mosque provides us with a wonderful case study of public square issues, and of the great need for a new Christendom. And since the opportunities in this situation to gain wisdom are enormous, it is not surprising that just about everybody is refusing to do so.
The “hallowed ground” meme has, not surprisingly, caught on. Opponents of the mosque have picked up the thread, urging the construction of the mosque to be stopped, and on that basis. Supporters of the mosque, like the president, have granted the legitimacy of the point, but urge their denominational distinctives about what is actually permissible on hallowed ground. The president has said that “Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.” But . . .
Since it is necessary for a public space to be defined by one religion, the president thinks that it should be his religion — which in this case is multicultural mush.
“For in the end, we remain ‘one nation, under God, indivisible.’ And we can only achieve ‘liberty and justice for all’ if we live by that one rule at the heart of every religion, including Islam-that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
That religion is Americanism, ick, poo, a religion that wants all the “sectarian” faiths to take their place on the god shelf, and adopt as their central belief whatever the president says their core values ought to be. But in the case of the Christian faith, it is not the Golden Rule — the heart of Christian ethics, sure, but ethics is not the gospel. Christ crucified, buried, and risen — that’s the rule at the heart of our faith. Not only is it the center of our faith, it is a center that cannot, by any means, be made to fit on the rickety god shelf of the secularists.
But opponents of the mosque, like Charles Krauthammer, are in no better shape. He argues against the mosque here, and his argument necessarily fails. As you read through Krauthammer’s article, note that he does make sense in a lot of ways, as he usually does. But this case has to be made, if it can be made, on the basis of something other than false theological claims, and Krauthammer pours a foundation of false theological claims, and does so in his first paragraph.
“A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).”
But if a place can be made hallowed by “a widespread belief” then Mecca is as sacred as Ground Zero. In fact, it is more sacred than Ground Zero because a “widespread belief” about a false transcendent faith is going to necessarily displace a “widespread belief” about a false immanent faith. Despite his not existing, Allah still outranks the pushme-pullyou baals of consumerism and entertainment. If this is all we have, rape outranks masturbation. In order to answer the transcendental claims of the Koran, we need to appeal to the transcendental truth. It is not until we put Allah and the Lord Jesus Christ side by side that the one that actually doesn’t exist will then appear at a disadvantage. Until then, if we are forced to choose between an idolatry that knows what it believes and an idolatry that is never quite sure, the latter will always give way to the former.
In the meantime, instead of “hallowed” and “sacred” and so on, we should just recognize the long-standing “fighting words” limit on freedom of speech. In a 1942 decision, the Supreme Court decided (9-0) that freedom of speech did not include the right to stand on the sidewalk outside the funeral of somebody’s mom in order to taunt the mourners. That is a disturbance of the peace, and if somebody tries it, the magistrate has every right to come and sit on his head. But in order to prohibit “fighting words,” it is not necessary to maintain, as a point of law, that the deceased woman was “hallowed,” or “sacred,” and that the taunter is guilty of blasphemy or sacrilege. No, he is just being a jerk.
But even here, in order to tell the difference between just and unjust fighting words, we need to have an orientating faith, and this is something that secularism simply cannot provide. The secularists cannot tell the difference between gracious abortion protesters, full of love, and homo-bashers like Fred Phelps, full of hate. After all, the secularist says, reasoning closely, are they not both standing on a sidewalk? Hmmm? Are they not both “saying stuff?”
The Muslims in this know exactly what they are doing. Those who defend the construction of the mosque say that these are moderate Muslims, and are not to be lumped in with the terrorists. But think about it for a minute. Reasonable questions can be asked about where the money for the mosque is coming from, and what the imam there thinks of Hamas, and so on. But we don’t need to ask and answer those questions in order to determine whether or not he is a moderate. Of course he is not moderate — he is playing brinksmanship at Ground Zero. If he were really moderate, we never would have heard of him.
I said that the Muslims know what they are doing. What is that exactly? They are exposing the intellectual, theological, and ethical bankruptcy of secularism, and they are doing it on purpose. To answer their challenge, someone as intelligent as Charles Krauthammer is reduced to saying that sacrilege is defined by what lots of people think, true or false, doesn’t matter, or where lots of people died, right or wrong, doesn’t matter either.
Someone really does need to tell secularist America that her gods are genuinely pathetic. And currently, the Muslims are doing this because the Christians won’t. And the Christians who won’t do this are not so much in need of a different kind of theology as they are in need of a different kind of spine.