can Muslim’s be good American citizens (or for that matter, Christians)?
I just saw a clip of a pastor, Flip Benham, being interviewed by Anderson Cooper of CNN. In the clip, Benham is discussing Islam and the building of the mosque and comes out very aggressive against Islam. And while this is his prerogative to do so, there was one clip which I found so ironic that I felt I must point it out. While on the show, Pastor Benham said the following:
“It would be impossible for a Muslim to be a good citizen in America, because he must swear his allegiance to Allah.
I find this statement ironic because it is the same sort of statements that were made by the ancient Romans toward Christians - they believed there was another Lord besides Caesar and their first allegiance was to that other Lord. That is, Romans believed Christians couldn’t be good citizens because they viewed Christians as anarchists. Christians denied Caesar having lordship over everything and therefore, undercut the power of the throne.
And that is the irony to me. Jesus’ teaching rightly understood doesn’t make us as Christians good unquestioning citizens either, because Jesus’ belief was that our allegiance is to God and not state (for instance Jesus’ statement on taxes “give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s” is a statement that says that there is a power higher than Caesar to which Christians submit. The apostle Paul stated that kings only had power because God gave them power as well.). And so I find it ironic because I am hopeful that this pastor would also affirm that as Christians our allegiance is to God before it is to the United States. To follow his logic, I must conclude that “It would be impossible for a Christian to be a good citizen in America, because he must swear his allegiance to Jesus.”
Although I disagree with this thought, I think it brings up all kinds of questions of what it means to be a good citizen.
While I don’t want to dive into too much of a political statement on this, I have to say that I believe it is fully within the constitutional rights of US citizens to build a house of worship (even one I disagree with) wherever they please. And while I share the sentiment that it seems in poor taste to build where this community center/mosque is being built, I also want to protect their right do so, because as a Christian pastor, I desire to have the same right as well. I see no way to support the freedom of religion and yet support questioning the rights of other religious people in the US to build a place of worship where they see fit. And I see no other way for me to live out Jesus’ teaching of doing to the other as we would have done to ourselves.
