Preacher says Falwell putting lives of Christain missionaries at risk

[Cell Whitman]

remember this next time you hear about Christain missionaries getting killed around the world...there are reasons...

Dr. Bruce Prescott, http://mainstreambaptist.blogspot.com/ who is a Baptist minister and the President of Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Oklahoma, posted a list of the top 20 podcast downloads of his weekly radio show.

Lots of very good stuff. (He did kind of pooh pooh Moon's influence in his interview with Frederick Clarkson but I am trying to set him straight on that. :) Just uniformed on the subject - like the masses.)

Last March, Dr. Prescott had an oustanding interview with Dr. Charles Kimball, who is Chair of the Department of Religion at Wake Forest University. He has a book out called "When Religion Becomes Evil."

Kimball says point blank that when Jerry Falwell says that Islam is evil he endangers the lives of Christian missionaries all over the world. Really digs on Jerry. He says Franklin Graham does a lot of good things but when he says the same type things he is messing up bigtime.

Here's Dr. Prescott's top 20 podcasts post:

http://mainstreambaptist.blogspot.com/2005/08/top-twenty-podcasts.html

Scroll down for #19 "Charles Kimball interview part 2"

little before 19:00 he starts his take down of Falwell. ouch!

I transcribed some of it for you. :)

Quoting Dr. Kimball:

Even as there are people trying learn more about Islam and looking for ways to build bridges of understanding and cooperation, we also have the shrill voice of some in the United States, and you mentioned some of those. Let me just mention Jerry Falwell, in particular, because he's on the national television airwaves about twice a week and I feel like if he wants to go on national television and represent himself as a spokesperson for Christianity - what he is saying is fair to be critiqued.

When he goes on 60 minutes, as he did fairly recently, and talked about Islam or Mohammad as a terrorist, when he says that "Islam is an evil religion" or "Allah is not the same as the God of the Bible" ... he's speaking, A. out of ignorance and tremendous arrogance. But he's also, he's doing much more than that. I mean this is very serious and very dangerous what is going on. He is in fact, with these kinds of statements putting at risk, literally, the lives of Christian missionaries around the world.

This kind of statement is getting international attention and is destroying the bridges that many Christians, who are often working in minority communities in very difficult circumstances, in various parts of the world, it's destroying the bridges and the cooperative work that many people are engaged in.

But when Falwell goes on these programs I am always amazed that he almost always begins by saying, "Well of course I am no expert on Islam and I certainly haven't studied the Koran." This is a kind of badge of honor that he wouldn't have wasted his time to learn about this other tradition. I keep hoping that Phil Donahue or Chris Matthews or Larry King will stop him at that point and just say, "Well, why have you come on national television? If you admit you're ignorant, why have you come here to spread your ignorance to the rest of us?" We really have to call people in these kinds of prominent positions to account, to be much more responsible for the things that they are saying.

There is plenty of room for disagreements between Christians and Muslims on all kinds of issues. But to resort to this kind of name calling and verbal assault has real consequences.

I did a, I taped a PBS program last week with the two, probably the most prominent Muslim scholars in the country and with the person I consider to be the preeminent student of Islam, non Muslim student of Islam, I was honored to be the fourth person in that group.

And the two Muslims were saying that people in United States just do not realize how dangerous and damaging this is.

In Pakistan, they said for the last five weeks on the front pages of newspapers that statements, the Falwell statements and this image that Christians around the world are attacking the Prophet. Well, no, Jerry Falwell and few others have been attacking the Prophet of Islam. But people on the extreme within the Islamic world are using this for their own political purposes. Extremist parties in Pakistan which used to get four or five seats in their elections just recently got fifty seats and they said it's very much on the "anti-Falwell" sort of platform. People in the rest of the world are saying...they hear something, Franklin Graham, who I think is a good, very good person doing a lot of good work, but when he calls Islam an "evil religion" and repeats that several times people around the world say, "Well, isn't this the guy who spoke at president Bush's inauguration?"

We're not paying much attention to this but the ripple affect of these sort of careless comments are having tremendously damaging affect and really fueling extremism in the Islamic world and that's the danger that we can't afford. We need to be working at ways to at least understand one another and to find ways to share our fragile planet better than this kind of name calling.

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http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[Cell Whitman]

1. Thanks Cell. n/t

:)