have a coffee

Yesterday evening, I led a prayer meeting linked to the "30 days of prayer for Islam" campaign sponsored by the Evangelical Alliance in Germany. The growth of Islam in Europe is a hot topic in Germany right now, especially after the recent arrest of three would-be terrorists, two of which turned out to be German converts to the Muslim faith.

How do we react to the fact that another truth system is gaining ground? Looking at it in a purely postmodern/relativistic way, it shouldn't matter too much. Someone has another idea of truth -- so what? As long as I am allowed to keep my own version, I shouldn't be concerned too much. But of course, I am not buying into that ...

First of all, I think there might be some real danger in a large-scale Islamization of Europe, at least in the long run: If one day, Islamic political interest became dominant in our country, I fear that the choice of your own truth and your own religion would be done away with rather fast. Fortunately, this frightening perspective does not seem to be realistic any time in the near future. Still, Islam is growing in Germany.

The second, and much more important reason why I think we cannot sit back and do nothing is because we do have a metanarrative to defend. I've argued before that I don't think we can live without one, and that we have the best metanarrative there is -- and a non-violent one, at that. The question then is, how do we face the growth of a new belief system in a non-violent way?

I tried to illustrate the proper approach at church yesterday evening by imagining what we would do if the local Islamist union (yes, we do have that in Freudenstadt) set out to build a large mosque in our city. I proposed two possible responses: