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:

How can you seriously reject a metanarrative? Postmodern thinkers who do claim it is terrible how individual "local" narratives elevate themselves to meta-narratives beyond the
scope of their community context and claim to be universal, thereby judging other local narratives inferior. I'd say, by the same standards, the meta-meta-narrative of postmodernism, which elevates itself even higher, beyond all supposedly universal meta-narratives, judges them inferior and even oppressively rejects them as false, thus claiming to be the only true narrative itself, should be regarded as more horrid. But, in saying so, am I not creating a meta-meta-meta-narrative? Then, again, if I was, you'd never be able to tell me, because your statement would constitute a meta-meta-meta-meta-narrative. I think I'd better stop right here. Isn't this ridiculous?

I have already mentioned (in one of my replies to Brad Andersen) that I cannot but see the Christian story as a meta-narrative. Its claims to exclusivity, universality, and absolute truth are completely incompatible with the post-modern portrait of a "local story" within a community. Yet, I do think that the story of faith, i.e. the story of the Spirit-filled community, is able to escape the post-modern criticism against meta-narratives for a number of reasons.
One of them has just re-surfaced in my reading of Anthony Thiselton's Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise: In chapter 3 (&quoto All Controlling Models in Religion Serve Manipulative Purposes?&quot Thiselton refers to the New Testament, to Luther's "theology of the cross", to Bonhoeffer's writings and to Jürgen Moltmann in order to show that the Christian story is not promoting power and glory for its proponents. Criticism levelled against it from the days of Nietzsche through Heidegger, Foucault, and Rorty, has therefore no base: The Christian community is not seeking to promote itself above all other communities.
Rather, it is seeking to promote Jesus Christ, the liberator, who sets people free from oppression. But, that's already another argument ...