VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 9/8/10)—On Tuesday, September 7, general secretary Roy Medley attended an interfaith summit hosted by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., which addressed the recent surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamaphobia in the United States.
Directly following the summit, members in attendance held a press conference and issued a joint statement to the public regarding unified action for faith communities to promote tolerance and reduce hate crimes, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and Islamaphobia. Click here to view the statement.
The press conference was telecast live on CNN and CSPAN and included statements from members of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faiths. The leaders emphasized the need for people associated with all different faiths to protect the safety and civil rights of Muslims.
Medley issued the following statement regarding the meeting:
Today, I joined with a wide range of Christians, Jews and Muslims to express our concern about the growing expressed hostility towards Muslims in our country. The Christians present in addition to myself included Michael Kinnamon of the NCC, and representatives of evangelical organizations such as the National Association of Evangelicals. I joined in this effort because as the spiritual heirs of Thomas Helwys and Roger Williams, American Baptists have a keen interest in preserving religious liberty. It is core to our understanding of faith and a gift that Baptists at great cost have given to the world.
We strongly implore our brothers and sisters of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville to turn away from their proposed burning of the Koran on September 11. It is an act inconsistent with the spirit and teachings of Christ. We remind them that when Jesus' disciples implored him to call down destruction upon the Samaritans, he refused. Though they were of a different faith, the gospels record that he welcomed Samaritans to the consternation of his own disciples and singled out one of them as exemplary of what it means to show neighborly love to others. We recall as well the horror we felt when a rogue Orthodox priest and his followers burned Bibles stored for distribution by the Georgian Baptists several years ago.
We clearly see all such actions that discriminate against or threaten others because of their faith as undermining the very principle of religious liberty that Baptists struggled to incorporate into our Bill of Rights so that in America faith might be protected.
I urge us all as American Baptist Christians to stand firm in our commitment to the blessings of religious liberty for all and in our repudiation of efforts and acts that fail the test of Calvary's love. Let us make such love visible and active in concrete acts of compassion, justice and friendship toward our Muslim neighbors as fulfilling Jesus' instruction to, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
View the joint statement
C-Span stream of September 7 press conference: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/295331-1
To view the ISNA statement, click here.
To view the NCC release, click here.
American Baptist Churches is one of the most diverse Christian denominations today, with 5,500 local congregations comprised of 1.3 million members, across the United States and Puerto Rico, all engaged in God’s mission around the world.