"End Those Muslims!" Response to Jerry Falwell Jr — Ep. 006

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Dan, and you've spent a fair amount of time in the Middle East. You work in humanitarian aid in different parts of that world. And yeah, so you have a lot of experience when it comes to, you know, Islam and kind of the situation there. It seems like it's always in the news for the wrong reason. There's like war and just terrorism and all these buzzwords that we hear.

And I'm thinking specifically back about two years ago, Liberty University, it's the largest Christian evangelical university in America. And we'll show the clip as well, but where the president of that university says, "We need to arm ourselves and end those Muslims." If more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed us.

So I just wanted to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to get your permit. We offer a free course, and let's teach them a lesson if they ever show up here. What is the context that made Jerry Falwell, the president of the university, say those things? The actual context, as far as the news, what was going on in the news cycle right then, was the San Bernardino shooting, as I recall. And so you had two Muslims that went into a holiday party in California and shot a number of people.

And of course, that followed on the string of some other terrorist attacks that have been going on in the United States and other Western countries over the last number of years. In speaking about that, which Liberty University tends to often comment on current events, this was a reaction that he gave as a way to kind of instruction to his students, as I understand it. Go into a little bit of the motive. Like, what is he? Are these people, I mean, apparently they're very scared, or he thinks this is a legitimate threat.

But what's the motive here? The motive that I see coming out of a statement like this is fundamentally a belief in what America is or is supposed to be that is possibly, that is quite widespread actually among Christians. There's somehow this, well, someone's written a book called The Myth of a Christian America, but it's this idea that America was designed to be a Christian nation for Christians, by Christians, Christians running the government, Christians participating, and this is basically our little, you know, thing.

And there's a lot of fear among people that have that view because they feel like that is gradually being pushed out as there's more of a pluralistic society, more people, more people from other countries are coming, there's a lot more diversity. And so they have this sense that, hey, we're in danger, we're being threatened, we need to protect ourselves, we need to stand up for what we have, we need to stand up for our rights, we need to, as Christians, we need to stand up for our rights. And so a comment like this, I believe, is motivated by a core idea that the rights of Christians in America are under threat and are being trampled on by leftists, by Muslims, by many different people here, and if it takes physical force to defend them, that that's what they need to do.

Well, and lethal force, apparently. Lethal force. To end those Muslims. Yeah. That's very militaristic, you know. Right. And you know, I think possibly Jerry Falwell Jr. spoke to step back to that, you know, as there was some feedback and saying, oh, I was speaking specifically about those specific Muslims, you know, that were doing the terrorist attack, not all Muslims, but whatever the case, he was speaking about ending the lives of souls that God created. Yeah. How did other Christians respond to this statement? I would say the majority of what's known as evangelical fundamentalist Christians would have supported Jerry Falwell or been in a similar way of thinking. Certainly not across the board. There's people at various levels in their responses to Muslims and their responses to how much they want to interact with them.

But fear definitely is quite prevalent among the evangelical Christian community and possibly parts of even more mainstream Christianity. And so there would be agreement with what his statement. Well then, the question is, how would Christ respond? Very good question. If you read the New Testament, if you just read the Gospels that have Jesus' teachings, you see statements that are almost exactly the opposite of that statement again and again. Love your enemies, don't resist evil. If somebody smites you on one cheek, give them your other cheek. If somebody takes away your coat, give them your cloak also. There's this constant message that Jesus was giving the people that treat us badly or the people that we're supposed to be treating the best.

And so it's a very counterculture message. It's a very counterintuitive message, but that's absolutely the message that Christ gave to his people here on earth. So then let's take this focus and narrow it in more. What should the Anabaptist, the Mennonite response be to this? You know, you talked about, you know, mainstream Christianity in America, but yeah, what should our response be then? Well, the Anabaptists came out of Europe. The Anabaptist story is about 500 years old now.

And throughout their history, especially at the beginning of their history, the Anabaptists have been an oppressed people, a persecuted people, a people who have said, we will stand up for our beliefs no matter what it costs us, whether it means death by fire, death by drowning, death by stoning, whatever it might be, we will suffer and die. And you see that very much in the lives of the early Anabaptist martyrs. Of course, times have changed. Life has become much more comfortable for most of us as Anabaptists. We live in comfortable houses. We're not persecuted.

The majority of Anabaptists, conservative Anabaptists, are here in America. And so how do we respond to things like this? We have a choice to make. Really, we do. I fear that sometimes we are too affected by our neighbors and friends who would spread fear and make us want to respond in ways of defense and ways of saying, this is our country, we don't want to let you in.

But I really think the way of Christ is always the way of love. We have a tremendous opportunity to follow Jesus' teachings, respond in love, respond in non-resistant love when people treat us in these ways. And I think the real danger is, humanly speaking at least, the first response to these things is fear. Absolutely. You know, like when I hear of the latest terrorist attack or whatever, it's always fear. You know, there was one in Chattanooga, which is like 40 minutes from my house. You know, it was like, wow, that's really close to home. And the first response is fear.

That's not what we see Jesus teaching though. You know, and I really like how you, you know, the answer is just love. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, and just with what you're saying, Jesus said it very clearly, fear not them that are able to kill the body, but fear him who's able to destroy both body and spirit in death, or body and soul in death. And so obviously, as humans, we do have some fears, and I think God understands those, but he's encouraging us. What we really should be afraid of is spiritual failure, spiritual death.

Fearing people and groups that may have the potential to harm us physically isn't really the point. We maybe take some precautions, but our chief goal is not to preserve our lives. We're here only for a few short years anyway. And I think we can get that mindset. It changes everything. It's a radical change of thinking. That's a hard mindset to get. Or like, it takes a lot. You have to be really intentional to get that kind of mindset. That's absolutely right. We're all on that journey myself. Wow. Well, that's, yeah, that's some really good, really good thoughts for us. And I think that really does differentiate the Anabaptists from a lot of other forms of Christianity is that way of peace, that way of love.

It's not easy. It's not easy. It's absolutely not easy. And I want to be clear too that we as Anabaptists should never be proud or think that, hey, we're, you know, way up here ahead of you as evangelicals or whoever else it may be. I do feel strongly that Jesus is teaching us a way of peace and love and forgiveness. And I think that that's a very powerful message to any enemy.

Wow. Good stuff. It won't be easy. It won't be easy. Wow. Well, thank you everyone for taking the time to watch. And yeah, really think about some of this stuff. This is, it's easy to talk about, but to actually go out and do these things of loving our enemies, yeah, that is not an easy task. So yeah, thanks again for watching. And if you have any thoughts or input, just leave a comment and we'll do our best to answer it. And we'll see you in the next episode.