Koran Oath, Episcopal Split

Current! In Carmel - #11 - January 23, 2007
Koran and Cathedrals

Founding Fathers not only ones who flinched
By Bob Walters
Here are a couple thoughts on recent news involving religion.

Oath on the Koran: I wonder how many Middle Eastern mullahs flinched Jan. 4, 2007, when Minnesota congressman-elect Keith Ellison was symbolically sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives on a Koran, promising to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

Plenty of people here flinched, that’s for sure.

Here is what I find curious. The Koran, the Holy Book of Islam, does not separate religion and government (church and state) the way the Bible does, nor does it offer freedom outside the holy writings.

So, swearing allegiance on a Koran to the freedom-based tenets of a law-based government document (largely conceived by Christians), even in a symbolic photo op, seems more than curious. I would suspect such an act borders on Islamic heresy.

The fact that it was Thomas Jefferson’s Koran intensifies the oddness.

Jefferson championed religious freedom and the separation of church and state, yet is widely regarded as the least religious of the founding fathers. There is nothing to indicate Jefferson believed the Koran any more than he believed the New Testament (which he personally rewrote to remove its supernatural elements - the Jefferson Bible). He would have studied either book as a skeptic, not an adherent. Jefferson, who Islam would consider an infidel, certainly had neither Ellison's demonstrated religious zeal nor Islamic obedience.

Jefferson did, however, in 1801 send U.S. Marines to "the shores of Tripoli" to militarily stop Islamic pirates along the Barbary coast from raiding U.S. shipping and kidnapping for slaves the Christian sailors.

Funny, Ellison didn't mention Jefferson had considered the "Mohammadon" beliefs and actions, and concluded war was the best response. Maybe that is what Jefferson wrote about in the margins of that Koran Ellison was sworn in on.

Personally, I don’t care if an elected official desires to be sworn in on a cookbook – it’s the person’s heart that matters, not the book – but I’m with the Mullahs in wondering what a Holy Koran is doing at a U.S. government swearing-in ceremony.

U.S.-type religious freedom and Islamic religious obedience just aren’t cut from the same cloth.

Muslims know that; most Americans don’t. Jefferson - very obviously - did.

Those Fun-loving Episcopalians: Speaking of our founding fathers, America’s traditional Anglican-Episcopal Church has been torn asunder in recent years, straying from the holy faith and toward the popular culture. Last month, it cost them big time.

Citing doctrinal revisionism, the vital and growing American Anglican Church departed the ever-dwindling Episcopal Church. Not surprisingly, the liberal-leaning media is missing the story on this one.

Orthodoxy is the issue, not gay bishops and women’s leadership. By orthodoxy we are talking about the basic doctrines of the Christian faith, like the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of a divine Christ, which in some quarters of the Episcopal “faith” have morphed from infallible truth into disposable matters of opinion.

Exit the believing Christians. John Yates and Os Guinness wrote a brief but stunning defense of the Anglican departure, available online. I found it by Googling “Episcopal Guinness”. The article, which appeared Jan. 10, 2007 in the Washington Post, is available on various websites.

Historical note - It was The Falls Church congregation in Falls Church, Va., that led the exodus away from the Episcopalians. That was George Washington's church.

Walters, a Carmel resident, does not own a cookbook. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com