One God, Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Lecture 12 - Defending the Community

Introduction:

The faith community had sometimes to deal with another, civil society, or, in

the case of Islam, to assume the role of a polity as well as a “church.”

A. Church and State

1. Church and Empire
   a. “Church” and “State” are terms based in the Christian community’s
   experience with the Roman Empire and its various successors.
   b. Christianity’s entanglement with the Roman Empire began when
   Christians were identified as a new religion and so lost the exemptions
   and protections long extended to the Jews.
   c. The conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine led to a closer,
   more complex relationship between the “Catholic” (universal) Church
   and the universal empire. Both attempted to maintain their rights and
   prerogatives in the face of the other.


2. The Muslim Umma: The Church as the State
   a. Muhammad’s original “community” at Medina included not only his fel-
   low migrants from Mecca and the newly converted helpers at Medina,
   but Jews and pagans as well.
   b. Jews were soon purged from both the umma and the town, and the
   pagan Arabs there rapidly adopted Islam. Thus was constituted an
   exclusively Muslim umma.
   c. Thence forward Muslims have imagined the “Church” and the “State”
   as a single entity, the union or community of Muslims.
   B. Defending Faith’s Abode


3. Crusade
   a. The Christian Church is not a state and so cannot formally declare or
   conduct a war, but it has on occasion sanctioned the use of force for
   religious ends.

Before beginning this lecture you may want to...

Read F.E. Peters’ Judaism,Christianity and Islam: From Covenant to

CommunityVolume I, Chapter 7.

Consider this...

1. What is the difference between a Muslim country and an Islamic
   community?


2. What are the differences between a Crusade and a Jihad?


3. Are there modern Crusades? Jihads?

LECTURE TWELVE