“Faith is nothing, if it’s just a label”

Jean Zaru is a Palestinian Christian woman, and an amazing example of living the life of faith “in context,” in a way in which faith is worked out within the limitations of a particular socio-cultural-political-religious context, and also impacts and transforms the context in the process (see her book, Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Christian Woman Speaks).

She is a woman living and leading in a man’s environment. As head of the Friends’ (Quaker) Meeting, she is the only woman who is a leader of a church, in all of Palestine; and she is a co-VP of Sabeel, with Father Elias Chacour.

She is Palestinian, living under but resisting and working against Israeli occupation ("what do you do with problems and inequalities? do you sit and do nothing? faith is nothing if it's just a label - it should lead to resistance - to resist is to be human").

She is a Christian who engages in interfaith relationship, in a predominantly Muslim setting (and acts on the convictions that “All humanity are my brothers and sisters, created in God’s image” and that “The indwelling presence of God is in all people, not just Christians”).

And she is a Quaker, one of the smallest groups of Christians in Palestine, but holds her own with all of the older and larger churches (as mentioned, she is co-VP of Sabeel with Father Elias Chacour, the Archbishop of the largest church in Palestine, the Malekite).

She is living in a context in which women are known in relation – “mother of … (oldest son),” “wife of…,” and now for her, “widow of…”; a context in which women are told not to question, and not to confront men. But her vision, informed by a faith in which all human beings are equal in their creation in the image of God, is for women and men to be “equal partners” in the work, and for young women to be empowered to know their value and equality in the society.  From her perspective, women need to be “liberated from the inside”; in her experience, “no one call tell me I’m not equal – I feel empowered.” Her life demonstrates that she has experienced this liberation and empowerment, and is working on the basis of an inwardly experienced “equality,” regardless of whether others (e.g., the men around her) acknowledge it.

Her family context seems to have given root to her ability to think and act “outside the box” as she has followed her convictions over the years. In a land in which people hold very tightly to their family religious heritage, and may “disown” those who change religious affiliations (even from one Christian group to another), her family is startling different (does one call this “open-minded”? or are there other dynamics at work?).  Her family background is Orthodox, but things began to change with her parents’ generation.  Her parents became Quaker, she has an Uncle who is Baptist, two Uncles who are Anglican, and two Aunts who became Catholic Nuns). As she puts it, her family is (has become) “very ecumenical.” She says that her father and her husband both “empowered” her, encouraging her to follow her passions, and to believe that she could do anything. When her husband was dying, he called the family together and encouraged them to support Jean in continuing to follow her convictions.

She is often the only woman present in Muslim-Christian or Christian-Jewish dialogue. She has repeatedly been asked by men over the years, “why do you bother with all these issues? Go home and take care of your children.” But she carries on, energized by her confidence in her identity and calling.

It is interesting that she challenges the status quo – be it the pressures against women in leadership in public life, or the injustices of the Israeli occupation – but that she also works within the cultural context that she finds herself in. She shared various ways in which, as a woman, she has to act, to comport herself, so as to have a place at the table, an ability to speak and act and influence others. (And many of her male counterparts have said to her something like, “you’re okay, but don’t encourage other women to do this” – words which will go unheeded…)

Jean Zaru is a person who works for peace, and I would say for “culture change,” on many fronts at once: as a woman, she works to change the prevailing culture surrounding the freedom of women to participate fully in various aspects of life outside the home; as a Christian, she is active in interfaith relationships with Muslims; and as a Palestinian, she relentlessly challenges the Israeli occupation of her people.

“Religion,” Jean said, “can be a problem or a potential for transformation,” and "faith is nothing if it's just a label" (and does not lead to action). It is clear that in her case, faith is a powerful force for personal liberation and social change, and for transformational relationship with others.

Conversations between Christians and Muslims: Jesus, witness and "conversion"

I have recently been part of a fascinating email interchange among a group of people which includes both Christians and Muslims. We have been talking about the issue of conversion, and the fact that within most Muslim contexts, Muslims are not free to change their religion. I would like to pick up on a particular strand of thought that for me has central connection to the issue of faith in context. To quote from our email discussion, from the views of one of the participants:

… several of you… have pointed out that “conversion” is the real issue… No one wants to feel targeted for conversion by another. Here are [some further] thoughts on this....

1. Jesus came full of grace and truth according to the gospel of John (chapter one verse fourteen).  We need both grace (love, compassion, understanding) and truth (integrity with who we are, freedom, directness).  I try to live this way (in the context of this discussion) by saying something like “my religious heritage is Christian, but I’m working at believing in and following Jesus Christ. You are free to believe whatever you like about God and his messengers and books, but I’ve found there to be something very special in Jesus that I think you’d miss if you didn’t explore.”  That feels both graceful and truthful to who I am and who the person is I’m talking to.  

2.  We’re going back and forth in the discussion as to how we use the word “conversion.”  If conversion means – as most think it does – to change your religious identity, then we have problems.  I imagine most of us on this list agree that it’s not about changing your religious identity (although that itself is a hugely controversial topic).  But if by “conversion” we mean that God wants to change (convert) our hearts from the inside out – I think we’re open to that.  Right?  So it’s not that we’re “against conversion” - I need to be converted every day...
Therefore, in a perfect world, we might like the freedom in each country to convert from one religion to the next if someone so desires – we don’t have that and we don’t like to see that happen. What we DO want to see happen in our lives and in the lives of all 6.8 billion people on earth, is a true conversion to God by his spirit.  All of us on this list think Jesus has something to do with that. A classic Evangelical position is that it is by the death and resurrection of Jesus that this sort of conversion is made possible.  Our Muslim friends on this list (and many others among them) would agree that there is something special and unique about Jesus the Christ and that he shouldn’t be ignored.  

And my response:

As an Anthropologist who follows (seeks to follow) Jesus, one perspective I have on the issue of conversion is that we as human beings live in community with others (generally, who are "our people," who are like us). We grow up within a community, learn the culture and ways of life, internalize the "worldview" of that particular people, etc. We are all, naturally, "ethnocentric" - i.e., we see everything from the vantage point of our particular people; and we don't realize that there are other ways of "being human."

All of us tend to think that other people will be better, more fully human, if they become like us. We may not say this out loud, but we act as if it is true. The only way we know of being human, or of being "Christian" or "Muslim" or whatever, is to be like us. And so, if we share our faith, we tend to do it by trying to draw people into our community (and this can be with the best of intentions). But as we all know, most Muslims don't want to become Christians, or vice versa (and you can insert most peoples, most religions - E. Stanley Jones, when he went to India to evangelize the Hindus, found their response to be, "we don't want your religion, we have our own; we don't want your civilization, we have our own," etc. - this had a great impact on how he ended up sharing his faith there, as related in Christ of the Indian Road.)  In fact, Christians do this to each other, too - Protestants try to get Catholics or Orthodox to be Protestant, evangelicals try to get everyone to be evangelical, etc. And again, people don’t appreciate this attempt to change what is (in the deepest sense) their culture, their way of being.

It can be very different though, if rather than trying to get people to become like us, to become part of our community, we acknowledge the fact that they are and have a right to be who they are, part of a different community, and share (mutually, both ways) what we have found to be significant (e.g., in our following of Jesus, our faith in God, our religion) that they can take into their lives in their context, if they so desire.

Another way I think about this is that no one has to become like others to follow Jesus. No one has to follow Jesus, in the way that I do (in fact, that would be impossible, because my following of Jesus is inextricably bound up in my total sociocultural identity – it is only possible to follow Jesus in a specific context). Jesus, rather, enters into any and all human contexts, and walks our roads with us (this became Jones' message in India, that Jesus would "walk the Indian road" with people there). And what it might look like for Muslims to follow Jesus, in their context, could be very different from what it looks like for “Christians” (or any others) to follow him in theirs.

(With Christian groups I often ask, “Do Muslims have to “become ‘Christian’” to follow Jesus?” to which I argue, no, they don’t. What it might mean or look like for Muslims to follow Jesus in their own sociocultural context, is a matter for further discussion.)

Thus, as the author of the above email advocates, conversion is not about changing religion; conversion is about God changing our hearts, so that we can live out his life in the particular sociocultural context in which we find ourselves. And that, to me, is what faith in context (or contextual living) is all about.

In addition to the above, one of the things that makes this discussion and process hard (between Christians and Muslims, or Christians and anybody) is that many of us have come to a personal conviction and experience of Jesus as the source of life (in his own teaching, he said he is the bread of life, the way, the truth and the life, the resurrection and the life, etc.). With that conviction, our call is to bear witness to Jesus as the giver of life. And given our makeup as cultural human beings, that tends to get translated into an invitation to "become Christian," because it is in our context as Christians (for the most part) that we have come to know Jesus as the giver of life. So I want to say, while everyone is free to think what they want of Jesus, and responsible to respond to him (or not) out of their will and choice, we who know him also have an obligation to bear witness to what we have found in him (but need to learn to do so in a way that is good rather than bad “news” to people – this taking off on the fact that the word gospel means “good news”). And I would also maintain that knowing Jesus as the giver of life has nothing to do with being "Christian" (i.e., Muslims or anyone else can know Jesus as the giver of life, within their context).