Mennonite Weekly Review

As I drove to an evening meeting at my church — made up of many Indonesian Christians who have fled their homeland due to tensions between Christians and Muslims — an electronic billboard reminded me it was the beginning of Ramadan.

Stephen Kriss is a teacher, writer, pastor, student and follower of Jesus living in Philadelphia.

The words on the billboard, perched atop a public utility building, rang out loud in my head: “Ramadan Mubarak, Ramadan Kareem.” That translates roughly as, “Congratulations, it’s Ramadan” and “Generous Ramadan.”

I was surprised to read the words, though on an almost daily basis I see women in traditional Muslim garb. I’m not sure why the billboard caught me off guard as much as it did. At least a dozen mosques are scattered throughout the city’s neighborhoods.

Our church has regularly joined friends and neighbors from a nearby mosque to break the Ramadan fast. My Indonesian brothers and sisters are continuing to work through their issues of forgiveness and acceptance while living in a new socio-economic and political reality. They are sharing the American experiment of religious pluralism.

But there’s something in the American spirit these days that’s nervous about all things Muslim, something that encroaches even on our belief in freedom of religious expression. People’s brains seem to have been rewired in a traumatized kind of way.

Early Anabaptists were unafraid in the shadow of increased Muslim influence in Europe. Instead, they wondered, as the Muslim/Turk armies moved closer to Vienna, if it would mean less harassment, less frustration than they had experienced at the hands of their supposedly Christian nations. They were confident in their own commitment and faith identity in a way that freed them from a time and culture of fear.

And all of this is transpiring just a few days after 10 medical aid workers were killed in Afghanistan, including Mennonite Central Committee volunteer Glen Lapp, whose picture was on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer along with a story that told of a Mennonite commitment to service even in the midst of conflict and costliness.

It was an odd set of days when I could turn on Fox News and see the headline, “Mennonite Killed.” For a few days, Lapp’s family’s tragic loss was shared American grief and frustration.

These days of Ramadan, I’m wondering — in this city founded on the idea of religious plurality and supposed love, in a time of fear and misgiving — what might be required to live justly, love mercy, walk humbly.

When the front-page news lauds a Mennonite legacy of service and tells of political wrangling related to the construction of an Islamic center in Lower Manhattan, I wonder what God requires of me. I’m guessing it’s a call to continued love, a love that casts out all of my fears.

That would indeed be a generous Ramadan proclamation and incarnation from those of us who follow in the way of Jesus.

Stephen Kriss, of Philadelphia, is director of communication and leadership cultivation for Franconia Mennonite Conference.