The displacement of the long-established Christian minority in the Islamic world is also proceeding at a rapid pace. These people have often been longer in the countries than Islam has even existed. The devastating results of George W. Bush’s Iraq war on the Christian community were predictable – as the Islamic terrorists cannot win against the Americans, they are looking for the only attainable goal as a small victory, the peaceful Christian untrained in defense – to that degree the terrorists and the Iraqi government, with the latter doing nothing to oppose the terrorists, continue what has been underway for 100 years.

A similar tragedy is often forgotten in this connection: the displacement of Jews from Islamic countries. All in all their number is smaller than the number of Christians, but their percentage is higher, mostly close to 100%. For centuries Northern Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq all had prospering Jewish populations, which have in the meantime practically disappeared.

In 1948 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq. Today that number is 10!

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks fundamentalism is mostly understood among the general public to be radical, violence prone, religiously motivated extremists or simply religious terrorists. What in the vernacular is meant by ‘fundamentalism’ is a militant claim to truth and precisely that is what I find to be the shortest definition.

In my opinion there are only two possibilities open to saving the term ‘fundamentalism’ for legitimate usage: either bring the term fundamentalism closer to how it is used in everyday language and relate it to truly near-violent movements. Alternatively, applying the term widely to all movements could be desirable, in which case the term is in desperate need of being de-emotionalized so that it achieves a neutral, non-pejorative meaning. For this to be achieved there has to be large scale action requiring experts who oppose the mass media, which at the moment is an illusion.

In my opinion those who warn the public about fundamentalist movements should limit themselves to those groups who are dangerous due to the principal justification they offer for the use of violence, or who demonstrate an inclination towards violence, or who even use violence, and lastly those from whom the danger at least emanates that they might want to achieve political power over dissenters by the use of undemocratic means. For that reason my definition in the book which is soon to be released is as follows:

Fundamentalism is a militant truth claim which derives its claim to power from non-disputable, higher revelation, people, values, or ideologies. It is aimed against religious freedom and peace offers and justifies, urges, or uses non-state or state-based non-democratic force in order to accomplish its goals. In the process it often invokes opposition to certain achievements of modernity in favor of historical grandeur and bygone eras, and at the same time uses these modern achievements mostly in order to extend and produce a modern variation of older religions and world views. Fundamentalism is a transformation of a religion or world view conditioned by modernity.

Now I also know that the belief that soldiers have died for God, that they will be re-warded as martyrs for good works, and that they will go to be with him is not a typical Scottish or British affair. Rather, it is something that is found worldwide regardless of re-ligion. Furthermore, at one time it was something that was the order of the day in all European countries. In Germany, inscriptions on innumerable and in the meantime occa-sionally overgrown and seldom cared for memorials and memorial stones for soldiers who fell in World War I are witnesses to this fact.

At the highest point of the hill upon which Edinburgh Castle stands, this phenomenon is very much alive. For those fellow countrymen with a connection to the memorial, it incites religious feelings. And a number of the reminders and inscriptions date from more recent times. The huge complex was opened in 1927 (see photo), deals mostly with World War II, and has as its most recent extension a memorial (better said, a chapel) that was added in 2003.

Just so that no one misunderstands me: The war against National Socialist Germany was largely a just cause. Also, as a German I thank all those countries whose citizens died so that Germany could be freed from Nazi dictatorship and that I can live in a Germany that is now free. However, the elevation of a just war to a type of religious war in the name of God, and the assertion that those who died would automatically find themselves in God’s presence – by the way, regardless of the faith to which they adhered – has to be rejected by Christian ethics.

Now to some details:

The large inscription in the west wing “Whether their fame centuries long should ring, They cared not overmuch, But they cared greatly to serve God and the King” (Henry Newbolt) or the Celtic inscription in the east chapel for the Scottish Corps: “My country, my honour, my God” (and under it a Celtic cross) may be dismissed as harmless and “God and king” looked at as an empty phrase. The shrines, angels, and religious symbols can also be booked under a rather general and diffuse religiosity; experts would tend to speak of a ‘civil religion.‘

Still, in the large chapel around the so-called ‘shrine’ there are angels who are wearing the coat of arms. The very large writing on the inner circumference of the chapel quotes from Wisdom 3:1+3 in the so-called Apocrypha: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God. There shall no evil happen to them. They are in peace” (see photo).

Unknown soldiers are honored with an allusion to the book of life referred to in the New Testament (Revelation 20:12, and often): “Others also there are who perished un-known; their sacrifice is not forgotten, and their names, though lost to us, are written in the Books of God (see photo). Four kneeling and praying angels (see photo) and the arch-angel Michael hanging from the ceiling (see Revelation 12:7-8) complete the religious ori-entation toward Christianity.

God is directly exploited when God in the first person says the following for the benefit of the Royal Air Force in the Hall of Honour: “I bare you on eagles’ wings and brought you unto myself,“ which is taken from Exodus 19:4 (see photo).

Still one more example is the comment in the guide which appeared in 2004 regarding a statue in the east chapel: “A statue in bronze, partly overlaid with gold and silver, with a background of carved and painted stone showing the rising sun, the land and the sea (Earth, Air, Fire and Water). The symbolic figure represents the Soul rising purified from the Flames of Sacrifice, the left hand grasps the broken blade – the end of war – and the right hand raises the hilt – now the Cross Triumphant – while the eyes seem to gaze be-yond the range of mortal vision and to find there ‚A new Heaven and a new Earth‘ (Reve-lation, xxi 1)“ Scottish National War Memorial: Official Guide. Norwich: Jarrold Publ., 2004. p. 26) (see photo).

Oh man, oh man, as if nothing had happened, the sword is made into a triumphant cross and secures the new heavens and the new earth for the army. Soldiers who have died can reckon with the fact that they will be rewarded by God for their sacrifice?! Have we learned nothing from history?

I recently published a German book together with Kurt Bangert of World Vision entitled HIV/AIDS as a Christian Challenge (HIV/AIS als christliche Herausforderung). Efforts against HIV and AIDS, for those who have contracted AIDS as well as for those who are AIDS victims in the broadest sense, is nothing other than action against other social and medical catastrophes encountered in the past, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, blindness, and incarceration.

The German book The Fight against Poverty (Der Kampf gegen Armut), which has just been released, is an endeavor of the Evangelical Alliance that I have published with Andreas Kusch. It is a type of theological justification and reflection on the Micah Initiative  and in the process takes up a matter similar to the aforementioned book.

The Old Testament role models of faith are found in Joseph and Daniel, who helped their countries and cultures and saved many lives. Joseph drafted a gigantic program that saved the lives of the Egyptians and others, although they believed in another god. Joseph and Daniel did not wait until the world around them corresponded to what they as god-fearing people desired to see. Rather, they won the respect of everyone, because they became involved for all people – though not in a way that led them to compromise their faith in the one true Creator and Savior.

Our task as Christians is not to wait for a world which pleases us more or to get the world into a manageable shape before we do something. Rather, we are to act in the world as we find it here and now, proclaim the love of our God, and concretely bear witness to it at that point.

My Confession of Faith
From the beginning the Evangelical church protested and must continue to protest, but first of all from a positive basis, namely that of unconditional belief in the free grace of God in Christ, and namely as it has been revealed in absolute form for all times in the writings of Paul, Peter, and John. And secondly, it protests on purely religious grounds and only against that which alters the basis for faith in some form.
Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher
born September 14, 1790
in Königsberg in Prussia

[Handwritten entry by Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher on the first blank page, or flyleaf, in a copy of Das Vater Unser: Ein Erbauungsbuch für jeden Christen (The Lord’s Prayer: A Devotional Book for Every Christian) by the vice president and senior court chaplain Christoph Friedrich von Ammon, D. Ch. G. Kayser’schen Buchhand lung F. Beyer: Leipzig, 1839 (in my possession)]

His son and my grandfather, Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher (1824-1904) left the following lines in the Danzig Reformed Songbook, which I also want to make my own:

Eins nur wünsch ich mir hienieden,
Jesu, Deinen Geist und Frieden,
Und von dem Ruhm an meinem Grabe,
daß ich Dich geliebet habe.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher

(There is only one thing I wish upon this earth,
Jesus, your Spirit and peace,
And from any luster at my grave,
that I loved you.
Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher)

[Handwritten entry in a songbook (Kirchen Gesang-Buch Der Evangelisch-Reformierten Gemeinde in Dantzig ( Church Songbook of the Evangelical Reformed Church in Danzig). Thom. Joh. Schreiber: Dantzig, 1745) in my possession. The first entry in the songbook is from September 14, 1777 by A. V. E. (presumably not a relative of the Schirrmacher family). On September 14, 1854 “Carl Friedrich Schirrmacher” dedicated the book to his son Friedrich Wilhelm, who wrote the quoted dedication without a date. The book in turn made its way via his son Leo Schirrmacher to his son Klaus Leo Schirrmacher, who on March 16, 1968 passed it on to “my loving brother Bernd Schirrmacher” upon the occasion of Bernd Schirrmacher’s birthday. Bernd Schirrmacher, my father, passed in on to me with the dedication “Christmas 1989.” (Compare to this Franz Kessler. Danzinger Gesangbücher 1586-1793. Einzelschriften der Historischen Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung 15. Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk: Lüneburg, 1998. pp. 65-70 our songbook; also pp. 3-7 on the Reformation and pp. 6-7 on the Reformed in Danzig.)]

I have republished two of my grandfather’s books and provided introductions to both which carry the same wording. In a similar form the wording has appeared in the Biografisch-Bibliografischen Kirchenlexikon (Biographical-Bibliographical Church Encyclopedia) in German:

“Über den Verfasser.” pp. 5–28 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher. Briefe und Akten zum Marburger Religionsgespräch (1529) und zum Augsburger Reichstag (1530). Geschichte – Kirchengeschichte – Reformation 21. Bonn: VKW, 2003

“Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher”. pp. 5–23 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher. Die Entstehung des Kurfürstenkollegiums. Geschichte – Kirchengeschichte – Reformation 22. Bonn: VKW, 2003

“Friedrich Wilhelm Schirrmacher (1825–1904)”. pp. 142–151 in: Thomas Schirrmacher, Klaus Schirrmacher, Ingrid von Torklus (eds.). Baumeister bleibt der Herr: Festgabe zum 80. Geburtstag von Prof. Bernd Schirrmacher. VKW: Bonn, 2001

“Schirrmacher, Friedrich Wilhelm”. 1226–1235 in: Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, Traugott Bautz (eds.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon. Bautz: Herzberg beginning with vol. I, 1975, here vol. XIX, 2001

• www.bbkl.de
• See also Wikipedia: www.wikipedia.org

Well then, it is amazing what one comes across when traveling! A rather tedious amount of research yielded a solution to the mystery: The inscriptions on the beautiful pulpit of the Naumburger Cathedral from the year 1466 have only three original relief panels with depictions: 1) a depiction of the 12 year old Jesus in the temple, 2) a relief of Gregory, and 3) a relief of St. Augustine. Yet most of the carved columnar figures next to them were missing for a long time. In the 1930s the pulpit was restored and supplemented in Halle’s workshop for historic preservation and, lo and behold, the Lutheran wood carver or individual who commissioned the work smuggled Martin Luther in and set him up on a row with apostles and church fathers.

For the first time, the participants clearly reflected the fact that missionary societies from the southern hemisphere have overtaken the traditional sending nations of the west. Missionaries from western countries were in the minority, with the result that the program was determined by Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans. In the following, please find my opening words from May 13, 2010.

Links:

• www.tokyo2010.org
• www.christianpost.com/article/20100513/tokyo-missions-conference-draws-2000-leaders/
• www.christianpost.com/article/20100516/mission-leaders-repent-for-national-sins-seek-reconciliation/

To the delegates of Tokyo 2010 – Global Mission Consultation

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

It is a privilege to be together with you. I see you all as a living picture of what the Holy Spirit has been doing in the last 100 years since 1910! In spite of world wars, colonialism, poverty and financial crises, and in spite of secular megapowers like communism or Hitler’s racism, the church of Jesus Christ and world mission have become global as never before. Not, that we do not have a task left, but never before has the approaching fulfillment of the task of world mission been so visible.

You all probably have read the written greeting by Dr Sang-Bok David Kim, the Chairman of the International Council of the World Evangelical Alliance. I bring you personal greetings from Geoff Tunnicliffe, the International Director of WEA, as well as greetings from our Mission Commission (of course several of its members are here anyway), its Religious Liberty Commission and its International Institute for Religious Freedom (as persecution is a pressing reality in world mission today), and its Theological Commission, which I am privileged to chair. As the WEA, we know that a large part of our constituency of approximately 420 million is the fruit of your efforts, the missionaries and mission societies that have dedicated their lives to spreading the good news everywhere.

At 20 years of age, I head the privilege of being involved together with the late Dr Ralph Winter in the planing and organisation of the conference in Edinburgh 1980. This gave my life a new direction. Planting a vibrant church in every people, language, and culture became a central focus. I studied missiology, world religions and cultural anthropology just as my mentor Winter had done. But all this wonderful knowledge about the many cultures in the world only makes sense, if world mission and reaching the peoples that have no church becomes the very heart of theology itself. Theology, that lives for itself, as does much of academic theology in the country where I come from, theology, that does not see itself as an ongoing argument for God’s mission in the world, no longer is a theo-logy, a teaching centered on God, but has become a medium just for the exchanged of human arguments.

I am thrilled that Tokyo 2010 will be the real follow up of Edinburgh 1910: a meeting of mission agencies! And I am thrilled that Tokyo 2010 will overcome the biggest problem that Edinburgh 1910 had – the lack of non-Western involvement. This time, the Global South will lead the way and we definitely need this in the West (at least in Europe).

The more the World Council of Churches is overcoming the idea, invented 50 years ago, of a moratorium of missions, and the more it stresses that mission is an integral part of the  nature of the church, the more it can get back to its roots and claim to be a heir of Edinburgh 1910. And of course Lausanne III or Cape Town 2010 sees itself in the footsteps of Edinburgh 1910 too, and Tokyo 2010 shares the spiritual DNA with the Lausanne Movement and the World Evangelical Alliance.

But I think Tokyo 2010 is the real heir of Edinburgh 1910. Why? First of all for a very simple reason. Edinburgh 1910 was a meeting of those doing mission, of the mission societies and groups helping them, like student volunteer movements and prayer networks. The idea was not just bridging between the churches, but bridging for a clear purpose, namely the mission of the church, and this can only done by the practitioners.

The second reason is: Edinburgh 1910 was about reaching the whole world, but it did not represent the whole world. In Edinburgh 1910 even those parts of the non-Western church, that had vital churches already, were missing and not represented, not to mention other “mission fields”. At Tokyo 2010 it is no longer necessery for Western mission societies to invite representatives from churches in the Global South. Nowadays there are many, many mission agencies from the Global South, and when mission societies are meeting, as they do in Tokyo 2010, the Global South will dominate by numbers. And even the largest older mission agencies today owe their large size to their many members from the Global South. A timely example of this development is WEC International, founded by C T Studd in the heydays of colonialism, which is currently moving its international headquarter from Bulstrode near London to Singapore.

As a European I want to add the last step: Mission agencies from the Global South should bring the gospel back to the secularized countries in the West and help to revive dying churches: “Come over and help us!” Thus the dynamics started by the movement that led to Edinburgh 1910 finally would come full circle!

I pray that we all will be filled by the Spirit. According to Jesus’ words he alone can and will “convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment“. But he has chosen to use us as his messengers. So we can become witnesses to others, yet even more have the privilege to witness his mighty acts before our eyes.

Thomas Schirrmacher

On the stage with the international board

On the stage, with my speech in hand

However, when I read the commentaries and blog discussions under these headings, I shudder. Next to the many subject-specific articles or good-natured use of freedom of expression, I find the most disgusting gutter language, hateful language, abusive language and verbal slugfests. The mist of anonymity appears to allow everything that language can produce. People judge others, about whom only the last commentary on a blog is known, and they come to the conclusion that others are empty-headed, incorrigible, egoistic, or dangerous.

While one anti-discrimination law follows another, the result is that a more respectful – much less more loving – behavior towards others is nowhere to be found. Discrimination appears to be gaining momentum on web discussion boards. In theory, the netiquette for many blogs and media say something else, but in reality bloggers give the evil in their heart free reign.

When a pastor or bishop preaches about the Ten Commandments and holds up a ‘mirror of confession’ in front of people (and in particular when he does not choose words that display respect for human dignity as he certainly has learned), the press jumps all over him. However, measured against the language used in commentaries and blogs, in particular those which are associated with the press media, everything that the pastor or bishop can possibly have said is a friendly piece of advice.

Hundreds of thousands of writers of commentaries do not use the new technological avenues to promote discussion in democratic society and to enable (almost) everyone the opportunity to participate in public discourse. Rather, it enables verbally lashing out at everyone who has a different opinion. Side questions in which one truly can believe one thing or the other become the cause for denying someone their personhood. and in the friendliest case a reason for calling on them to go ahead and emigrate – a well-known form of request in discussion pages and blogs.

Is that democracy, where every person can insult everyone else at will? As time goes by, will the hatred that is shown towards those who think different politically stay in the web, or will it at some point influence the actual daily interaction people have with each other? Can those who watch over the virtues of our country, who are paying attention to political correctness everywhere, but who themselves dish out evil on web discussion pages and blogs fail to address this hatred?

Jesus said in Matthew 24:12: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold . . . “ On the internet we are increasingly experiencing how people allow their thoughts free reign, and the absence of law and prohibition is leading to boundless lovelessness which one day could spill over into our democracy. Democracy as a freedom of expression is bid welcome. However, democracy, when it is principally lacking in respect and takes away others’ dignity, is not a political structure that is worthy of human dignity. It is precisely the democratically elected politicians who are role models for hate bloggers and slanderers in the way they speak about each other.

The frequent warnings in the Bible against slander and rumors are indeed age-old, but at the same time they are more up to date than ever. People could by all means simultaneously be committed to the truth and make themselves controversial by being on a search for it, and at the same time through love get along respectfully with each other. See in this connection my essay “Putting Rumors to rest”, chapter 5 in my book “May Christians Go To Court” (Download under iirf.eu).

The Zurich film festival, the Berlinale and many other art and media people are protesting the arrest of Roman Polanski. More remarkable is the sympathy they have with the offender. In not a single press release or statement has one read that it is detestable to sexually abuse a 13 year old girl who is purposely given drugs.

Here is the background history: 1. Roman Polanski confessed to giving drugs to a 13 year old at a party at Jack Nicholson’s home in 1977 for the purpose of sexually abusing her. 2. Polanski was convicted under law for this action in 1977. 3. In 1978 Polanski fled from imprisonment. 4. Since he possessed French citizenship in addition to American citizenship, and France did not extradite him to the United States of America, he was able to elude imprisonment for three decades while in France. 5. Efforts on the part of Polanski’s lawyers resulted in a new hearing being granted, but Polanski refused this due to the fact that he would have had to set foot on American soil. 6. Admittedly, the victim had forgiven Polanski publicly in the media and would have halted the proceedings. Still, since when is it that the victim and not the courts decide about such an issue?
What do we learn from this:

1. Whoever is rich and famous can assume that his friends will get him out of a jam, even if it is the case of raping a minor and fleeing imprisonment.
2. The media lets the big ones get away, fortunately it is not always the same with the police and the legal system. The media are increasingly attempting to replace or influence the courts. The unlucky one is he or she who cannot be considered a media spectacle.
3. Our society has become so accustomed to all sorts of sexual excesses that the rape of a minor is treated as a peccadillo, at least by adults.
4. And again, it is the offender and not the victim who receives sympathy.

The Judeo-Christian message of a just legal system: “God does not show favoritism” has a more difficult time of it than ever.

The justification of suicide attacks in Islamism is a modern development that continues. Indeed there used to be the concept of martyrs as warriors who died in Jihad, which is a concept that has never existed in Christianity (though it has been found in the nationalistic garb of European states or, for instance, in Japan in world wars). But it has always been a war called for by a leader – for instance a caliph or a sultan. One died in battle against unbelievers, and one naturally tried to live as long as possible. This is to say that the individual did not commit suicide. (Exceptions were assassins between the 11th and 13th centuries, for which no line leads to the present.)

Terror attacks during the time of Yassir Arafat were hardly able to be justified religiously and did not consist of an actual suicide attack. The concept of the suicide attack is something that has progressively developed in modern Islamism in increasingly intensive phases, which anyone who has followed the last 25 years of reports in the media can understand.

Phases in the Development of the Theology and Practice of Suicide Attacks in the last 25 Years

1. Jihad no longer has to be called for. Rather, military Jihad is a permanent condition against unbelievers. An individuals can designate himself, or a small group can designate themselves. Whoever dies in the process goes to paradise as a martyr.
2. An individual is allowed to kill himself, if in the process unbelievers are also killed.
3. Male children are also able to be suicide attackers (initially in the Intifada)
4. An individual is allowed to do the same if in the process, as collateral damage, Muslims also die (this occurred initially in Israel, then on September 11, 2001).
5. An individual is allowed to do the same if in the process almost exclusively or exclusively Muslims die but unbelievers are disquieted (initially in Iraq).
6. Women can also be suicide attackers who up till now have only appeared as proud mothers of suicide attackers (a very recent phenomenon).
7. In the most immediate past girls have emerged as suicide attackers. In short: a girl who with an explosive kills other Muslims and, for that reason, is lauded as a martyr used to be unthinkable in Islam. It is, rather, a completely new theological and practical development that has little in common with premodern Islam.