Can Jews, Christians, and Muslims Co-exist?

This post previously appeared in the February 2013 issue of Baptist Studies Bulletin.

http://www.baptisthistory.org/bhhs/bsb/bsb2013_02.html

Yes.

I offer Exhibit A: the life and legacy of Edward Wilmot Blyden. Imagine a man who, as a child, lived next to a synagogue in the West Indies and attended a Dutch Reformed church. Imagine, further, the same man as a young adult who arrived in Liberia under the auspices of the New York Colonization Society and, with funding from white American Presbyterians, was educated in a mission school in Monrovia, where his fascination with Jewish history helped create a passion to learn Hebrew as a way of getting to the bottom of false claims that divine providence had assigned the descendants of Ham to a life of servitude. Now imagine the same man in the twilight of a phenomenal vocation as teacher, missionary, statesman, explorer, and activist sitting quietly in the administrative of a mosque in Sierra Leone overseeing a national program for the education of Muslim children.

Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912) is the real man you imagined. His life and legacy don’t get the attention they deserve, especially in the contemporary context created by the perceived and real conflicts among the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That is a shame. I add that, for those who give attention to Blyden, there is more than Abrahamic religious harmony that animated this intellectual giant of the nineteenth century. Start turning the pages of Blyden’s life and one will find the source of a broad, long shadow still visible in many places early in the twenty-first century.

In 1898 Blyden published an essay, “The Jewish Question,” in a British periodical. He began with reminiscence: “I was born in the midst of Jews in . . . St. Thomas.” He comments upon his excitements about “the annual festivals and feasts,” especially the “Day of Atonement,” recounting how he and his Christian friends assembled on “a terrace immediately above” the synagogue to “look down upon the mysterious assembly.” He concludes the introduction by noting that the “awe and reverence” of those experiences “have followed me all the days of this life.”

The essay goes on to engage the seminal work of Theodor Hertzl, the intellectual father of Zionism. Blyden suggests that “the Jew has a far higher and nobler work to accomplish . . . than establishing a political power in one corner of the earth.” He concludes: “The message of the great Zionist movement to the Jews, . . . is to rise from their neutrality and cooperating with . . . their children—Christianity and Islam—work for the saving of mankind . . . from a deadening materialism.”

Blyden’s context, West Africa, prevented him from much practical engagement of “the Jewish question,” but that was not the case with Christianity and Islam. In 1887 Blyden’s sweeping life’s work, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (CINR) was published; it was so well received that the next year it came out in a second edition. The book remains in print.

The connecting thesis of CINR is driven by missions. Blyden acknowledges the common origins of Christianity and Islam in the bosom of Abraham (i.e., Judaism) while at the same time noting the differences among the religions. In the end Blyden appeals for and practically engages cooperation. His profound sense of providence led Blyden to conclude that missions should be about basic education—teaching children to read and write and think and grow in place where they are planted. Pointing to the successes of Muslim missions surrounding the mosque school where children became literate in more than the Qur’an, Blyden called for Christian missions to invest in education, too.

 He was convinced that Christians and Muslims (and, by association, Jews) could and should teach the children and make room for the spirit of God to transform Africa, not by importing foreign cultures under the guise of religion.

On 8 February 2013 I was in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It was one hundred and one years—plus one day—since Blyden died there (click the photo to the left to read the inscription on Blylden’s grave marker). My Liberian colleague and friend, Olu Q. Menjay, and I visited Blyden’s grave in the company of his great-granddaughter, Isa Blyden. For eight hours she escorted us through Freetown, 

showing us where Edward Wilmot Blyden lived out his passions for education, missions, and harmony. The highlight of the day was, for me, a visit to the mosque in the Foulah district of Freetown where Blyden established the first school for Muslim children in West Africa. We met the imam and were warmly greeted by Muslim men and women arriving for Friday prayers.

Coexistence is possible. I saw it and experienced it in Freetown.

Riding Off into the Sunrise

   Today was my last chance—on this trip—to participate in the morning rituals at Ricks Institute. I arose earlier than usual and made my way to campus as the sun was rising. A hard rain last evening and the hint of more today made for a brilliant sunrise. The clouds and low mist scattered the early beams like so much spun gold behind and above the palms.

1 March 2013
class line-ups at Ricks

   For the first time in all of my trips to Ricks I stood among the students for the raising of the flag and the singing of the School Ode and national anthem. It was a different and good perspective.

   “One-eighty-one!” the song leader cried as the students found their places in front of their seats, “One-eighty-one!” There is a short canon of songs the students select each morning. I so enjoy listening and watching the Ricks community sing. The Liberia accents bring new meaning to the words as often as not.

"One-eighty-one!"

   As the hymn began, “There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,” Blyden found me—and caught me by surprise. He backed me into a corner of history and showed how circumstances long past endure for generations. By the time the hymn reached the refrain for the first time 

Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
No, not one! No, not one!

I was awash in bittersweet anguish and delight. I’ve been looking for Blyden in Liberia and Sierra Leone for seven weeks. As my time draws to a close Blyden found me and backed me into a corner from which I could see past, present, and (perhaps) future in Liberia. I remembered Blyden’s clear analysis of one of the differences between African Muslims and African Christians. Islam, Blyden notes, was not hampered by a history of complicity in the slave trade; Christianity, however, would forever carry that burden. 

     Christianity, on the other hand, came to the Negro as a slave, or at least as a subject race in a foreign land. . . . The religion of Jesus was embraced by them as the only source of consolation in their deep disasters. In their abject miseries, keen anguish, and hopeless suffering they seized upon it as promising a country where, after the unexampled sorrows of this life, “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”

Edward Wilmot Blyden
1832-1912

    Upon checking my memory I had the sense that Blyden was pushing me around, maybe roughly. Yes, I thought back to his gravesite and, according to his great-granddaughter’s interpretation of the kola nuts—that Blyden wasn’t listening to me. Perhaps he was listening after all. In the quotation above Blyden had cited Job 3.17, but I wondered, too, if there was a hymn in his mind as he wrote. The larger context from which the quotation comes approaches the lyrical, with references to how the [American] slaves put “new songs in their mouths—those melodies inimitable to the rest of the world—which . . . have recently charmed the ears and captivated the hearts of royalty and nobles in Europe by a tenderness, a sweetness, an earnestness, and a solemnity, born of adversity, in the house of bondage.”

Henry Hart Milman
1797-1868

   So, I searched and found a hymn by Henry Hart Milman, a contemporary of Blyden’s and Dean of St. Paul’s in London. It was a rough push. Often Blyden mentions the splendors of St. Paul’s and uses the dome as a measuring stick for other places he visited (such as the Great Pyramid of Giza). I wonder if, perhaps, they had met. As I continue looking for Blyden I will look in the corner for Milman. Milman’s “Burial Hymn” concludes:

And when the Lord shall summon us  Whom thou now hast left behind,May we, untainted by the world,  As sure a welcome find;May each, like thee, depart in peace,  To be a glorious, happy guest,Where the wicked cease from troubling,  And the weary are at rest.   

   For good measure, Blyden pushed me again. On Fridays Visiting Principal Kris Keske hands out recognitions of folks in the community who embody the values of Ricks. This morning she described the person: “She came to Ricks during the war as a displaced person and has stayed. She always goes beyond what is expected of her. She is an inspiration to us.”

Principal Keske and Mrs. Dixon

   Mrs. Dixon came forward. I’ve known her since I first came. She is a cleaning woman who works tirelessly and diligently to keep the floors clean. She sweeps and mops and mops and sweeps—everyday, all day. The smile on her face never fades. She pauses for conversation. She never asks for anything but prayers for herself and her son.

Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide till the day is done;
There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus,
No, not one! No, not one!

   Bittersweet anguish and delight. My Liberian friends have struggles I know nothing about; even my prosperous Liberian friends do. Liberia still is a place where water has to be fetched, clothes are washed in a bucket, and food is cooked over charcoal fires. The delight came from having Blyden find me—even if he did push me around a bit.