Remember, the three most powerful narratives on the planet are narratives of religion, narratives of nation, and narratives of ethnicity/race. You cannot afford to forfeit that territory by talking about economics or the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Don’t be afraid to be Christian ministers. If you don’t use the Christian narrative to define reality for your people, then someone else will define reality for them with a different narrative.
What makes this quote remarkable and unexpected is the speaker: Eboo Patel, a devout Muslim. Dr. Patel, an Oxford-trained scholar, teaches a course on interfaith leadership at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago together with a Christian woman named Cassie Meyer. McCormick being what it is, I would have expected such a course there to push lowest-common-denominatorism, but that seems to be far from the case. Judging by the fascinating article on Dr. Patel and the class in the latest issue of Leadership, “Ministry Lessons from a Muslim” (which doesn’t appear to be up online yet), he and Meyer advocate respectful conversation between unabashed truth claims. We need to respect and love those with whom we disagree based on our own convictions, not by setting those convictions aside, and so Dr. Patel, as a Muslim, encourages his Christian students to be more Christian. He explains this in part by saying,
If you enter a ministerial gathering as a Christian minister and downplay your Christian identity in an attempt to make everyone comfortable, as a Muslim leader, I’m immediately suspicious. I don’t trust you. Embracing your identity as a Christian creates safety for me to be a Muslim.
That isn’t a reaction I would have predicted, but it makes a lot of sense; after all, someone capable of neutering their own beliefs and identity for the sake of a particular goal is also perfectly capable of asking others to do the same—which, to those unwilling to do so, makes them a potential threat. (By contrast, someone unapologetic about declaring and maintaining their beliefs either will make space for others to do the same, or else will expose their hypocrisy and other sin issues. That’s not pleasant, to be sure, but at least such people can be dealt with straightforwardly.)