[Uri’el-2012]

Mathew N. Schmalz is associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester

is one of those modern day pagans masquerading
as a follower of Yah'shua who do not believe
that YHvH has punished this country for it's
actions toward Israel.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[cripplecreek]

Back in the late 1980s, I was managing a homeless shelter for a Catholic religious order in the South Bronx. The highlight of the week was our Sunday dinner and the priest who founded the shelter would come and say mass. For mass one Sunday, the priest decided to address the topic of Muhammad. The subject was not Muhammad as the antithesis of Jesus, nor Muslims as enemies. Instead, the subject was Muhammad as guided by the Holy Spirit and Muslims as friends. The priest pointed to aspects of Islam's five pillars--particularly fasting (sawm), prayer (salat), and almsgiving (zakat)--as practices that all Christians could admire. That the priest was politically and theologically quite conservative made his reflections surprising but all the more welcome--especially since I had just returned from Pakistan and had thought through many of these issues in dialogue with my Muslim friends.

Mathew N. Schmalz

Let's debate the Gospel