23AR28-04

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AR 28:4 - How would you prove that God performed a miracle?

In this issue:

ISLAM - a knee-jerk reaction to a classroom image of Muhammad backfires

 + "a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, D.C."

MIRACLES - the New York Times highlights meticulously documented examples

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM - when Jehovah's Witnesses lose their rights, mainstream Christians see danger for all

Apologia Report 28:4 (1,601)
January 24, 2023

ISLAM

It's a DEI dilemma. The diversity/equity/inclusion mix <www.bit.ly/3QB0608> includes enough variables to make balance difficult at times. The conflict at Hamline University over Islamic orthodoxy's influence in the classroom is a good example - and it's not as straightforward as it might seem. "Most of All, I Am Offended as a Muslim" by Amna Khalid (Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec 29 '22) sounds like a no-brainer. "On October 6, during a class on Islamic art that was part of a global survey course in art history, a professor at Hamline University offered students an optional exercise: Analyze and discuss a 14th-century Islamic painting that depicts the Archangel Gabriel delivering to the Prophet Muhammad his first Quranic revelation."

   Khalid elaborates: "I am appalled by the senior administration's decision to dismiss the instructor and pander to the students who claim to have been 'harmed.' This kind of 'inclusive excellence' permits DEI administrators to ride roughshod over faculty knowledge." That's for openers.

   "As a historian, I am shocked that Hamline's administration cannot appreciate that the image is a primary source and that a class on art history, by definition, necessitates engaging with primary sources; this is the heart of the historian's craft." Take two.

   Then, the title of the piece comes into play. "In choosing to label this image of Muhammad as Islamophobic, in endorsing the view that figurative representations of the Prophet are prohibited in Islam, Hamline has privileged a most extreme and conservative Muslim point of view. The administrators have flattened the rich history and diversity of Islamic thought."

   Kalid concludess: "As Ahoo Najafian, an assistant professor of Islamic studies at Macalester College, told me, 'it is precisely to contest this mainstream narrow version of Islam, which is based only on theology, that we need to expose students to the richness and plurality within Islamic thought and culture. Excluding these images from discussions of Islamic art, and from courses on Islam more broadly, means giving our students an incomplete version of Islamic history.'

   "To add insult to injury: The push to silence and exclude alternative Muslim views at Hamline is driven by the office of inclusive excellence. So much for the role of the DEI apparatus in advancing real diversity on campus." <https://archive.vn/lumm0>

   Update: "Hamline University leaders admit to 'misstep' in Islamophobia controversy as adjunct professor files lawsuit" by Josh Verges (Pioneer Press, Jan. 17 '23) <www.bit.ly/3H5R2Md>

   Also see: "Muslim Activists Misunderstand Islam: Why the latest controversy over depictions of Mohammed was completely unnecessary" by Hisham Melhem (Foreign Policy, Jan 22 '23) -- "It is evidence of the strange contemporary culture of higher education in the United States that a private university recently declared that the showing of an image of Prophet Mohammed, contained in a treasured Persian manuscript from the 14th century, painted by a Muslim scholar for a Muslim ruler and celebrating the birth of Islam, is "undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic. ...

   "For centuries, Islam was seen by many Western scholars—and, unfortunately, by the overwhelming majority of Muslims themselves—as a static, immovable, undifferentiated, and immutable corpus. The Muslim world has always been as diverse politically and culturally—if not more so—than Christendom at any time. Let's start with the bogus claim that Islam forbids the drawing or painting of religious or holy figures.

   "There is absolutely no such injunction in the Quran, and the Persian and Ottoman empires, as well as various Muslim realms in India, have left us a stunningly rich inheritance of drawings and paintings depicting the mundane of the terrestrial and the sublime of the celestial. ...

   "The staggering blunder of Hamline University was in equating the display of reverential images of the Prophet Mohammed for specifically pedagogical purposes with the infamous cartoons mocking Mohammed that the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published in 2012 and 2013, an act that prompted a deadly attack against the magazine staff. <www.bit.ly/3XHHgqU>

   "The president of Hamline University, Fayneese S. Miller, had the temerity to co-sign an email to the students claiming that respecting the sensibilities of Muslim students "should have superseded academic freedom." It is troubling that a president of an American university in 2022 would choose not to defend the principle of academic freedom. Sadder still is that she  apparently does not understand that such freedom doesn't contradict the spirit of the religion she claims to be defending." <www.bit.ly/3HuQSj1>

Edward Kosner's "BOOKSHELF" column (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 28 '22) caught our attention: "Ever since emancipation, blacks in America have oscillated between the desire for integration with white society and, when spurned, the appeal of separation. The most conspicuous of the separatists has been the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslim sect founded by a visionary hustler called Master Fard Muhammad and, after Fard's disappearance in 1934, transformed into a movement by Elijah Muhammad and his eloquent disciple, the martyred Malcolm X. But for all their stress on self-reliance, the aura of violence has always clung to the Black Muslims.

   "Elijah's hit men gunned down Malcolm X in Harlem in 1965 after he broke with the leader. And a dozen years later, a holy war of sorts among the group's adherents and a breakaway Muslim sect culminated in a set of deadly sieges in Washington, D.C., one of the most violent incidents ever in the nation's capital. The spark that ignited it all was a big-budget movie about the historical prophet Muhammad supported by the Black Muslims but damned as blasphemous by an angry apostate.

   "Long forgotten, this grotesque episode is reanimated by Shahan Mufti, a veteran journalist, in 'American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, D.C.' 

   Meticulously detailed and fluidly written, the book <www.bit.ly/3He75c0> mixes terrifying scenes from the renegade Hanafi movement's hostage-taking sieges with sophisticated explications of the sectarian feuds among rivalrous Muslim black nationalists." And by the way: the "epic" 1976 film in question - "Mohammad, Messenger of God" (aka "The Message"), starring Anthony Quinn - "proved to be an epic box-office bomb." <www.bit.ly/3WfAmrj> (registration required)

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MIRACLES

The full-page "Guest Essay" for the New York Times' 2022 Christmas Eve opinion section <www.bit.ly/3QySLxZ> was well chosen. It checked a good number of boxes:

      * - wide-ranging, yet brief

      * - cites solid pro/con examples and testimony

      * - shows thoughtful, non-dismissive counterpoint

      * - takes a commonsense approach to obvious uncertainties

      * - appears representative of principle issue involved

      * - includes discussion of key positions taken

      * - leaves room for reflection independent of conclusion

      * - allows that the author may not be driven by bias

   Verdict: Molly Worthen, a UNC Chapel Hill historian "who writes frequently about America's religious culture," delivers a fair examination of her subject, namely: "How Would You Prove That God Performed a Miracle?" She amply demonstrates that she knows just how critical leg work is to being taken seriously. Her champions are not all so easily slotted into either pro or con based on their bonafides. The first "directs the program in neuroscience at Indiana University Bloomington"; the second is a publisher and historian; the third "is completing his residency in general surgery ... as well as a cardiac surgery research fellowship. More follows, including a double-doctorate apologist you've read about plenty in AR who rides the fence. 

   Worthen introduces us to the Global Medical Research Institute <globalmri.org>, a serious nonprofit that applies "rigorous methods of evidence-based medicine to study Christian Spiritual Healing practices." The experiences they document "are striking because they operate in one of the most antisupernaturalist subcultures in the modern world: secular academia." The individual cases of healing Worthen describes are genuinely amazing, and all but guaranteed to warm the hearts of Christian readers (many of whom will eagerly share the article with their believing *and* skeptical friends).

POSTSCRIPT, Feb 14 '23
Hi Rich, et al., 

            In your January 27 AR, one subject was “MIRACLES The full-page ‘Guest Essay’ for the New York Times' 2022 Christmas Eve opinion section; was well chosen.  It checked a good number of boxes…” 

            I would like to add a caveat to that article for fellow Christian apologists.  The article is justified for celebrating miracles at Christmastime due to the real miracle of Christ’s virgin birth (and this appeared in the most liberal NY Times!).  The additional miracle in the story was about two well-educated professors, a husband and wife, Drs. Josh and Candy Brown.  He is the director of neuroscience at Indiana University Bloomington and she is a tenured professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the same university, with a prestigious Harvard doctorate in religious studies.  Impressive as that is, the NYT article seemed faith-promoting, “[the Browns] believe that God does intervene to cause miraculous healing, all the time.”  Together, the couple spend the bulk of their spare time searching out documentation for miraculous healings. 

            This caught my interest because it sounded like a modern remake of Dr. Richard Casdorph’s book, The Miracles (Logos, 1976), where he set out to document the miraculous healings from Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministry with before and after X-rays.  He was no sham himself, as a diplomat of internal medicine and licensed to practice in three states.  Unfortunately for the Christian world, after Kathryn Kuhlman died, Dr. Casdorph showed less discernment in his personal faith than he did in his medical studies and left Christianity to join the Unity Church. He left Unity and rejoined Christianity a few years later.

            The Browns do not mention Casdorph’s book, but they take on a similar study of miracles after Josh was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, a low-grade glioma.  He was raised a cessationist-Baptist and did not believe in continued charismata gifts and, for all intents and purposes, had let his faith fall by the wayside of his career.  His wife too.  She was raised in a mainline Christian environment that was suppressed by her liberal graduate and doctoral studies in religion.  As they sought cures for his brain tumor, she one day quipped at him, “Why don’t you try Jesus!”  He took her up on that suggestion and began crisscrossing America, seeking one faith healer after another, and, in the end, without any medical treatment directed to the tumor, he was healed.  He documented his eight years with the tumor with MRI scans.  As a result of prayer alone, his tumor reduced to nothing except scar tissue.  He got his miracle healing through prayer at healing meetings.             

            They decided on two things.  One, the have to tell this amazing story, and, two, that they are going to document other miracle healings that came through prayer and faith, by using as much scientific method and principle as possible.  Candy, the writer between them, published an account of Josh’s healing (under the pseudonym George, with a list of other healings under other pseudonyms) in her first book, Testing Prayer, Science, and Healing (Harvard, 2012).  It received a number of surprisingly positive reviews (like the NYT story), but not all ends well there. 

            She, too, like Dr. Casdorph before her, did not use as much discernment in her future quest because she slowly began embracing New Age practices (of which Testing Prayer rejects the New Age by name and reveals that Josh’s own mother, a long time New Ager, renounced it and repented of it to became a Christian after she saw his healing).  From what I have gleaned from her four books and several articles, it appears to be a gradual process, but she eventually gave way to becoming a Yoga master and she leads the way among several others in promoting so-called “Christian Yoga,” which is an oxymoron to Christian apologists.   

            Her second chapter in her book, The Healing Gods: Contemporary and Alternative Medicine in Christian America (Oxford, 2013), is titled, “Yoga, I bow to the God within You.”  She also gives tacit endorsement of other non-Christian methods that makes her search look like globalist-inclusivism, as if healing in all faiths are as valid as those in Christianity.  No longer is her search for Christian prayer and healing, but it is any healing so long as it was done by religious faith.  The nexus for this began in her survey in Brazil, where she asks religious people if they had been healed through “Macumba, Umbanda, Candomblé, Quimbanda, Xangô, Para, Kardecist spiritism, spiritualism, Catholic folk healers, curandeiros, African-Brazilian priests/priestesses, herbalists, shamans, psychic surgery, Caecó, metaphysics, Santeria, yoga, homeopathy, and chiropractic” (Testing Prayer, 336).   Further analysis of her surveys began to convince her that Christianity was not alone.  Yet her husband, Josh, is not mentioned in any of her latter books and she gives no indication that he followed her inclusive direction.   

            I note too that all of these New Age, cultic, and occult practices from her Brazilian survey are conspicuously missing from he North American surveys.    Testing Prayer is overwhelmingly about Christian healing, although she gives lopsided weight to the Toronto Blessing, Rodney Howard-Browne, Benny Hinn, Bethel and Bill Johnson, with only scant mention from more legitimate forms of Pentecostal, Charismatic, independent, and mainline churches.  What the astute reader will pick up is the sprinkling of terms, without any analysis, from practices like yoga, Reiki, energy healings, parana, and Tai Chi.  From a liberal approach, Candy Brown finally landed on a homogenization of yoga and Christianity.  In her latter writings she belittles evangelical Christians as narrow-minded people who need to open up to yoga, TM, Deepak Chopra, Reiki, and other beliefs.  The New York Times article gives an incomplete picture of what Candy Brown calls a miracle healing.

Kurt Van Gorden 

Utah Gospel Mission/Jude 3 Missions 

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 RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

"Norwegian Christians critical of government actions against Jehovah's Witnesses" (CNE.news, Dec 30 '22) -- "The Norwegian government is withdrawing the Jehovah's Witnesses' registration as a religious community amidst many critiques from Christian circles.

   "The reason for the loss of registration is the shunning practice of the Jehovah's Witnesses. According to the Norwegian State Administrator, the exclusion practice is against the law. 'We believe the religious community violates the members' right to free expression. We believe this violates the members' right to freedom of religion.'"

   The Norwegian Christian daily Vårt Land reports: "We also believe that they violate children's rights by allowing the exclusion of baptised minors and encouraging members to socially isolate children who do not follow the religious community's rules."

   Vebjørn Selbekk, editor-in-chief of the Norwegian Christian daily Dagen, adds that "the health of Norwegian democracy is weakened when the state uses its means of power to punish a religious community because of religious teachings and practices."

   Last, "Catholic priest Torbjørn Olsen is also critical of the government's actions. In an op-ed in Dagen, he argues that the decision of the State Administrator narrows down the freedom of religion in Norway. He fears that more religious communities might face the consequences. 'If the registration refusal stands, it may soon only be a matter of time before a number of other communities with 'incorrect' positions are separated.'" <www.bit.ly/3vWWSKM> 

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