‘Christianity and…’
Keith Ward
Christianity and Islam: An inevitable clash? Public Lecture delivered by Revd Professor Keith Ward at Trinity College, 21 March 2003
The title of this lecture, of course, reflects the title of a book by Samuel Huntington, a distinguished American political scientist, on the clash of civilisations. One of his themes is that there is very likely to be a clash of world civilisations, and one of those clashes will be between Islam and Christianity. Tonight, I want to examine how far that might be true, and what a theologian, like myself, or what a Muslim theologian, might say about that. One difficulty is, of course, that religion very easily gets mixed up with politics. And, as we started with a moment of silence about the present conflict in Iraq, it is well to remember that it is not a religious conflict at all, though there are religious overtones felt by some people. It’s not religious because, for a start, this is an occasion when all the mainstream Christian churches and all the mainstream Muslim organisations are in complete agreement about what they feel about the present conflict. So, in fact, from the religious point of view it’s a time when Islam and Christianity are closer together than they have been for many years. So, it’s not that sort of conflict. But, let me begin by looking at the history of relations between Islam and Christianity and why there has been felt to be historical conflict. The reason is this, I think: that, in Europe, at least, what is called the Dark Ages is the period from about the seventh century to the tenth century, I suppose, when Europeans were rushing around with armour bashing each other with maces. On the other hand, at that time, after 622 by the Christian calendar, when the Muslim era begins, Muslims would regard this period as the age of enlightenment, not of darkness. It’s an age when al-Andalus, what we now call Spain, was a great Muslim nation and when Muslims were those who were rediscovering and retranslating, for the benefit of the world, the great Greek classics. This was a golden age of Muslim civilisation, which extends into the tenth century. But, there’s something a little bit odd about both Islam and Christianity. Christianity began as a virtually pacifist sect of Judaism. It was very difficult to be a soldier in the Roman army, for example, if you were a Christian. There was alleged to be one legion of Christians but, on the whole, Christians steered clear of military conflict. And, yet, after the conversion of Constantine, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. And, some say, it’s all been downhill from there. Whether or not that’s true, Christianity certainly changed at that time. It became associated with the
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