Introduction The Middle East is likely the most complex region in the entire world and yet most Americans have only the knowledge gained over these last 25 years of war. Prior to September 11, 2001, Americans were still searching for Kosovo on a map, and had not even thought about the Middle East much more than Jesus’ hometown and oil. The problem for the average American is that we don’t think the way much of the world does. We exist in a bubble of capitalism and freedom that preaches American exceptionalism. To be clear, I love exceptionalism but the application of that exceptionalism can have consequences. This American Creed, by its very nature, requires an American to think of themselves as the standard of excellence by which the entire world is measured. While this may be provably true through mathematics and markets, it lends to skew our perspective to the assumption that America is the best, does everything the best, and everyone else thinks just like us. For citizens of the West, we tend to have a strong understanding of the government and what it is; its function. We have clear distinctions between the Federal and State level and the ways in which each tier are equally devoted to maintaining the order of law. Look at your community and you will find government functions everywhere. There are fire and police departments, ambulance service, public transportation, public roads, food stamps, welfare, childcare, homeless outreach, medical clinics, and the list goes on. When we start to really think about our society, we begin to see just how many public services our government offers at both the state and federal level. Another measure of a civil society is how it deals with social unrest and violence. In many countries, cities are well regulated and controlled by the government, however, once one finds themselves outside of those city boundaries, one is often outside of the government's reach as well. That is to say that, in many nations around the world the government does not control the rural regions within its own borders. The rural regions are controlled by the leaders of the people that live there and methodology is often in conflict with the rules of the State. In America, this is not the case and one can simply look to any number of examples in history where Federal Law Enforcement took jurisdiction and restored order when the state could not resolve the issue . You may argue the methodology of the policing, my point is that here in America, there really isn’t any geographic region where anyone can escape the reach of the federal government. This is important to keep in mind because for much of the Middle East this simply isn’t their reality. It is also very important to understand the difference in perspective and how that impacts our interpretations and formulates our opinions. America is truly a unique experiment and I would suggest that we are more the exception than the standard. For a great deal of the world outside of America and Europe, the religious center (church, temple, mosque, etc) is the foundation of their community. In those societies, they view the religious center as being ahead of the government in importance in their lives. You could argue their faith is stronger, but the true reason is because the church provides them with more than the government does. The social safety net we have in America (in the form of Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, social security etc), does not exist in the majority of the world. For much of the world, and America traditionally, the social safety net came from the religious center within the community in which it served. The society and culture are therefore built around that which is the caretaker of the community. In Western society, we have replaced that with the government. The church is our religion and the government handles everything else. Western society, without intending to (or maybe intending to), removed the glue that placed the church in the center of the community and subsequently changed the way we as a society view our faith. Much of the Middle East does not think this way, in fact, their politics are a product of their faith. There is no separation. For American Protestants this is tough to understand because we have a strong doctrine of separation of church and state. Protestants are not completely united politically, they do lean heavy to the right, but not completely united the way other communities are. This is often because most people around the world retain both an ethnic identity and a religious identity that sometimes are difficult to separate and takes precedent over the national identity. For the West, societies were built upon national identity and religious identity, as tribal or ethnic identity was cast out as disruptive and divisive. People began to build religious nations and not religious tribes. This was the beginning of empire. The Western World is data focused and thus looks forward and creates new methods and products to aide in the furtherance of progress. For many people, they tend to look backward into history and tradition to gain the answers for the present. Americans are always looking forward for wisdom, while others look into the past. There is a tendency in Americans to believe that humans of the past were not as smart as us because they didn’t have machines and technology, but I would argue the way you define intelligence or wisdom is at the core of the issue. A Brief History of the Christian Church No disrespect here, but Protestants are usually the least educated regarding the history of the Christian Church. We don’t really have a strong sense of where we came from. It is a worthy endeavor to understand that the Protestant branch of Christianity can be thought of as a reaction to the Catholic Church and its function and practices at that time in history. Protestantism came out of Catholicism as Martin Luther was a Catholic Priest when he wrote his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517 CE. Even though Protestant theology sought to dissolve the control of the church, it retained much of its structure and framework from the Catholic Church at first. This can be seen in the Lutheran or Anglican/Episcopalian branches. Moral of the story, there was a ton of Protestant thought coming out of England (which is where many Protestant denominations come from; they followed a thinker). Beginning in 1642 CE, there were a series of Civil Wars in England and many people fled to the colonies in America as a result. This was the seeding of Protestantism in America. For approximately 1,000 years, the church was known only as the Christian Church. It was broken up into regions to make it easier to govern but the church was global and unified. In July 1054 CE, an event occurred in the Christian Church that is known as “The Great Schism” or “The East-West Schism”. The church in Rome wanted to do certain things differently than had been traditionally done and they had a few different interpretations of the scriptures that conflicted with the current church understanding, but mostly because they wanted a Pope. Therefore, the church divided and the Western Church in Rome became the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The remaining network of Christian Churches are today known as Eastern Orthodox. As we understand the history of the Christian Church and the divides that created friction and disrupted unity, we can better understand the context of history and apply lessons learned to our perspectives today. Building off of our understanding of the Christian Church and The Great Schism of 1054 CE that divided the church, we can begin to examine an equal parallel in the history of Islam. A Brief History of Islam Islam officially began in 610 CE when Muhammad received his first divine revelation. At the time of Islam’s founding Judaism was present in the Middle East as it always had been and Christianity largely surrounded the Arabian Peninsula courtesy of the Byzantine Empire (Rome). Th… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.protestantvoice.org
