Prayer is a part of life here in East Tennessee.
As someone who just moved here three years ago, I’ll admit, it’s taken some time to get used to, even as a faith leader myself. Presbyterians of my tradition tend toward more liturgical forms of spoken prayer in formal worship settings. Many of my friends and neighbors, however, belong to more Evangelical denominations of Christianity, and pray extemporaneously and publicly much more often.
Having grown accustomed to this tradition, I was no longer surprised, for example, when one of my neighbors prayed in Jesus’s name with all the neighborhood kids as we finished walking them to the front parking lot of their local public elementary school on the first day of class. A few days earlier, the school’s
PTO group had talked about a Prayer Walk on the school’s track – not sponsored by the school or PTO, but discussed openly and positively by its members. And, lest anyone think I just happen to belong to an especially prayer-full district, the coach of my son’s Little League team led the kids in prayer, again in Jesus’ name, after every game a few seasons ago, even when this was not a church-affiliated league.
Prayer is a just part of life in East Tennessee.
So, you can imagine my surprise at our county Commissioner Andy Fox’s attempt to penalize public calls to prayer by our Muslim neighbors. According to Knox News, Commissioner Fox was seeking an ordinance to fine any amplified calls to Muslim (and only Muslim) prayer, by $1,000. If prayer is such a beautiful and open tradition in this area, why is it only reserved for Christians? This attempt seems a direct attack on a beautiful and faithful tradition of our city.
Moreover, it strikes me as unbiblical. It is not hard to find on the pages of Scripture beautiful and respectful moments of genuine inter-religious encounters. Today, we associate the word "Samaritan" with Christian service, but in Jesus’s day, Samaritans were viewed as holding a faith separate from Jesus’s own (see John 4:22), and yet Jesus repeatedly praises their faithfulness (Luke 10:36, 17:18, John 4:42).
One might also think of God’s message to Peter about Cornelius, “a centurion of the Italian Cohort.” Scripture says Cornelius was devout, but as a Gentile, he would have certainly had a very different understanding of God than Peter. And yet God responds to Peter in a dream, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (Acts 10:14). And in perhaps the best example of inter-religious dialogue in Scripture, the Apostle Paul praises the faithfulness of the polytheistic Athenians, even their altar to an unknown god, saying “I can see how extremely spiritual you are in every way” (Acts 17:22).
So, if there are these poignant examples of respect across faiths in our own Christian Scriptures, and there is a beautiful tradition of respectful public prayer right here in our own city, why on earth would we seek to penalize public calls to prayer by our Muslim siblings in faith? Such a move strikes me, as a faith leader in this area, as un-Christian and tn-Tennessee.
I hope our Muslim neighbors know that their faith is valued, and that they are loved by Christians here in Knoxville. And, respectfully, I hope they know Commissioner Fox does not speak for us.
The Rev. Dr. Richard Coble is the pastor/head of staff at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Knoxville.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Attacks on Muslim prayer are un-Christian and un-Tennessee | Opinion
