More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea: A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships ed. by David D. Grafton

Abstract

Reviewed by: More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea: A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships ed. by David D. Grafton Robert F. Shedinger More Than a Cup of Coffee and Tea: A Generation of Lutheran-Muslim Relationships. Edited by David D. Grafton. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2021. 212 pp. This book provides an overview of Lutheran-Muslim relationships spanning the last thirty years. Following forewords by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and Sayyid Syeed, head of the Islamic Society of North America, the book begins with four essays focused on official documents produced by Lutheran bodies on the topic of Lutheran-Muslim relationships as well as the influence of Islamophobia on those relationships. This section includes an essay on the 1986 document God and Jesus: Theological Reflections for Christian-Muslim Dialogue and one on the development of the Lutheran-Muslim consultative panel. These chapters lay the foundation for how the ELCA has thought theologically about its engagement with Islam and Muslims. The next three chapters take us inside specific examples of Lutheran-Muslim engagement in the United States. We learn how Lutherans are engaging with the Somali community in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. We learn also about Lutheran-Muslim community connections in Southern California fostered by the Claremont School of Theology and the development of the Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. The final four chapters expand the focus beyond the United States to Lutheran-Muslim encounters in Palestine, Indonesia, Senegal, and India. No doubt, Lutherans have been at the forefront of good faith efforts to build bridges of mutual understanding and cooperation with Muslims around the world. This book does an excellent job of documenting this. But despite all the good work —like the work of the Lutheran World Federation's Augusta Victoria Hospital serving Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza—I think Lutherans, like other Christians, continue to view Christian-Muslim dialogue from [End Page 232] within a specifically Christian worldview. Are Lutherans authentically hearing Muslim voices? We see a hint of this in the Rev. Jane Buckley-Farlee's essay on engagement with the Somali community in Minneapolis. She relates how Trinity Lutheran Church launched a Safe Place Homework Help program in 2001. An average of fifteen Muslim students come to the church each day after school for help with homework provided by tutors from Augsburg University and the University of Minnesota. One day, Rev. Buckley-Farlee relates how a student asked to use her office to engage in one of the five daily prayers. Rev. Buckley-Farlee, who was working on prayers for her Sunday service, invited the student in to pray. "I could see her standing, bowing, and kneeling, praying, out of the corner of my eye as I tried to type my own prayers for Sunday. It suddenly dawned on me that we were doing the same thing" (83). Well, not exactly. Christian prayer is much more akin to the Muslim practice of dua (intercessory prayer). The obligatory five daily prayers (or salat) involving ritual physical prostration are one of the five pillars of Islam and as such are part of a larger Islamic system designed to inculcate submission to God in all affairs of life in a way that transcends the carefully maintained boundaries between the sacred and secular so fundamental to the Western Christian worldview. This same mistake occurs when Christians liken the Islamic pillar of zakat to charity, missing the fact that zakat is really an obligatory wealth tax and the heart of what many Muslims believe is a uniquely Islamic economic system. I hope that as Lutheran-Muslim relationships move forward, there will be a greater interest among Lutherans and all Christians to understand Islam from a Muslim perspective. They might find real common ground, not necessarily theologically, but in a shared vision of the devastating and dehumanizing effects of modern global capitalism. Christians and Muslims can do much together to save the planet from human-caused catastrophe. [End Page 233] Robert F. Shedinger Luther College Decorah, Iowa Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.