BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -Brian McLaren, the minister known as a major spokesman of the Emerging Church movement for more than two decades, has attacked a Christian news outlet’s publication of an anti-Muslim diatribe.
“Charisma News put up a hateful, Islamophobic rant online,” McLaren said in an interview today. “It sure sounded like he was calling for genocide (against Muslims).”
McLaren responded on his web site with an open letter to Charisma News criticizing its publication of “Why I am Absolutely Islamophobic,” written by the Rev. Gary Cass, president and CEO of DefendChristians.org. Charisma News posted it on Sept. 5. It echoed Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson’s earlier comment to Fox News on the Islamic terrorist group ISIS that America should “either convert them or kill them.”
McLaren said the Cass article, which spoke fondly of Christian crusaders who killed Muslims, sums up what’s gone wrong with modern evangelical Christians in their approach to other faiths.
“Americans are subject to a certain type of propaganda that tries to present all of the wrongdoing as being the fault of Muslims and doesn’t understand the historical reasons behind Muslim grievances,” McLaren said. “That doesn’t excuse Muslim violence or violence of any kind.”
The Christian message should be one of peace, not violent retaliation, something Jesus preached against and his followers were slow to absorb, McLaren said.
A Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice: 