After the Open House — Going Forward Together

Hospitality given and received through the Open House leads to forming new relationships, tentatively reaching across divisions of culture and religion, and often stretching our accustomed comfort zones. In these relationships we discover common human hopes and dreams, fears and anxieties, and faith and life concerns that can be as compelling as the commitments we hold with fellow Christians.  

When the Open House is over, how shall we let those budding relationships develop, entering into deeper friendship with men and women in the larger family of God even as we continue to cherish our particular Christian heritage?  

A number of principles can guide us in this. They are rooted in our biblical commitments to love God with all that we are, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 

First:  Continue to build personal friendships grounded in our common humanity.

This does not require any turning away from our own faith community. Rather, in relating to new friends who are devout Muslims, we can discover other seekers who have honored God for generations. In bearing witness to our own faith and receiving the witness of others, we can expect to grow in our understanding of the Spirit’s presence in the world.  

Our interaction with Muslim neighbors, begun in the Open House encounter, can continue through the many ways in which our lives intersect — at school, at work, in neighborhood activities, the PTA or other associations where we join with citizens over common causes.  

Second:  Enter empathetically into the world as our Muslim neighbors experience it.

In that world Muslim friends strive to be faithful in the face of discrimination, which takes the form of profiling or compromised civil rights before the law. They are viewed by many Americans as potentially related to a world conspiracy of terrorism. Anxiety, fear, rejection, and anguish for the fate of friends or family in lands of their origin are a continuing burden.  

Some Christians have provided accompaniment for Muslims taking their children to school or shopping where the public environment is particularly threatening. Simple hospitality with empathetic listening over a cup of coffee can help Muslim neighbors feel more secure in their neighborhoods.  

Third:  Join with Muslim friends in study and action in regard to political and ethical issues and the establishment of the justice, civic order, and peace that God wills for the world.

This can happen with individual friends or in small discussion groups. Muslim and Christian understandings of God’s will for social order and peace have much in common. Coalitions can form to achieve common aims.  

Fourth:  Be open for matters of faith to arise in discussion of common concerns with Muslim friends.

Both Christianity and Islam recognize the ideal of “no force in religion.” Thus, exchanges of witness between friends can be natural and non-threatening, leading to greater understanding and appreciation in interfaith friendships. Both evangelism and da’wa (the Muslim counterpart of Christian evangelism) ? when directed to respectful sharing of faith experiences and conviction ? can contribute to interfaith understanding and friendship rather than tension and conflict.