Community: The people of God

Introduction

The idea of “community”, meaning an intentional group or corporate entity of believers, inheres to both Christianity and Islam. The notion of “being community” in some unique way is central to each. However, the selfunderstanding and structural manifestations of community are different and variable both between and within Islam and Christianity. The topic of the twelfth Building Bridges Seminar, held in 2013, was the theme of “community of believers” (Mosher and Marshall 2015). It was also explored earlier that same year by the ninth meeting of the Christian-Muslim Theological Forum (Schmid et al. 2014). Following a preliminary hermeneutical task, the main structural question addressed by the Forum had to do with the form of organisation of Muslims through the centuries, leading to the issue of particular versus universal perceptions of the Muslim community (Umma or ummah'). This was closely connected with the question of the legitimation and structure of authority. Some participants regarded the Umma as referring to a virtual, abstract community, not really an institution or social entity as such. The diverse reality of the Umma contradicts any notion of an institutional-centred and structured Umma. Nevertheless, the Forum saw that it is important to develop a systematic-theological and a regulative (political) concept in order to make the term, and the reality to which it refers, comprehensible and definable. Questions and issues around “community” that were addressed by the two dialogue events were many. To what extent do the terms “Church” (ecclesia) and “Umma” (ummah) denote the same sense of organised, institutionalised community of faith? Do they denote specific, radically different - and so incommensurate - forms of social reality in respect of these faiths? Or are they effectively synonymous terms, simply denoting community as such? Certainly, the relevant term is differently shaped and discussed within each religious tradition. For Christianity, “Church” can name a physical building; or it can refer to the idea of a social or theological institution; or it can refer to the idea, and concrete reality, of a gathered congregation of people — a voluntary society.

The idea of Church bears many layers of usage and meaning and carries multiple discourses. A diversity of meaning and application is likewise the case for Umma. The term plays an important role in current Islamic discussions. In times past it was identified with the Caliphate. What is the Umma, today? For some, it can relate to the idea of a national state and allied political questions and options. For many, however, it is simply a concept of the Muslim community per se-, of belonging and identity, with specific markers of time and place that localise the otherwise universal entity that the term implies. For many Muslims it signifies a feeling of encompassing corporate membership; the locus for belonging and identity that has both a local contextual as well as a transcendent universal sense. Or it might refer to the processes and experiences of being different, being “other than” the non-Muslim world; and for some it infers hope in an afterlife. The idea of Umma certainly carries a sense of global, even idealised unity across the divides of ethnicity and language: a single united community in submission to God. This signifies a focus upon the “community of believers” of which the individual is a member. The fundamental mission, or task, of this community is to uphold and campaign for solidarity and human rights. However, the notion of a singular, global and monolithic Muslim community is both a hindrance and, historically speaking, misleading — in similar fashion to the notion of a single encompassing Church applied to Christian history. There is the idea and ideal; then there is the manifestation and concrete reality.

While the idea of a transnational Umma is present in Muslim thinking and discourse, and tends sometimes to have a revolutionary character, there is great diversity of particular expression and form within the Muslim world. Even though the term carries a sense of transcendence in regard to an overarching collective commitment and solidarity, there are many manifestations of Umma, at least as varied as the diverse ethnicities and cultures of the global family of Muslims. Although there is no doctrine of the Umma that equates to Christian ecclesiology, there is a parallel of immediacy in relating the community to God, and God to the community. As with some notions of Church, it is within the theological construct and practical life of the Umma that the Divine Will is to be found and is continually present. The Theological Forum examined five topics that, among others, included issues diversity and unity, the concepts of Church and Umma, and the relationship between the faith communities, on the one hand, and the state and wider world on the other. It concluded that both religions’ communities need to find their place anew in contemporary pluralist societies in order, for example, to meet the challenges of globalisation. The Building Bridges Seminar focussed on three key areas of community - nature and purpose, unity and disunity, continuity and change. From these two dialogical engagements, what can we discern as to contemporary Muslim and Christian perspectives and dialogue on the idea of being a community of faith? In order to provide an answer, we will focus on the insights and contributions of the two dialogues under the following three headings — Being community: identity and purpose; Together as community: unity in diversity; Living community: context and continuity.

At the Theological Forum in 2013, the fullness of religious life was seen as comprising a relational matrix of community, individuals, symbols, and social context. The value of religious symbols, for example, is in direct relation to what might be termed the narrative belonging of a community itself: any religious community “belongs to” its unique narrative. This is what shapes and defines a community. Religious communities, furthermore, “have a constitutive function for the emergence and tradition of religion” (Bochinger 2014, 32). A prophet or preacher requires a community; without the listening and receiving activities of the relevant faith community, the Word or message cannot be said to exist. History bears witness, for example, to multiple forms of Christian institutional, or denominational, structure and with that a plurality of meanings as to nature, function, and purpose. Even the Christian New Testament contains almost one hundred images or proto-models of Church (see Minear 2004). Gavin D’Costa (2015) posed two guiding themes that encompass the various articulations of the nature and purpose of the Church. In essence, these are growth in discipleship, and evangelical witness. The former speaks of the individual who, through participation in the life of the community, is able to discern, submit to, and follow the call of God into discipleship in Christ; the latter has to do with sharing the Good News of God through word and act.

The Church is the locus for the life of faith and each historic manifestation of Church reflects and expresses these themes in all manner of ways. For instance, the “body” model and language, which draws from a variety of biblical passages identifying the community of Christians with the Body of Christ,¹ tends to be favoured by the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, as well as other catholic churches (e.g., Anglican). By contrast, post-Reformation Protestant Churches, such as Presbyterian, Baptist, or other Reformed churches, tend to favour notions of a voluntary gathered community when articulating their understanding of Church. The Theological Forum noted that the body metaphor is found also in Islam, in the hadith text known as Bukhari (10th book), as well as in the Christian New Testament (e.g., 1 Corinthians). The body motif holds together variety of function and diversity of task within an overarching unity of purpose and being. The image denotes a dynamic reality. This image is not only a metaphor, it represents clearly the reality of the community: a dynamic diversity-in-unity. As a community of solidarity, the Umma equates to those who are connected to one another through membership within a moral community of responsibility.

Sociologically speaking, Islam has no institutional or structural equivalent to the Christian Church and this has ever had consequences for formal interactions between Christianity and Islam with respect to representation. One of the concerns of the Theological Forum was to discern and articulate a hermeneutical framework for the theological comparison between the two religions of the concepts of “faith” and “community”. Whereas the Church is an institutional entity (both theologically and socially), the Umma is more a discursive construct, more diffused; but no less real for Muslims than Church is for

Christians. The Christian understanding of Church is necessarily a theological concept as it is a socio-structural reality giving expression to some key theological values and ideas, including the idea of universality in relation to the self-identity of the Christian community as, in essence, a single entity following and responding to a single divine reality. For the Christian West, one of the effects of the Reformation was to problematise the concept of Church. Whereas in theological understanding there is but one Church of Jesus Christ, historically a diversity of contexts in which Christians live and experience their faith has led to a plurality of churches, or denominations, giving expression to the interplay of theological interpretations and temporal applications of otherwise universal ideas with specific contexts. Furthermore, in the current age of ecumenism, where churches have sought to transcend, if not directly reconcile, the denominational differences and allied identity divides that express the history of internal diversity, Christian ecumenical dialogue has led the way in rethinking the very notion of Church. Nevertheless, a high status of Church - ecclesia per se — in Christian theology can easily lead to a one-sided discourse and comparison which means, in a context of theological dialogue with Islam, any tendency to dialogical hegemony needs to be carefully avoided.

The Forum sought to engage carefully with the appropriate points of comparison only, not undertaking this in any contrastive or evaluative way, but rather to present perspectives from either side so that each can learn of, and from, the other. One potential outcome would be in finding points of cross-linking of concept and idea: each religion’s idea and construct of “community” might have something informative and valuable to contribute to the perspective of the other. The aim was not to determine common ground or substantive commonality, or to resolve differences as such, but to deepen mutual understanding, including self-under-standing. For even the comparison of commonality and difference in respect to specific items is problematic: who determines what these are? The risk, to be avoided in dialogue, is to enhance the uniqueness and incomparability of one’s own religion, especially in matters theological, relative to the other. The greater possibility, theologically, is to see in the other something that is helpful in deepening an understanding of one’s own. Here it would seem an application of commonality in terms of the dynamics operative within each religion, rather a comparison of substantive items of belief and practice, might be the more fruitful path to follow. This certainly seems to have been the case with the Theological Forum.

Speaking at the Forum meeting, Johanna Rahner (2014) stressed the role of metaphorical language. Functionally, the Church is a community of witnesses of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Its main task is to give access to this revelation, both inside and outside the Church. Conceptually speaking, “Church” is the locus of that which, or those who, belong to God in terms of the present moment and the heritage of history. More sociologically, it is the gathered community of the people of God that seeks to live in faithful discipleship and response to the action of God in Christ. There is a long tradition, both within scripture and down to the present that Rahner alludes to and

Community 67 touches upon, including the dimension of succession. The Church is a continuation, but not mere repetition, of an originating event. The Church in this sense is itself a mission, not just on a mission. It is both an institution as such, and also the people: the disciples or followers, who comprise the institution. The temptation to reification is ever present. The existential dimension of discipleship is not to “save” the institutional structure as such but constantly to recreate, creatively and afresh, that which conveys and discharges this impelling mission. Discipleship is not about imitation but about reception: the ever-new reinterpretation of the Christ-event and all that this portends.

The term “institution” evokes an understanding of a given historical social entity, with its guiding structures, organisation, life-guiding orientation, rituals, law, and rules of education. But today individual faith sometimes seems to stand in opposition to the social character of “Church”, of the ecclesia. So-called secularised Christianity tends today to be highly individualistic. Yet, as witness of God’s revelation, the Church has the propensity to be the locus for both “seeing” the action of God and facilitating the reaction of humanity, which is itself a form of bearing witness. And as Ludger Weckel (2014) noted, the essential biblical message, as encapsulated in the life, teachings, and impact of Jesus, is that the structures and values of the world are not necessarily a reflection of the intention of the world’s Creator. Discipleship, which lies at the root of the Christian community, carries with it an implicit political challenge to the world. This is inherent to the idea of the Church as mission. It is in discharging this challenge and task, to and for the world, that the Church is constituted. How things are - injustice, hunger, misery, violence, war etc. — is not a manifestation of the Divine Will for the world, but the results of sinful human failing, the consequences of human, often self-centred, limitations. But human beings have the capacity to change this at the political level, at least. When people commit to this task, when the church campaigns for victims, thus announcing God’s good news for them, this is a political action. The Church then engages its mission.

Building Bridges participant Gavin D’Costa (2015) usefully distinguished the vertical (“God’s dealings with his community”) and the horizontal (“sociological and historical snapshots of Christian communities”) dimensions to the Christian life, associating the horizontal with the empirical realities of organised community existence in the world and the vertical with notions of a transcendent or mystical body idea. He went on to pose a critical question: “If the Church ’is’ the ‘body of Christ’, does it mean that in some sense Christians are claiming divini-sation - as they believe Christ was both human and divine?” (D’Costa 2015, 5). The Greek term theosis might uncritically suggest that. However, it is used by the Orthodox Church to mean Divine participation, including an accompanying transformation of the created order with the energy, or dynamics, of God rather than being simply an expression of the Divine “essence”. This reflects an ontological-relational understanding of Church. Body language is analogical. The point is to highlight a particular relational matrix that constitutes the nature and identity of the Christian community brought to focus in the word “Church”.

There are, indeed, a number of physical bodily images and referents, derived from scripture that Christian thought has drawn upon in this regard.

Alongside body images and models, D’Costa discussed the Church as the Sacrament of Christ whereby the Church sees and understands itself as the visible expression of Christ within the real world. This is one way of explicating the meaning of salvation. It can be seen in the ritual patterns and behaviours of devotional life and corporate worship. While the ritual behaviours of the Christian community are highly variegated and not without disputation, dissension, and disagreement, nevertheless the bodily signification of such behaviours reflects in differing ways the motif of the Church as being, in some sense, the body of Christ. For D’Costa, the locus of Christ’s salvific action lies with and within the corporate community (i.e., body) of Christian disciples, the Church. Although varyingly understood and articulated by the different denominations of the contemporary Christian community, the sacramental model of the Church refers to the view that the purpose of the Church’s existence is to serve the world. This model focusses on the nature and purpose of the church as pointing to the Gospel and to Christ, not to itself. Certainly, the Church, as an institution, is open to critique and reform in order better to proclaim the salvific action and gracious Word of God in and through the person and event of Christ and to express that in the concrete actions it takes in the world. Thus, alongside the sacramental and Christological focus, D’Costa highlighted the allied motif of the Church as “Suffering Servant”, drawn from a focus on the cross: the event of crucifixion as the self-giving passion of Christ. This yields a diaconal view of Church as the servant community and agent of social action; of seeking liberation of the oppressed, of giving a voice to the voiceless, striving for justice and implementing the kingdom of God in the here and now. While there is a risk of various forms of activities and action programmes supplanting the faith-focus that sparked them, the practical engagement and the sense of concrete manifestation of the spiritual and material dimensions of life have had a strong influence.

From a Muslim perspective, whilst the Arabic term ummah (community) admits of many applications, it is always some form of group - religious adherents as such; followers of prophets; a group of people; a group within a larger community, and many more forms besides. At the Building Bridges Seminar, Abdullah Saeed focused on Quranic texts and commentaries, with particular attention to select early and modern-era figures. He highlighted the fact that, with the advent of Muhammad, the Arabic context and usage of ummah transferred to that of a new faith-based community which “transcended the tribal affiliation of the Arabs” (Saeed 2015, 16). Religion became the new communal bond and reference for identity, both personal and corporate. Initially an inclusive term — any person could be included so long as they believed in one God - in a relatively short span of time it took on an exclusive tone of referring only to the community of the Prophet Muhammad, the Muslim Umma. The concept and reality of the distinctive Muslim idea of Umma emerged over time with associated beliefs, rituals, and institutional expression.

In the early centuries following the Prophet, the concept and lived reality of the Muslim community developed considerably, taking on new characteristics pertaining to political and state power that had not been present during the lifetime of Muhammad. As Christianity, born in the bosom of Judaism, emerged into and in the end needed to adjust to and accommodate a wider non-Jewish gentile world, so Islam erupted out of the Arabian Peninsula and drew non-Arab peoples into its fold. Each religion expanded and in consequence needed to adjust its initial context and understanding of “community”, both theologically and practically. From the Qur’an the Muslim community of faith is defined as an inherently fair and just community, having the aim of promoting the good and forbidding evil. A strong theological ethics, and an imperative to live and act in accordance with that, underwrites the notion of “Umma” in similar dynamic fashion to “Church” for the Christian community.

The Muslim community is referred to in the Qur’an in terms of superlative honour (e.g., Sura 3:110) and lauded as “the best community, having evolved for the service of humankind” (Saeed 2015, 18). For some, such superlative ascriptions take on a comparative edge of superiority. Alongside other religions that share similar values, the Muslim community’s distinctiveness is that the commanding of the good and forbidding evil is emphatic: the imperative to act has led to the use of force if need be. Here is found, perhaps, the seed of an impositional model of Umma in terms of socio-political expression and action. However, Saeed pointed out that some classical era commentators on the Quranic perspective took a more broadly ethical and hortatory line. Right beliefs and observations are coupled with exhortations to live the right path: theological reflection and ethical interaction are intertwined. This may be associated with a very distinctive Quranic use of ummah, namely that of the community of a “middle” or “just” way. The Muslim Umma is here regarded as a community of justice and moderation, “conceived as such because it avoids extremism in belief and practice” (Saeed 2015, 19). This makes of the Muslim Umma an ethical community under God, implying that this community should not act unjustly toward non-Muslims.

Yet another perspective sees it as referring to a vocational imperative to “bear witness”, whose “fundamental purpose is to guide as the Prophet Muhammad has guided, bearing witness to the truth” of the prophetic message and teaching concerning the ways of God (Saeed 2015, 20). More recently the concept of Umma has been subject to politically influenced and nuanced interpretations, especially with respect to a global leadership role for the Muslim community, namely to lead by right and godly example. An allied high view of the Muslim community, that of being the bearer of a transcendent truth whilst yet remaining contextually relevant, suggests that far from being rigid, the Umma is to remain authentically faithful, while yet open to change and progress across all fields of human endeavour. Here, commensurate with the Quranic-based truth it proclaims, the Umma is the locus for effecting change both within itself and the world in which it is set. This is supported by the view of the “collective belief in the oneness of God as a shared power that can have political implications” (Saeed 2015, 24), which is linked to the notion of vice-gerency as the proper God-given role of those who truly submit to the divine will. It is this that forms the necessary basis for the acquisition and exercise of political power. And in contrast to the more overtly political interpretations of the nature and purpose of the Muslim community, a contemporary sociological perspective sees the Umma as fundamentally a transformative agency, capable of both maintaining unity and accommodating cultural diversity within its own life. The contemporary Muslim Umma exists at the point of tension between the particular and the universal; the local and national; and the global and transnational. Saeed concludes “there is now more debate on the purpose of the ummah in terms of upholding of justice within an increasingly complex social and political context . . . the ummah is not a fixed notion” (Saeed 2015, 25). We will return to themes of justice, ethics, and politics in subsequent chapters.

From another Muslim perspective, Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth (2014) made the point that, in distinction from the church as a religious institution, the Muslim Umma denotes a religiously framed political system. The Arabic root of the term refers to a kinship community bounded by local laws and mores. At its most expansive, it refers to the community of all humanity, even all creatures on earth under God.² More specifically it denotes the community of people who submit to the Will of God - the essential meaning of being “Muslim” — and so those who constitute the community of Islam (i.e., those who make submission - the root meaning of ¡slant — to God and God’s will). There is a long and considered tradition within Islam of reflection upon, and refinement of, the understanding of ummah, to which the author refers. Certainly, the term and concept has received significant attention since the early 20th century, especially with the ending of the Ottoman caliphate and the emergence in many parts of the Muslim world of movements for alternative political arrangements. These included calls for Islamic governments to replace secular democracies, especially in post-colonial contexts. For Muslim thinkers such as Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905) who regarded the message of the Qur’an as focused on the welfare of society, ummah has an ethical meaning. Sura 2:143, for example, is one Quranic text that speaks of an ethical balance between material and spiritual considerations. El Kaisy-Friemuth referred to Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) who treated the Muslim Umma as an exclusive religio-political structure, the essence of which is the fight against unjust rule and the (re)-establishment of Islamic Shari'a as the law and constitution of the community. Giving high theological elevation as something divinely pre-ordained, the very notion of the Muslim Umma denotes Muslims and Islam as inherently superior to all other communities and religions. Against this superior and exclusivist line of thought, popular in many quarters, El Kaisy-Friemuth also referred to a strong inclusivist motif within the Qur’an in respect to its general attitude toward other monotheistic faiths. This implies the Umma may be regarded in a very idealistic, even utopian, view as an encompassing religious community inclusive in the sense of representing all believers in monotheism throughout all the world.

As Mohammad Gharaibeh noted at the Theological Forum, ummah is both a simple idea and a complex reality. Typically, the term denotes the global identity of the Islamic community of faith, the Muslim Umma, as active in expressing and proclaiming a divine message and in being itself a revelatory event: “the best community that has been created for people as long as you fulfil your obligation to call to faith, prohibit unbelief, and maintain your faith in God” (Gharaibeh 2014, 64). While it is the community as a whole that is charged with the task of proclaiming, interpreting, and living out the message of its scripture, historically it is the scholars - the ulama — who took on this particular responsibility, at least to give a lead and provide direction. Hence the academic or intellectual activity pertaining to expounding revelation and understanding the prophetic tradition emerged as being of great importance, leading to the formation of an Islamic theological canon: dogmatics; practical or applied theology; principles of applied theology; the Sufi Way; Quranic sciences of textual form, recitation, and interpretation; and the hadith sciences. For Gharaibeh, as with the idea of “Church”, the Muslim Umma denotes the entire community of believers. And if the Church sees itself in continuity with Israel, Gharaibeh points out the Umma is regarded as being in the succession of all previous prophets and revelations and, like the Church, offers humanity universal salvation.