Together as community: unity in diversity

The idea of the Muslim Umma can denote a specific religious community, and the term can also apply to the idea of human community as such. Muslim scholar, Mouhanad Khorchide (2014), noted four dimensions inherent to the very idea and reality of the Umma, namely political, theological, normative and identity creating. Politically, it refers to the idea of a unity of all Muslims with a Caliph at the head. The theological dimension refers to the conditions for membership of this community, whilst the process of discerning and promoting community values is the normative dimension of the Umma as a social reality. It is the sense of social belonging, of having one’s identity shaped and confirmed within what is concretely local yet at the same time an imagined universal, that is the fourth of these overlapping and interweaving dimensions. Members of an imagined community do not have a direct relation with each other. Most of them do not know each other and will never do so. Khorchide argued that to belong to the idealised imagined community, the Umma, is certainly very important even though it is obvious that the imagined homogeny does not exist; it equates to a virtual reality. Lived reality is rather more fragmented and fractious than the ideal. Further, historically and politically, the Muslim community has never been one thing: diversity of expression and self-understanding emerged rapidly following the death of the Prophet. As Feras Hamza (2015) noted, the first fracture, a disruptive civil war to impact the nascent Muslim community occurred only some 20 years after the death of Muhammad. It has ever been referred to as the fitna, or religious trial. Central to the political struggle underscoring this event, referred to as “the biggest quarrel”, was a basic question of, or challenge to, the unity of the community. It was a family fight, yet much more.

From the outset, and reflected in verses of the Qur’an, tension and dispute quickly emerged over questions of definition and identity — who is a true Muslim? How is that to be assessed? What is the right way to be and believe? How is difference and diversity to be resolved when we are meant to be one under God? Muslim tribulations in this regard echo those of the first Christians. But the Muslim community is meant to be the best — to demonstrate and embody taivhid, the essential unicity of God and the unity of the followers of God (cf. Sura 3:105). Hamza sketched for the Theological Forum the history of the early Muslim community through the time of the first caliphs and into the period of the first dynasty, the Umayyad, which ruled from Damascus, through to the Abbasid dynasty ruling from Baghdad and the developing distinction between Sunnism and Shi’ism, which had its own fissiparous development. Hamza concluded that although in the 19th and early 20th centuries attempts were made to create pan-Islamic movements that “were momentarily ecumenical”, in fact “sectarianism had been ingrained so early on in Islamic history that it could never really transcend its divisions” (Hamza 2015, 74). A pan-Islamic project was in effect an impossibility. The notion of a unified, united, or in some idealistic sense singular Muslim community is a trope of Islamic ideological vision, the expression of an ideal or imagined community. The concrete historical reality of Islam is of great diversity and concomitant rivalry. The Muslim ideal is manifest through the disunity of a host of variant expressions and forms reflecting racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversities as well as sectarian variants. Some of these inevitably vie for hegemonic superiority so as to regard themselves as, indeed, the embodiment of true Islam. If unity is the ideal and aim, diversity is the lived reality. How to reconcile the two is both an internal Muslim matter and an issue that has distinct commonalities with Christianity.

In addressing the relation of unity to diversity in the Christian context, Ulrich Dehn (2014) spoke at the Forum of the unity of the church and the image of the Church as the “body of Jesus”, in similar fashion to that of D’Costa at the Building Bridges Seminar. Dehn noted that, since the middle of the 19th century, the idea of unity — later promoted by the ecumenical movement — was the guiding motif to emerge from missionary endeavours. It also emerged in the context of discovering the potential of dialogue between Christian churches and other religions in the cause of peace. The first step on the way to an ecumenical unity was the founding of various trans-denominational umbrella-organisations. In the beginning there was the hope and aim for a full unification of all the different churches that subscribed to the vision of a (re-)united Christian community. The model of organic union seeks to attain a real institutional unity as the true expression of Christian unity: a single “Church” structure for all Christians. But before long the idea was modified to that of an overarching community, or fellowship (koinonia), given expression in an umbrella organisation such as the World Council of Churches, as well as in inter-church, or ecumenical, cooperative activities of varying sorts.

It is a commonplace of ecumenical understanding that it is not possible to create full ecclesial (i.e., all churches together) and visible communion (corporate togetherness); the task is rather to make visible the God-given communion of fellowship in which baptism is the common ground that makes the koinonia possible as a spiritual fruit of co-belonging. The church is a unity already, at least conceptually so, even if it is not visible in terms of socio-cultural and institutional reality, and may never be so. The Church is or belongs to Christ, but it manifests in different shapes and forms at different places and times. Thus, the idea of “Church” may be better understood as a conciliar community of local churches that, in fact, are united in and through their diverse particularities, with each committed to the same essential apostolic faith and acknowledging every other community of this fellowship as members together. It is this that constitutes the body of Christ, conceptually and as social reality. Unity is still an important issue, but it does not need to be the ultimate, or determining, goal. This is borne out by current discourses on unity and otherness that deal with cultural and ethnic diversity. New forms and types of piety and discipleship within the old denominations are changing because of migration and globalisation. The contemporary context for Christian discourse on unity and community is undergoing rapid change. Networks of relationship and connectedness show their theological and human value to the extent they express solidarity in multilateral partnerships, especially in times of upheaval and challenge to all.

At the Building Bridges Seminar, Lucy Gardner deftly sketched a history of the Church, succinctly drawing out of a long, complex, and multifaceted story of the Christian community some key markers of unity — ideals that enable diversities to mutually coinhere — and delineated key contours of ecclesial diversity, especially the great divide between East and West. In the process she touched on biblical perspectives, early Church developments and consolidations, the later multiplication of churches particularly as a consequence of the Reformation of the Western Church, and the late-modern quest for reconciliation and visible unity that marks the 20th century as the ecumenical century. Unity — being “One” — is a primary mark of “Church”. This is no mere institutional singularity reference; it is ideological rather than ontological and it is conjoined by three other theological ideals: being holy, being catholic, and being apostolic. These marks or ideals are interrelated: “they are interdependent aspects of each other” (Gardner 2015, 45). What holds - or what unites - Christians within the “oneness” of the Church, or that sense of universal community transcending any and all institutional expressions and structures of it, is the sense of being called into a fellowship that, in its relatedness to God, is separated out (as sacred or holy) from the world (the mundane) as yet a universal (throughout and for the whole world) entity that follows the faith and participates in the mission as initiated and formed by the first followers, the apostles. These marks reflect a dynamic of being called and formed as a gathered community whose purpose is to be sent into the world as agents of divine love, compassion, justice, and salvation. This is, in essence, what it means to be Church.

Conceptually, “Church” denotes a dynamic community engaged in divinely mandated action. Historical, cultural, and institutional arrangements to give expression to the motivating and guiding idea are manifold. As Gardner remarked, although the Church is clearly not “one”, not a singular entity, in any ordinary sense, nevertheless there is a “persistent belief that the Church— we—should be united” (Gardner 2015, 45). Structural or organisational disunity coexists with the ideal of unity. The one is the historic reality and has been so since the very earliest days of Christianity. The other is an eschatological vision that at once judges the structure as having failed, yet empowers and enables a relational dynamic across the particularities of denominational identity and life, so allowing for the motif of unity-in-diversity as a retort to the long-standing motif of the “scandal of particularity” that is at the root of disunity. The historical record, beginning even with the apostolic era, has tended to conflate any idea of transcendent unity as a theological mark of distinctiveness with the implementation of a singular, even uniform, institutional structure within which variety, dissent, and difference was highly problematised. Those who did not acquiesce were anathematised and banished; those who sought to implement alternative structures were labelled schismatics and deemed heretical. Novelty of expression and experience was deemed a mark of unfaithfulness. Orthodoxy in thought and belief was asserted unequivocally, and apostolicity “was a question of the right words with the right explanations, drawing on appropriate philosophy. At its worst, however, this was a violent, traumatic brawl for power” (Gardner 2015, 51). There are, of course, many different ways to read the history of the Christian Church. Arguably they all bear witness to the variegated way that Christians, down through the centuries, have explored their understanding of what it means to be Christian community, with the answers signalling the different versions of Christianity that have emerged triumphant. As noted above, the modern ecumenical era is still working out what it means to uphold the “unity” of the Church and what that might portend for the being of the Christian community in the contemporary world.

Returning to the world of Islam and the issue of a community of true believers, the Qur’an gives a clear answer as to who will reach salvation, or the eternal bliss of paradise: those who believe in the One God, in the Last Day (of God’s judgement) and in doing good actions — because doing such actions is to do the will of God. Further, just as adherents of other religions can be similarly saved, it is not the Umma per se that is necessary for salvation; rather it is the fact of belief in and submission to God. The patriarchal figure of Abraham is the prototype of this pattern of total belief and full submission, so far as Islam is concerned. Within Islamic theology the Umma is not itself seen as relevant, or playing a particular role in salvation in any similar fashion to the role and place that the Church has had, and for some is still the case, in Christianity. To be sure, the sense of a community held-together-as-one is strong, and constitutes a socio-institutional driver, for both Christianity and Islam. Each has points of reference for this in their respective origins and history. There is an underlying common value, or dynamic, that is varyingly and uniquely expressed in each. Ecumenism

Community 75 in recent Christian history is one expression, as is the phenomenon of umbrella regional and global Muslim organisations. Is an Islamic ecumenism possible? The term does not sit well — caution needs to be exercised against the risk of norma-tivising a term with sensible meaning in one context as being equally applicable elsewhere. Although the term “ecumenism” (inhabited earth) is per se not necessarily Christian, meaning it can be applied elsewhere, the theological conceptual freight, and the institutional dynamics that give it expression in one context (Christian), may not apply equally elsewhere.

Umma and Church name transcendental ideals, and the overarching social construct of community in each religion. But the terms are by no means synonymous with respect to socio-institutional expressing and organisational arrangements required for expediting the practical realities of community life. For each, unity in diversity is the key underlying dynamic; this is the common phenomenological element and it defines the essence of being community. The particularities of time, place, history, and culture provide the diverse, indeed highly variegated concrete expressions that make of each community a distinct entity and identity. In dialogue this can be shared for the purpose of understanding and mutual acceptance. No further resolution is required. The connection between unity and plurality in religion seems to be a tension that cannot be solved. Plurality may be interpreted as God’s will manifested through what can be seen in creation. Unity in faith, action, and community structures, on the other hand, may be seen as a God-given ideal, or a purpose-orienting goal. The Christian ecumenical movement in the 20th century is an expression of this tension and an attempt to resolve it. But can a visible, institutional unity of the church still be a valid goal as such if, indeed, the goal is seen more in a dynamic never-ending process of individual and collective engagement and acceptance of each other? A similar perspective for the Muslim community obtains in the distinction between the idealistic vision of Umma and the different levels of action of humanity in its concrete realisation. Unity, in either case, is not so much an historical reality that should be pursued, but an appeal to the individuals to engage relationally within the wider community, in their diversity, so affirming and enacting an ongoing, living, dynamic unity.