Light does its best work when it stops trying to defeat the darkness and simply shines in it.
A demonstration promoted as the “Christian Crusader March” drew hundreds of protesters and counterprotesters around the Henry Ford Centennial Library, where a council meeting had been moved because officials expected trouble. Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell stepped before the council and accused the city of operating under Sharia law, then demanded that its leaders renounce it. Twenty-two misdemeanor arrests followed around the demonstrations, although police have not publicly identified every person arrested by religious affiliation. Authorities said most people gathered peacefully and reported no injuries. Sewell’s charge has raced across the country because it touches a fear many American Christians carry.
Dearborn has become one of the most obvious centers of Muslim life in the United States. The influence of Islamic culture there is highly visible. Believers watching changes across America understandably ask where those changes lead and whether a nation shaped deeply by Christian thought will someday surrender pieces of its civic life to a religious system that rejects the Christ we worship.
Clarity serves us well here. Islam is a false religion. It denies truths standing at the center of the gospel. Jesus is the eternal Son of God, crucified for sinners and bodily raised from the grave. Through Him alone, guilty people are reconciled to the Father. Any religious system that turns a sinner away from the Son directs that soul away from the only Savior. Christians should resist every attempt to place Islamic religious law over American civil law. Our voices, votes, pulpits and every lawful freedom God has allowed us should be used with courage. Silence has never been the price of Christian gentleness.
Religious liberty belongs to Muslims too, because coercion is a poor guardian of conscience. That same liberty gives Christians every right to say that Islam is wrong and to resist any effort to give Sharia civil authority. A free society can protect a mosque from vandalism while protecting a pastor who stands outside it preaching that Jesus Christ alone saves.
Still, one question reaches deeper than Dearborn. What does courage look like when a Christian finds himself surrounded by a culture worshiping the wrong god? Paul knew. He arrived in Athens alone, waiting for his companions and walked into one of the most celebrated cities of the world. Architecture made men stare upward. Statues filled the streets. Philosophers traded arguments in the marketplace. Medicine, geometry, theater, grammar, music and reason had flourished there. Human intelligence seemed almost to have built itself a monument. Athens could measure the world and still could not find its Maker.
Paul saw through the marble. Luke says “his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols” (Acts 17:16). False worship did something to him. Passing those statues as harmless local color was impossible for a man who knew the living God. His heart burned because men and women fashioned gods with their hands while their Creator supplied breath to their lungs.
Then Paul went to work. The synagogue became one field of labor, the marketplace another. Acts 17:17 says he reasoned there “every day with those who happened to be present.” Think of the relentless beauty of that scene Paul found himself in. Farmers arrived in the morning and then later came street performers, philosophers, merchants and men who lived to turn ideas over in public. Somewhere among all those voices stood a missionary talking about two realities Athens could not absorb: Jesus and resurrection. Tomorrow found him there again and again.
Paul never softened the truth to win the room. His message confronted their entire way of seeing reality. Beginning with God as Creator and Lord, he exposed their idols and told sophisticated men that the One they tried to contain in temples needed nothing from human hands. Judgment was coming and repentance was commanded. The resurrection of Jesus stood in history as God’s declaration that the appointed Judge lives. That is hardly a timid gospel! Here was a preacher with enough backbone to tell an educated pagan city that it was wrong about God. Yet humiliating Athenians could never satisfy the heart of an evangelist…he wanted them saved. That desire should govern Christian engagement with Islam.
The Muslim family living across the street is more than evidence of a changing America. A woman in a hijab loading groceries into her trunk is an image-bearer carrying milk home to her children. Next door, a Muslim man mowing the lawn has worries, bills, disappointments and an eternal soul. One day he will stand before Jesus Christ. Before that day arrives, I want him to hear the truth that Muhammad cannot carry his guilt. Religious devotion cannot wash away sin. Human effort cannot make him righteous before a holy God. There is a cross where the Son of God bore judgment for sinners, an empty tomb where death lost its claim, and a Savior who receives every person who comes to Him in repentance and faith. A Muslim defeated in an argument can walk home still lost.
Paul wanted more. Some Athenians mocked him, while others postponed the question. Then Luke gives us names: Dionysius believed, Damaris believed and others joined them. Think of it. Athens was crowded with idols whose names have largely disappeared into history, while Scripture still carries the names of people rescued from their worship. Two thousand years later, we still remember a man and a woman who heard a stubborn preacher proclaim the risen Christ and crossed from death into life. Somewhere in Dearborn may live another Dionysius. A future Damaris may hear the shouting outside the library and wonder what Christians actually believe. Perhaps a Muslim teenager, a father, a shopkeeper or a grandmother will someday meet a follower of Jesus who possesses Paul’s courage without surrendering Christ’s character.
That is the victory I want. Christians can oppose Islam without despising Muslims and reject Sharia as a governing authority while opening your home to a Muslim neighbor. Name falsehood plainly because eternity hangs over the conversation. The gospel gives us courage fierce enough to stand and love strong enough to stay. Dearborn should concern Christians because growing Islamic influence deserves serious attention, but Paul never needed panic. Because truth steadied him and the risen Christ sent him. A gospel powerful enough to enter a city full of idols gave him every reason to keep speaking.
So when America changes around us, refuse cowardice and hatred alike. Stand where God places you. Speak clearly and defend lawful freedom. We need to expose false religion and then love the person standing across from you enough to tell him about Jesus. The darkness may gather, but light still knows exactly what to do.
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If you have not already done, so, please read the book, unholy, alliance, by Pastor Michael Youssuf, a former Muslim. A real eye-opener for those who have no discernment and are in the dark.