With all the election-year nonsense being spouted about the Islamic Cultural Center in New York, I thought it interesting to see the emergence of another cultural influence on the other coast. This fall, Zaytuna College is opening its doors as a small, faith-based institution in the San Francisco Area. Faculty hope to assist students to integrate faith and learning, the curriculum includes intentional spiritual formation, and the College’s vision extends to the shaping of American society.

What, another Christian college? Don’t we already have plenty of those around? While it might sound like your typical Evangelical college, it’s not. It’s a Muslim College, with the Koran as a firm foundation. The stated mission of the college is to “educate and prepare morally committed professional, intellectual, and spiritual leaders, who are grounded in the Islamic scholarly tradition and conversant with the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.”

The Islamic Cultural Center! The ISLAMIC cultural center? The Islamic CULTURAL center? Depends on which news you watch and what papers you read. To some, it sounds like the second choice. Sarah Palin has weighed in. Jon Stewart made his views known. President Obama gave a speech, after Mayor Bloomberg finally came out of his civil rights closet to make a solid statement.

And I really don’t get what the fuss is about. As if there are not already two mosques located within four blocks of the trade center site, one of which predated the building of the World Trade Center. In fact, none other than Fox news recently reported that “New York City has more than 100 mosques . . . more than 800,000 of its 8.21 million residents are Muslims, said Philip Banks III, chief of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau.” My friends, New York City has more Muslims than the entire populations of two Islamic nations: Bahrain and Qatar.

Mosques, cathedrals and synagogues make the most interesting bullies. There they crouch, architectural annoyances flaunting their crosses, spires, and stars at the playground. That glowing white dream castle in Salt Lake City kicks sand in everybody’s face, and Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral thinks it’s God himself. If only these buildings could just leave everybody alone.

Now everybody’s having a fit over the new kid who’s moving in, thanks to the Cordoba Initiative, the proposed Islamic cultural center at Ground Zero. Its controversy stands up there with Justin Bieber as part of The Summer Debate 2010, and its symbolism is far bigger than the acreage it plans to cover. If allowed to play at recess, it will be larger-than-life, the kind of presence that no one will be able to ignore.

This morning's BBC report discloses that the French government has refused to grant citizenship to man because he is forcing his wife to wear the 'full veil'. Because she is not free to 'come and go with her face uncovered', this man's values place him a category of person to whom the French government denies citizenship. It is recommended by the French government that anyone showing signs of "radical religious practice" be refused citizenship.I'm interested in your thoughts on this subject so I'll just toss some questions out:

1. The phrase 'radical religious practice' seems ambiguous. Isn't 'eating the flesh and drinking the blood' (see John 6, or your weekly communion table) also radical? Or living in community? What are the risks that this ruling becomes precedent setting for all manner of religious persecution? On the other hand, isn't the state obligated to protect the powerless (Romans 13), and isn't this woman being rendered powerless? But what if she wants the full covering?

March 15, 2008, I was privileged to occupy a seat at the 25th anniversary banquet for Frontiers. Frontiers mission is to invite Muslim peoples to follow Jesus by loving them and respecting them. The banquet consisted of Frontiers missionaries, staff and donors.

During the banquet, Frontiers staff introduced a Muslim couple from Pakistan who they had brought along for the anniversary events.  As the couple stepped up the microphone, the packed banquet hall silenced, all eyes glued on the couple who bore their traditional dress. The man spoke first. Speaking from the heart he spoke to the kindness he and his wife had received from the Frontiers missionaries in Pakistan. He also spoke about how he could never follow their Jesus. He spoke to the many contradiction’s he saw weaved in and out of the West and the Christians of the West. The room was sober and the guest speaker was honest and convicting.

After 10-15 minutes of observation of the West and its wicked ways, which had a stinger full of truth, the wife of the man approached the microphone. She spoke out against the promiscuity of Western women. She spoke as to how she could never embrace Christianity when the values of relationships and character were so flippant. As they closed their speech and thanked us Christians for listening to them, Muslims, the room was so silent I was afraid to swallow for fear those sitting across the room would hear.

After a period of silence, the Pakistan Muslim man stood to the microphone again and took off his turban. He then introduced himself as an American Christian missionary serving the Pakistani Muslim peoples. His wife followed suit as she removed her burka. You could feel the weight of the room lift as he began to share with us how he and his wife have served with Frontiers for many years. He shared with us that what he and his wife had said when they were posing as Muslims was exactly what they deal with in Pakistan daily in the Muslim community.

Time magazine famously announced that “God is Dead” on April 8, 1966. While their cover story captured the zeitgeist percolating through university classrooms and philosophical debates, Time failed to anticipate how grassroots the religious impulse remains. Mainline denominations caught in the theological currents of the sixties (Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians), did experience significant decline. But the evangelicals who stuck to their core convictions during a time of great upheaval saw profound growth over the following forty years. God joined Mark Twain in suggesting that “The tales of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Now, during another Holy Week and Passover observation, a national newsweekly has announced “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Jon Meacham’s argument in Newsweek doesn’t put God or Christianity on trial. He wrote an additional piece to clarify his intentions (beyond a brilliantly timed strategy to drive sales and light up the blogosphere during Holy Week). Instead, Meacham points to the rising tide of individuals claiming no religious affiliation in the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. Those who consider themselves outside of faith have doubled since the 1990 survey, from roughly 8% to 15% (with another 5% refusing to even answer the question). Dispute that rising tide, America remains comprised of a remarkable number of Christians. But those Christians must figure out how to navigate a world in which their morality may no longer be a majority.