Tag Archives: Islam

January 27, 2023

Christendom Under the Habsburgs in Vienna

By Clarke Morledge

In the days when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five-Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, the Holy Roman Empire was the greatest unifying force in all of Western Christendom, under the Emperorship of Charles V. Despite various attempts to heal the rift between Roman Catholics and Protestants, most notably at a meeting (Diet) in 1541 at Regensburg, Germany, the theological split in Europe put the Holy Roman Empire under severe stress.  By 1648, some 130 years after Luther’s protest at Wittenburg, the unity of the Christian West in Europe lay in tatters. What superseded the Holy Roman Empire was the emergence of a single royal family headquartered in Vienna, Austria: the Habsburgs.

My wife and I spent two nights in Vienna during our trip to Europe in 2022. The presence of the Habsburgs’ influence could be felt everywhere.

Bust of Ferdinand II, a leading Habsburg and Holy Roman Emperor from 1619 to 1637, during the Thirty Years War. Photo taken in Vienna, Austria.

The Habsburgs left Europe a checkered legacy. The Thirty Years War, which ended in 1648, had divided Central Europe into many autonomously governing districts. But the Habsburg family remained the primary power broker in the region, adored by some, despised by others. On the one hand, what emerged from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia was a renewed effort to reinvigorate the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation in the various lands ruled by the Habsburgs, and their networks of ruling families, particularly in lands surrounding Vienna, Austria. Along with that renewed Catholicism came the suppression of Protestantism, particularly in Bohemia, and its most prominent city, Prague.

The Habsburgs managed to rule a large chunk of Europe until its final breakup, at the end of World War One. Names like Ferdinand, Leopold, and Maria Theresa pepper the family tree and made their mark on the world (it is a rather complex family tree!). Staunchly Roman Catholic, they were great patrons of the arts. Names like Wolfgang Mozart, Franz List, and Ludwig van Beethoven all gained measures of support from the royal family.

The royal family built some of the most impressive buildings and estates in Vienna. The standout features are the Hofburg Palace, the Habsburg winter estate near the city center of Vienna, and the Schönbrunn Palace, their summer estate on the outskirts of Vienna, both of which were on our tour.

Part of the Swiss Wing of the sprawling Hofburg Palace estate. Vienna, Austria.

The Habsburgs also formed the greatest line of defense against invasion from the Turks, from the Islamic East. For several hundred years, on and off, the Turks laid siege to Vienna, seeing that this city on the Danube River was the gateway to Western Europe. But in 1683, the last and greatest siege was broken, and the Turks were driven back to their territories around Istanbul, in modern day Turkey. In the wake of the upheaval of World War One, the situation is much different now, but the signs of the medieval Austrian/Ottoman conflict remain. At St. Stephens’s Cathedral, one can look up one of the spires and find a cannon ball lodged in the stone, a memory recalling the great battle that took place on September 11, 1683 (Unfortunately, the ball is up so high, I could not get a good photo of it)….. For the curious, the date of the attack on the World Trade Center, in New York City, on September 11, 2001, was not picked by accident. It was intentionally set on that date to recall the events from this final siege of Vienna, centuries ago.

Capistran Chancel, outside of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, Austria. A Franciscan friar under an extravagant sunburst, trampling on a beaten Turk, in response to the 1456 crusade. The Turks made numerous attacks against Vienna until 1683, when the Turks were finally repelled during the last great siege of Vienna.

What was most interesting about our recent trip to Europe was the different responses I got from tour guides when I asked about the legacy of the Habsburg family. In Vienna, glowing reports about the Habsburgs were mentioned as we toured the various palaces that the family owned. In contrast, in Prague, the name of the Habsburg family was largely synonymous with oppression.

Today, with few exceptions, glorious monarchies like the Habsburg family are pretty much a thing of the past. Along with the decline of such monarchies, the Christian influence that animated the spiritual life of the family and their supportive subjects, or infuriated those who despised their enforcement of their religious convictions, has been effectively replaced by secularism. For example, in nearly every church in Vienna that I visited, curious tourists far outnumbered reverential worshippers. Love ’em or despise ’em, the Habsburg family has left a multiple centuries long influence across Central Europe.

The rear view of Schönbrunn Palace, from the far side of the expansive gardens.

Yet despite the conflicted legacy the Habsburgs’ left, they knew how to build some immensely grand buildings, and beautiful gardens to surround them, particularly at the Schönbrunn Palace.

 

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September 11, 2021

Remembering September 11…. 1683

By Clarke Morledge

King John III Sobieski praying for Christian victory, for his Polish forces, against the Ottomans, outside of Vienna, on September 11, 1683.

When Osama Bin Laden selected the date of September 11, 2001, to attack the twin towers of the World Trade Center, in New York City, this was not just a clever play on the phrase “911,” the standard phone number for making emergency calls. It was a deliberate attempt by Bin Laden to symbolically reverse the devastating defeat of Islamic Turks, at the Battle of Vienna, on September 11, 1683.

The Ottoman Empire had held the city of Vienna in a brutal siege for several months, as the Ottomans sought to take advantage of the disarray experienced in Western Europe, after years of religious wars between Roman Catholics and Protestants, that divided Christian Europe from within. By attempting to take Vienna, the Ottomans were hoping that a weakened Hapsburg Empire would eventually capitulate to the relentless attempts of the Islamic Turks to take the city, as a gateway into the rest of Christian Europe.

But the Austrian Hapsburgs established an alliance with the Polish-Lithuanians, led by King John III Sobieski. Sobieski led what many historians consider to be the largest calvary charge in world history, as typically dated to September 11, 1683, that broke the Islamic Turkish siege of Vienna, thus ending the threat of Ottoman expansion into Western Europe. As demonstrated in the following 3-minute movie clip, from the 2012 film, The Day of the Siege, Sobieski describes the importance of the battle, in explicitly apocalyptic terms, as a heroic defense of Christendom, with a passionate speech to his troops before the battle.

Twenty years after Osama Bin Laden’s attack on America, a symbolic victory for the radical wing of Islam, a massive visual spectacle imprinted on the minds of nearly all Americans, we can look back at the challenges faced by Christians, in the wake of 911.

In many ways, 911 marked significant shifts in our culture: a decline of the Christian Right, the first major world event to be broadcast across the then infant world of social media, and the rise of the New Atheist movement, a.l.a. Richard Dawkins, that portrayed all religion, not just Islam or Christianity, as the greatest threat against humanity. A new generation of young people, growing up in the wake of 911, have grown increasingly sympathetic to the cries of such skepticism about organized religious faith. After the era of the Post-Reformation religious wars, after the Age of the Enlightenment, and now into the reality of a Post-Christian moment, how will the Christian movement respond?

That is something to think and pray about today.

 

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March 28, 2018

“Chrislam,” Rick Warren, and the Internet Lie That Never Dies

By Clarke Morledge

Christians are called to be people of the truth (John 17:17). Sadly, some Christians have a persistent habit of misrepresenting the truth, by the way they (mis)use the Internet.

Take the example of pastor Rick Warren and the supposed “Chrislam” controversy. Rick Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California. For years, Rick Warren has taken an interest in building relationships with Muslims, so that they might hear the Gospel of Jesus. As Rick Warren says, “You cannot win your enemies to Christ. You can only win your friends.” Yet as a pastor of one of America’s largest churches, such a high profile personality comes under a lot of scrutiny.

Sadly, another Christian leader, a tele-evangelist (I will not name the man), became suspicious of Rick Warren and popularized the terminology of “Chrislam,” accusing Rick Warren of trying to combine Christianity and Islam together into a single new religion, and denying the faith. Rick Warren, in 2011, publicly denounced the accusations as false.

Now, just to be clear, I have no dog in this race. I have never met Rick Warren. I have never been to his church. I have never heard him preach, but others tell me that he is a great evangelist. I read a short pamphlet/book he wrote a few years ago, and I thought it was somewhere between pretty good and OK. Not the best thing I have ever read. But not bad either. I am sure God has and will continue to use his writings to change the lives of many people. It just was not necessarily the type of reading I personally go for.

In 2012, an article in a local, secular newspaper, the Orange County Register, printed a story that sought to confirm the reports of Warren’s “Chrislam” views and activities.  Unfortunately, the newspaper article contained many errors, according to Saddleback Church. Shortly after the article was published, Rick Warren made statements intended to correct the misinformation. Sadly, some Christians, including the above mentioned tele-evangelist, spread the Orange County Register story, like wildfire on TV and the Internet, without ever bothering to ask Rick Warren directly, if the story was accurate or not.

Fast forward to 2018, and if you do a Google search, for something like “Rick Warren chrislam,” you will get an amazing 200,000+ hits, most of them repeating the same type of accusations made six years earlier in 2012, that Rick Warren addressed within days of the Orange County Register article.

Six years. Over 200,000 hits.

Never mind the fact that Saddleback Church has baptized over 45,000 people, over the years, a number of whom come from a Muslim background. That is right: people from a Muslim background, risking ostracism and family rejection, to publicly identify with King Jesus.

It is like the Internet lie that never dies.

If you have been tempted to pass on such old rumors like this to your friends, there is this pesky little command, in the Ten Commandments, that you might want to be aware of:  “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16).

The video below should pretty much dispel such rumors, which is an interview that Rick Warren had with a leading Calvary Chapel pastor, a year or two ago. Much of the lingering controversy involves Rick Warren’s signature in 2007 on a Christian response to the Yale “A Common Word” document, written by Muslim leaders. The Christian response was open to misinterpretation on several points, but it was meant to commend Muslim attempts to call for peace and dialogue, and rejecting violence, and not to be a final statement on doctrine. For more about the related “A Common Word” Yale document, see this earlier Veracity post. 

13 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Witnesses

September 8, 2017

Pray for Nabeel Qureshi

By Clarke Morledge

Nabeel Qureshi, a young Muslim turned Christian apologist, published his first book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounter Christianity

Nabeel Qureshi is a Christian apologist, from a Muslim background. Please pray for him.  Nabeel is dying of stomach cancer, and the immediate prognosis is not good.

Nabeel grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, having parents grounded in Ahmadiyah Islam. He became a follower of Jesus, after becoming friends with David Wood, an atheist turned Christian, while both were students at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia. He wrote the best-selling Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, after pursuing a medical degree and advanced theological studies in Christian apologetics. Nabeel is a speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Fellow Veracity blogger, John Paine, met Nabeel at an apologetics conference a few years ago, and John wrote a great series on Islam, based a lot on what John learned from Nabeel.

Nabeel’s critics from Islam believe that his stomach cancer is a sign of God’s judgment against him, for turning his back on Islam, and becoming a Christian.

Please pray that God might work a miracle, or otherwise, finish strong.

Nabeel had to have his stomach removed, several weeks ago. As the flood waters were rising outside of his home, in Houston, during Hurricane Harvey, he was rescued from his home and taken to the hospital, for further treatment. Sadly today, Nabeel released a video on YouTube, telling his supporters that he has been put on palliative care. Nabbed is married with one child. Nabeel Qureshi is 34 years old.

 

4 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Apologetics

February 17, 2017

A Conversation Starter: Muslims, Christians, and Jesus

By Clarke Morledge

muslims-christians-jesusMy wife and I just finished reading a book written by Carl Medearis, Muslims, Christians, and Jesus: Gaining Understanding and Building Relationships. Little did we know that when we first started to read the book that current events surrounding the world refugee crisis would make our reading of the book into quite a big conversation starter.

Some voices in our culture say that Islam and Christianity are basically equal pathways to God, just using different language. Therefore, Christians should not bother trying to share their faith in Jesus with Muslims. On the other side, some say that Muslims can not be trusted, because of their association with terrorism.

Carl Medearis avoids the pitfalls of those two extremes. He focuses on the person of Jesus. I reviewed my first Carl Medearis book, Speaking of Jesus: The Art of Non-Evangelism, here on Veracity. Medearis and his family spent 12 years in Beirut, Lebanon, building relationships with Muslims in the Middle East, talking with them about Jesus. As in his other books, including Muslims, Christians, and Jesus, Medearis recounts some of his conversations with Muslim leaders that challenged me to rethink my own prejudices against Muslims as real people, who need Jesus just as much as I do. In addition to giving a helpful overview of what Islam is, Medearis provides some very useful tips in making friends for Jesus with Muslims. As a read geared towards a popular audience, it is a fairly short book, too.

For example, according to Medearis, did you know that Muslims often think that Christians do not properly honor the Bible as God’s Holy Word? Sure enough, this past Christmas, I invited a few Muslims friends to a concert at our church. In our church, we put our pew Bibles in metal trays attached underneath the seat in front of where we are sitting. My Muslim guests were appalled that we stored our Bible down low, underneath people’s rear-ends, instead of lifting God’s Word up high, as a sign of honor and respect.

I had never thought about that before.

In early 2017, a new American President implemented a temporary travel ban on citizens from several Islamic countries, including an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria coming into the United States. Several million people have been fleeing civil war in Syria, including not just Muslims, but Christians as well. Refugee resettlement programs can take a very long time to work through, so the recent moratorium complicates the situation. Veracity blogger John Paine and I have made our views known before here on Veracity, on which we both agree, regarding the Syrian refugee crisis, and how Christians should respond.

Christians all over the world, and especially here in the United States, are divided over this issue. Hundreds of prominent Christian leaders oppose the refugee ban, while others support it. World Relief, an evangelical relief agency working with churches to settle refugees, has drafted an open letter, as a full-page in the Washington Post in February, 2017, calling upon conservative evangelical Christian leaders to speak out. It is a delicate balance between being obedient to the Gospel’s call to love and care for the refugee, with the requirement for national security and protecting American borders. We need to have a conversation among Christians today, as to how believers are to pray and be faithful in God’s calling to best assist the refugee, in a dangerous world.

Might I suggest that you grab some copies of Carl Medearis’ Muslims, Christians and Jesus, read it together with Christian friends as a group, discuss it, and then, do something about it?

 

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