Cross and Christ covered up as Muslims worship in Southwark parish - Four Articles

Muslim prayer services may not be held on consecrated ground, a spokesman for the Bishop of Southwark told Anglican Ink last week, following reports that a Muslim Friday prayer service or jummah had been held at St John’s Waterloo with the permission of the incumbent.

On 6 March 2015 the Rev. Canon Giles Goddard invited the Inclusive Mosque Initiative to celebrate an “Inclusive Jummah” in the church. A video of the service, released on YouTube shows Canon Goddard participating at the close of the service led by a woman imam, Dr. Amina Wadud. Reading from Psalm 139 he said: “This is from the Hebrew scripture – we all share these great traditions, so let us celebrate our shared traditions, by giving thanks to the God that we love, Allah.”

All Christian imagery and iconography, including pictures and statues of the saints, the Virgin Mary, Jesus as well as the stations of the cross appear to have been covered with sheets during the service at St John’s, the video of the proceedings appears to show, leading some critics to charge that while hiding the cross and Christ may assuage Muslim concerns, it serves to deny the divinity of Jesus. Keep reading

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Covering the ornaments of the church may be less extreme than destroying the ornaments of the church but both point to the same thing--Islam's intolerance of other religions. While we read about liberal Christians inviting Muslims to hold prayer services in their church buildings, we never read about liberal Muslims inviting Christians to read the New Testament and celebrate the Eucharist in their mosques.

Muslims do not look at the holding of Muslim prayer services in Christian churches the way that liberal Christians do or the way liberal Christians are hoping that Muslims will see these gestures. From the Muslim perspective turning over a Christian church for a Muslim prayer service is in the natural order of things. It is tacit recognition that Islam is the only true religion and Christianity is a false religion that will eventually give way to Islam.