American Salvation 
The place of Christianity in public life 
Albert J. Raboteau 
8 G.K. Chesterton once called America �a nation with the soul of a church.� He 
was referring, in part, to the habitual tendency of Americans to cast political 
and social events as scenes in the drama of salvation. From the start America�s 
story was a religious story. In the 1630s English Puritans represented their 
journey across the Atlantic to America as the exodus of a New Israel out of Old 
World slavery into a promised land of milk and honey. And through the 
centuries, the story of the American Israel would serve as our nation�s most 
powerful and long-lasting myth. 
But to black Americans the nation was not a New Israel but the old Egypt, 
condemned to sure destruction unless she let God�s people go. The existence of 
slavery, segregation, discrimination, and racism contradicted the mythic 
identity of Americans as a chosen people. 
African-American Christianity has continuously confronted the nation with 
troubling questions about American exceptionalism. Perhaps the most troubling 
was this: �If Christ came as the Suffering Servant, who resembled Him more, the 
master or the slave?� Suffering-slave Christianity stood as a prophetic 
condemnation of America�s obsession with power, status, and possessions. 
African-American Christians perceived in American exceptionalism a dangerous 
tendency to turn the nation into an idol and Christianity into a clan religion. 
Divine election brings not preeminence, elevation, and glory, but�as black 
Christians know all too well�humiliation, suffering, and rejection. Chosenness, 
as reflected in the life of Jesus, led to a cross. The lives of his disciples 
have been signed with that cross. To be chosen, in this perspective, means 
joining company not with the powerful and the rich but with those who suffer: 
the outcast, the poor, and the despised. 
Out of this prophetic tradition the civil-rights movement emerged in the 1960s 
to offer one of the most powerful critiques of American society, including not 
only Jim Crow in the South but eventually what Martin Luther King Jr. would 
call the �giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.� King, 
the most eloquent spokesman of the movement, clearly drew upon the resources of 
black religious protest, but he also drew upon the critical thought and action 
of a variety of figures from other traditions, such as Thoreau, Gandhi, 
Rauschenbusch, and of course the Hebrew prophets. The prominent presence of 
such figures as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Greek Orthodox Archbishop 
Iakovos, and Roman Catholic priests and nuns in the front lines of civil-rights 
marches demonstrated the deep moral resonance that moved peoples of different 
faiths to protest injustice, based upon the age-old call of their traditions to 
seek justice and show mercy. Religions throughout history have
 motivated some to stand on the margins of society as critics of the dominant 
cultural and religious values. 
The American experiment offered these traditions a special role. Freedom of 
religion, despite the long-lasting cultural hegemony of evangelical 
Protestantism, gave leeway to various religious groups to fight discrimination 
and establish public worship and public institutions. And by so doing, they 
made politically viable in this nation the principle of freedom of conscience 
and resisted the age-old tendency of governments to absorb religion into 
systems of state ideology. 
The principle of religious freedom provided a powerful opportunity for 
religious-based dissent. In addition to democracy�s inherent capacity for 
self-criticism and renewal, the mobilization of the prophetic role of religion 
in the political life of the country has served as a critique of national 
ambition and hubris, from the Puritan Jeremiad to the Abolitionist Movement to 
Lincoln�s Second InauguralSpeech to the anti�Vietnam War protests. In the 
current political climate of American exceptionalism, as promoted by the Bush 
administration, it is easy to forget that rhetorical assertions tying salvation 
to our nation�s destiny have a long history, and have stirred strong criticism 
from evangelical Protestants, past and present, for verging too close to state 
idolatry. Christianity, even as the dominant religion, has always had strains 
that cut against the mainstream, while still being rooted in and influenced by 
the culture and society of a particular time and place. This perennial
 tension is succinctly captured by the instruction in John�s Gospel that Jesus� 
disciples should be in the world but �not of the world.� 
* * *  
In the world, but not of the world. These words capture the antinomical 
relationship of the Church to human society and culture. On the one hand, the 
incarnational character of the Church establishes her in history, in this 
particular time and place and culture. On the other, the sacramental character 
of the Church transcends time and space, making present another world, the 
kingdom of God, which is both here and now and yet still to come. Throughout 
the history of Christianity, the temptation to relax this antinomy has led 
Christians to represent the Church as an ethereal transcendent mystery 
unrelated and antithetical to human society and culture. Or, alternatively, it 
has prompted Christians to so identify the Church with a particular society, 
culture, or ethnicity as to turn Christianity into a religious ideology. 
Because we are �not of the world,� Christians stand against culture when the 
values and behaviors of the culture contradict the living tradition of the 
Church. 
Take one early and famous example: the refusal of early Christians to honor the 
emperor by offering a pinch of incense before his image. Being in the world, 
the Christian acts within the culture as a leaven, trying to transform it by 
communicating to others the redemption brought by Christ. The early Christian 
apologists stood within culture as they attempted to explain the faith in the 
philosophical and cultural terms of their times and recognized within the 
culture foreshadowings or adumbrations of Christian truth waiting to be 
fulfilled. Notice the reciprocal tension between Christianity and culture as 
eloquently stated in a second-century document, the �Letter to Diognetus�: 
Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country 
or language or customs. They do not live in cities of their own; they do not 
use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life. 
This doctrine of theirs has not been discovered by the ingenuity or deep
 thought of inquisitive men, nor do they put forward a merely human teaching, 
as some people do. Yet, although they live in Greek and barbarian cities alike 
. . . and follow the customs of the country in clothing and food and other 
matters of daily living, at the same time they give proof of their own 
commonwealth. They live in their own countries, but only as aliens. They have a 
share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every 
foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a 
foreign land . . . They busy themselves on earth, but their citizenship is in 
heaven.
It is this perennial tension of being in the world but not of the world with 
which Christians continue to wrestle in 21st-century America. 
This tension is central to my own faith tradition, Christian Orthodoxy, 
familiar to most as Greek or Russian. Historically, Orthodoxy refers to the 
Christianity of the eastern Roman Empire, centered on Constantinople or 
Byzantium, as distinct from that in the West, centered on Rome, hence Roman 
Catholicism. The two gradually drifted apart and officially broke in the year 
1054, due to changes unilaterally made to the creed by the West and the East�s 
rejection of the Roman pontiff�s claims of primacy. Orthodoxy first came to 
America with Russianmissionaries in Alaska in the 18th century and was 
established in the continental United States by migration in the 19th and 20th 
centuries from Greece, Russia, and the Balkans. I was born Roman Catholic but 
became Orthodox ten years ago, drawn by a series of experiences that 
constituted for me a spiritual renewal. I was drawn in part by a sense of 
profound similarity between Orthodoxy and the ethos of African-American 
Christianity. In both
 there is a quality of sad joyfulness, a sense that life in a minor key is life 
as it is; an emphasis on the importance of suffering as a mark of the 
authenticity of faith. Both African-American and Orthodox Christianity view the 
person as embodied spirit and inspirited body. Both understand matter and 
spirit to be related, not antithetical�hence the use of material and bodily 
gesture to reveal the presence of the spiritual to our bodily eyes. Both hold a 
profound trust in the healing power of ritual, which opens the door to the 
other world, revealing its presence within this world. Both understand the 
interpersonal nature of the self as shaped by a web of relationships stretching 
into the past and the future. Both criticize individual aggrandizement as 
destructive of the person. Notice that these beliefs, common to both Orthodox 
and African-American religious tradition, clash with dominant cultural 
attitudes and values. 
Orthodoxy in particular offers, I believe, a distinctive view of the human 
person that can serve as an important critique of the definition of the core 
American value, freedom, the principle upon which Americans are most likely to 
agree. 
The American idea of freedom is centered on the rights of the individual 
person, but with the premise�more strongly observed at some times than 
others�that the respect due to the individual makes possible his participation 
in common, public, civic life. Freedom of conscience and freedom of choice 
enable individuals to participate in civil institutions, which exist to serve 
the commonweal. 
The democratic tradition defines authority as public service. It encourages 
participation and treasures the voice of each because you never know when it 
might be the voice of a prophet. This tradition is profoundly antithetical to 
status and power based on inherited aristocracy. (Democracy itself has 
something of value to say by way of criticizing clericalism, which reduces 
priesthood to a managerial profession. Respect for the common man may reinforce 
the Pauline insistence on the gifts distributed throughout the community for 
building up the body of Christ. The democratic definition of authority as 
service is certainly consonant with the gospels and is important for anyone in 
religious authority to constantly bring to mind.) 
At its best, democracy balances the rights of the individual with the 
responsibility to participate in the public conversations and tasks that make 
civic community possible. However, the possibility of so stressing rights that 
we forget responsibility is a perennial threat to American liberty. The choice 
of privileging one over the other comes down to a simple, but profound 
question: �What is freedom for?� When Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration 
of Independence he copied from John Locke the famous list of inalienable rights 
endowed upon us by the Creator�with one significant difference. Jefferson 
substituted for Locke�s life, liberty, and property, �life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness.� Tragically, Americans ever since have found it too easy 
to reverse Jefferson by turning the pursuit of happiness into the pursuit of 
property. Precisely at this juncture, Orthodox Christianity levels a powerful 
critique of Americans� addiction to consumerism, the dangerous collective
 illusion that reduces persons to objects and turns the interpersonal 
relationship into one of manipulation and exploitation. 
Orthodoxy offers a radically different vision of the person. We are created in 
the image of God. We are redeemed so that we may become more and more like the 
image in which we were made.In this process of theosis or divinization, we 
become by grace what God is by nature. A striking symbol of Orthodoxy�s 
opposition to the self-aggrandizement endemic to our society is our liturgical 
calendar, in which roughly half the year consists of days of fasting. 
Self-emptying, not self-fulfillment, is the purpose of Orthodox ascetical 
practice: �He must increase, but I must decrease,� we say with St. John the 
Forerunner. Or �Now I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,� with St. Paul. 
This is a very countercultural prescription in a society that promotes getting 
your fill. Individual rights have been turned into self-gratification. A cycle 
of ever-expanding need, gratification, need, drives our consumer society. 
It is easy to criticize the vulgar consumerism of mass-media advertising; 
religion alone does not necessarily defend us against it. Religion itself can 
be another form of ego gratification�a kind of spiritual consumerism that 
focuses on having spiritual experiences to aggrandize the self, spiritual 
hedonism, but hedonism nonetheless. Behind the drive for self-aggrandizement, 
whether material or spiritual, is a distorted sense of the person as an 
individualized ego�the self as the source of freedom and value. To the 
contrary, Orthodoxy views the person as ineluctably interpersonal. The very 
purpose of our being is to commune with others�to commune with the Divine 
Persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to commune with 
our fellow human persons. We stand not alone, as solitary individual selves, 
but in compassionate solidarity with others, the saints, who have gone before, 
our ancestors in the faith, whose icons surround us at church and at home�a 
cloud of living
 witnesses. And we stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the 
present, especially with those who suffer. In the words of St. Isaac the 
Syrian, a 7th-century ascetic and theologian, our compassion should extend to 
�the entire creation, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for 
every created thing: and by the recollection and sight of them the eyes of a 
compassionate man pour forth abundant tears.� 
This sense of interpersonal solidarity leads Orthodoxy to reverse the 
privileging of rights over responsibilities. In the words of Father Zosima, the 
monastic staretz, or elder, in Dostoevsky�s novel The Brothers Karamazov, �the 
moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you 
will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf 
of all and for all.� These mysterious words, echoing the offering of the Holy 
Gifts to God in the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy, allude to Christ�s 
redemptive sacrifice on the cross, in which �He who was without sin became sin 
for us.� Father Zosima is saying that Christ�s sacrificial way is ours. This 
same sense of responsibility �on behalf of all and for all� also illuminates 
the lives of the monastic elders, who in their isolation become profoundly 
aware of the hidden connectedness of us all. The way to true freedom and 
recognition of our interpersonal responsibility, they taught, is through
 obedience, fasting, prayer, and humility, which, with God�s help, liberate the 
spirit from the tyranny of habit and desire, from a slavery to a 
hyper-individualism that leads eventually to isolation and despair. 
* * *  
For Orthodox Christians, as for all people of faith, beliefs about the nature 
of the individual and society shape a political agenda; integrity requires that 
we argue not just with words, but with our lives as well. But those beliefs 
must make their case within the pluralistic agora of American society. The 
freedom of exercise clause of the First Amendment offers religion the freedom 
to live and express its values, and the non-establishment clause guarantees 
that each has to do so in the midst of supporting and conflicting claims. 
If American democracy offers religion an opportunity, American pluralism offers 
it a challenge. Pluralism challenges us to experience religion as more than a 
cultural identity. Pluralism means encountering the values and attitudes and 
beliefs of others with respect for those who hold them. Pluralism, when taken 
seriously as respect for difference, rejects relativism for avoiding the hard 
truth that we do indeed differ. It is the difficult road we walk to achieve a 
mature understanding of the truth and the opportunity to share that truth with 
others who are seeking it. It challenges us to appropriate, internalize, and 
live out the religious identity passed to us by family and society. It creates 
an opportunity to discuss and to argue for one�s own position. 
Consider the issue of abortion. When considered in the context of Orthodoxy�s 
holistic vision of the person within society, a whole web of moral issues 
emerges that does not necessarily align with any particular political party�s 
agenda. 
Abortion is clearly a paramount issue for many Orthodox (as well as many Roman 
Catholics and evangelical Protestants). The number of abortions performed today 
is horrendous. A large percentage of our fellow citizens, even those who think 
that too many abortions are being performed or that abortion should be to some 
extent restricted, have come to the conclusion that abortion is a matter of a 
woman�s choice. The Republican promise, implicit or explicit, is to take steps 
to reverse Roe v. Wade. Given the widespread division of public opinion and the 
even division of the Senate (which approves Supreme Court nominees), is this a 
credible promise? It would seem that the possibility of making abortion illegal 
anytime soon is remote. 
Those of us who believe that human life begins with conception and that life is 
a sacred gift have a huge task in convincing others of our vision of the 
person. It will not be enough to condemn abortion. Our position needs the 
credibility of a Mother Teresa, who could say, �Do not kill the children; give 
them to us and we will raise them.� We will need the hard, long, and beautiful 
work of counseling pregnant women, of giving our help to those who are poor and 
abandoned, of offering to adopt the babies brought to term. We need to support 
a fabric of social welfare that will support women (particularly young and poor 
women) facing unwanted pregnancies. It is interesting that Holland and Belgium, 
countries where abortion is legal, have relatively low abortion rates (due in 
part to an extensive social-service network), whereas Latin America, where 
abortion is generally illegal and social services scant, has a relatively high 
rate. In the United States the abortion rate went up during
 the presidency of Ronald Reagan and down under Bill Clinton. The idea that a 
Republican presidency is going to effect a shift in national attitudes or 
result in the overturning of Roe v. Wade seems to me a chimera. The concept of 
the sacredness of life must first extend to those our society devalues: the 
imprisoned, the impoverished, the disabled, the mentally ill, the alien, the 
enemy. 
I am troubled that there is no political home for my consistent ethic of life, 
but I also take comfort in the knowledge that electoral politics is not all 
there is to politics. If Chesterton�s idea of an America with the soul of a 
church has any validity, I believe it lies in our tradition of voluntary 
activity, through which faith can mobilize people to participate in the long 
and difficult grassroots struggle to transform our communities into a more just 
and peaceful society. 
Orthodox voices occasionally warn us of the danger of reducing the church to a 
social-service agency, but that warning should not displace the tradition of 
compassion calling us to act for those in need. St. John Chrysostom preaching 
on Matthew 25: Do you want to honor Christ�s body? Then do not scorn him in his 
nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while 
neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked. . . . Of what use is it to 
weigh down Christ�s table with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? 
First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn 
his table. . . . What is the use of providing the table with cloths woven of 
gold thread, and not providing Christ himself with the clothes he needs?
Or, to quote a modern Orthodox witness, The way to God lies through love of 
people. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in 
my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I 
shall be asked, Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the 
prisoners. That is all I shall be asked. About every poor, hungry and 
imprisoned person the Savior says �I�: �I was hungry, and thirsty, I was sick 
and in prison.� To think that he puts an equal sign between himself and anyone 
in need . . . I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. 
It fills me with awe.
The same passage from St. Matthew inspired these words of Mother Maria 
Skobotsova; it led her to found Orthodox Action in Paris in the 1930s to carry 
out this Gospel imperative, and it led ultimately to her death in Ravensbruck 
for protecting French Jews during the Nazi occupation. Houses of hospitality, 
hospice care centers, communities of caring that welcome the disabled, the 
orphan, the mentally ill, and the abused, can be sites of sanctity in the 
modern desert of need, as the life of Nun Gavrilia, an �ascetic of love� who 
worked among the poor in India and elsewhere, testifies. 
* * *  
Such heroic action in the world �but not of the world� was made possible by a 
vision of the kingdom of God, the reign of God, in the here and now, made 
possible by his disciples following the precedent of Christ�s life, but never 
fully actualized until Heaven. It is for this kingdom that the Christian prays 
in the Lord�s Prayer: �Thy Kingdom come; thy Will be done on earth as it is in 
Heaven.� It is for the arrival of this kingdom of peace and justice that the 
Christian community, as the ongoing body of Christ in time and space, 
continually waits and acts. In this dynamic vision Christ is the transformer of 
culture because he makes present among us the kingdom of God. The concept of 
the kingdom of God was central to the theology of Father Alexander Schmemann, a 
leading figure in the American Orthodox Church, as it was for H. Richard 
Niebuhr, the eminent Protestant theologian, who wrote the classic texts Christ 
and Culture and The Kingdom of God in America. According to Schmemann and
 Niebuhr, it is crucial for Christians to realize that the kingdom is both here 
and now and still to come. 
The kingdom of God�announced, inaugurated, and given by and in Christ�stands at 
the heart of the early Christian faith, and not only as something yet to come 
but as that which has come, is present now, and shall come at the end. It has 
come in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and 
in the fruit of all this�the descent of the Holy Spirit on the �last and great� 
day of Pentecost. It comes now and is present in the Church, the �ecclesia� of 
those who having died through Christ in baptism can now �walk in the newness of 
life,� partake now of the �joy and peace of the Holy Spirit,� eat and drink at 
Christ�s table in his kingdom. And it shall come at the end, when, having 
fulfilled all his dispensation, Christ will �fill all things with Himself.� 
To keep Christianity from being reduced to religion�just one more isolated 
compartment among the many that occupy the modern person�s life (this, for 
Father Schmemann, was the meaning of secularism)�it is essential to hold sight 
of the reality of the kingdom as present and as future. Secularism is not 
antireligious. It approves of religion by turning it into what Niebuhr called 
an �idol,� one among others suited to our self-gratification. Secularism, in 
this sense, robs the Church of its eschatological dimension. It is no longer 
the primary community for us, the source of our life and our joy, but one more 
activity in a busy week, competing with work, social life, and entertainment. 
When the Church loses its awareness of the kingdom of God and its essential 
sacramentality, there develops (as Father Schmemann writes) �a peculiar divorce 
of the forms of the Church�s life from their content, from that reality whose 
presence, power and meaning they are meant to express and, as a consequence the 
transformation of those forms into an end in itself so that the very task of 
the Church is seen as the preservation of the �ancient,� �venerable,� and 
�beautiful� forms, regardless of the �reality� to which they refer.� The 
Church, in effect, becomes a museum of archaic artifacts and rituals, beautiful 
but inert. What is lost, and lost not through persecution but through our own 
inattention and inertia, is the �very deep and essentially Orthodox experience 
of the Church as truly an epiphany: the revelation of, the participation in, a 
reality which because it is not �of this world� is given to us��in this 
world��in symbols. Hence the crucial importance of symbols in which we
 experience the reality of the Divine presence and action.� 
The primary symbol of God�s transforming action in the world is the Eucharist. 
We offer the gifts of bread and wine, wheat and grapes transformed by human 
hands, to God, who returns them to us transformed by the Holy Spirit into the 
body and blood of our lord Jesus Christ. Here is the sacrament of the 
transformation of the entire world. 
Now, we are perhaps closer to understanding the meaning of the antinomy with 
which I began. The antinomy of Christians being in the world but not of the 
world is for the sake of the transformation of the world and its return as 
Eucharistic offering to God, the source of all. In Father Schmemann�s words, 
The Church is left in this world, in its time, space and history with a 
specific task or mission: �To walk in the same way in which He walked� (1 John 
2:6). The Church is fullness and its home is in heaven. But this fullness is 
given to the world . . . as its salvation and redemption. The eschatological 
nature of the Church is not the negation of the world, but, on the contrary, 
its affirmation and acceptance as the object of divine love . . . the entire 
�other worldliness� of the Church is nothing but the sign and the reality of 
the love of God for this world, the very condition of the Church�s mission to 
the world. The Church thus is not a �self-centered� community but precisely a
 missionary community, whose purpose is salvation not from, but of, the world. <
Albert J. Raboteau is the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Religion at Princeton 
University and the author of Slave Religion and A Sorrowful Joy. 


Ena Nakiah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Saya jadi penasaran, apakah Amina wadud masih melangsungkan salat jum'at besok 
pagi? 
Saya berharap ada tradisi yang istiqamah dari keberanian Amina jadi Imam dan 
Khotbah di Negara Sekuler itu. Setiap Jum'at ada Imam dan Khotib yang jalankan 
oleh gagasan Amina. Itu baru pencerahan yang dasyat. hehehe....... Tetapi kalau 
tidak, ya sama aja dengan ceremonial belaka.

Salam
ENa

zuhairi misrawi wrote:


Mbak Fath,

Kita butuh ekspresi kebebasan seluas-luasnya. Tidak
ada yang merugikan umat Islam dalam ijtihad, seperti
yang dilakukan Amina Wadud. Saya pengin perempuan
berkarya, dan menulis fikih, tafsir, filsafat sesuai
dengan subyektifitasnya. Sudah tidak pada tempatnya
bila kita kaum laki-laki ini mendominasi ruang publik.
Sekarang saatnya perempuan bangkit.

Sebagai seorang muslim, saya husnu dzan kepada Amina
Wadud. Harus ada orang yang berani, sebagaimana pernah
dilakukan Umar bin Khathab, Nashr Hamid Abud Zayd,
Amina Wadud, dll.

Jadi perempuan harus bangkit, baik di dalam masjid
maupun di luar masjid.

ZM


--- "Fathonah K. Daud" wrote:

> 
> Iya, semestinya juga para ulama itu mempermasalahkan
> wanita jadi Qari'ah atau Daiyah, disamping durasinya
> lebih lama, juga karena dia wanita memjadi fokus
> sentral ketika berada didepan publik. Tapi kan tak
> ada
> pun Ulama yang melarangnya.
> 
> Berarti WAdud itu ya lantaran dia feminist maka
> perlu
> dikecam, bukan begitu Om Zuh??
> 
> Selamat terbang dan salam
> FAth
> --- zuhairi misrawi 
> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hed,
> > 
> > bagi saya perempuan menjadi imam shalat lebih
> mulia
> > dari pada perempuan membawa acara atau jadi
> bintang
> > iklan. ketika perempuan memimpin shalat, hemat
> saya
> > justru mengangkat harkat perempuan, bukan justru
> > merendahkan. itu ijtihad saya...tanpa harus
> > menggunakan dalil-dalil yang qath'i dan dhanni,
> > seperti santri-santri ma'had 'ali, he...he....
> > 
> > ZM
> > --- muhammad hadi wrote:
> > 
> > > zuh.. ngimami shalat kok disamakan seminar dan
> > iklan
> > > sponsor, gimana kok semakin kurang cerdas aja..
> > > he..he..
> > > 
> > > salam hangat kek
> > > Hadi
> > > 
> > > zuhairi misrawi 
> wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Ustadz,
> > > 
> > > Saya punya dua pandang yang sangat sederhana
> atas
> > > fenomena amina wadud. Pertama, positif, sebagai
> > > sebuah
> > > ijtihad hukum Islam. Menjadi imam shalat bagi
> > > seorang
> > > perempuan adalah sebuah ruang yang terbuka untuk
> > > dipikirkan. Saya punya pendapat tidak ada
> larangan
> > > dalam Islam bagi perempuan untuk memimpin shalat
> > > jum'at. Saya punya analogi sederhana, bila
> > perempuan
> > > boleh menjadi narasumber seminar, pembawa acara,
> > > kenapa menjadi imam shalat tidak diperkenankan?
> > > Menjadi imam shalat jauh lebih terhormat
> daripada
> > > menjadi bintang iklan. Mestinya para ulama marah
> > > dong
> > > pada bintang-bintang iklan, sekalian konservatif
> > dan
> > > kembali pada masa nabi.
> > > 
> > > Tapi saya sedikit gelisah melihat fenomena Amina
> > > Wadud, karena hanya bisa jadi gerakan dia tidak
> > > efektif. Karena akan menyempitkan ruang
> diskursus
> > > kehendak kesetaraan yang sesungguhnya di dunia
> > > ketiga.
> > > Persoalan perempuan di dunia Islam atau dunia
> > ketiga
> > > pada umumnya, bukan untuk menjadi "Imam Shalat".
> > > Perempuan butuh keadilan sosial dan keadilan
> dalam
> > > ruang publik. Persis tatkala saya menyikapi
> > masalah
> > > jilbab. Kita bisa-bisa tidak pernah beranjak
> dari
> > > soal-soal yang berkaitan dengan masjid dan
> > > simbol-simbol lainnya.
> > > 
> > > Inilah yang disebut Omid Safi sebagai "penyakit
> > > liberalisme". Saya kira itu saja dulu.
> > > 
> > > Salam hangat dari Portland.
> > > 
> > > Zuhairi Misrawi
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > --- nur munir wrote:
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Wa man ya�mal mina sh shoolihaati min dzakarin
> > aw
> > > > untsaa wa huwa mu�minun fa 
> > > > ulaaaika yad khuluuna l jannata wa laa
> > yadzlimuuna
> > > > naqiiro. (an-Nisaa� : 
> > > > 124)
> > > > 
> > > > Man �amila shoolihan min dzakarin aw untsaa wa
> > > huwa
> > > > mu�minun fa 
> > > > lanuhyiyannahu khayaatan thoyyibatan wa
> > > > lanajziyannahum ajruhum bi ahsani 
> > > > maa kaanu ya�maluun. (an-Nahl : 97)
> > > > 
> > > > Wa�adallohu l mu�miniina wa l mu�minaati
> > jannaatin
> > > > tajrii min tahtiha l 
> > > > anhaaru khoolidiina fiiha wa masaakina
> > thoyyibatan
> > > > fii jannaati �adnin wa 
> > > > ridlwaanun minalloohi akbar, dzaalika huwa l
> > fuzu
> > > l
> > > > �adhiim. (at-Taubah : 
> > > > 72)
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Non-discrimination of term of condition dalam
> > > > contract di atas diaddresskan 
> > > > untuk para pekerja amal sholeh sambil beriman
> > > > regardless pria atau wanita 
> > > > akan sama-sama menerima gaji khayatan
> > thoyyibatan 
> > > > di hari penggajian nanti.
> > > > 
> > > > A non-discrimination of term of condition
> dalam
> > > > contract juga appear di 
> > > > bawah ini di addresskan bagi para pengecut dan
> > > yang
> > > > pada lacut regardless 
> > > > pria atau wanita akan sama-sama terancam
> penalty
> > > > naaro jahannama khoolidiina 
> > > > fiihaa di hari itung-itungan nanti,
> > itung-itungan
> > > > bukan atas dasar kepriaan 
> > > > atau kewanitaannya, tapi atas dasar level
> > > khasbuhum.
> > > > 
> > > > Wa�adallohu l munaafiqiina wa l munaafiqooti
> wa
> > l
> > > > kuffaaro naaro jahannama 
> > > > khoolidiina fiihaa, hiya khasbuhum, wa
> > > > la�anahumullooh, wa lahum �adzaabun 
> > > > muqiim. (attaubah : 68)
> > > > Dan ayat-ayat yang seirama :e.g. al-fath 6;
> > > al-ahzab
> > > > 73; al-khadid 13 etc.
> > > > 
> > > > Detail dan njelimetnya hasil itung-itungan
> akan
> > > > terbayar semua, laa udlii�u 
> > > > �amala �aamilin regardless pekerjanya para
> > > dzakarin
> > > > aw untsaa.
> > > > Fa s tajaaba robbuhum annii laa udlii�u �amala
> > > > �aamilin minkum mi dzakarin 
> > > > aw untsaa, ba�dluhum min ba�dl,��(Ali �Imran
> > 195)
> > > > 
> > > > Demikian al-Qur�an memberikan an equal
> > opportunity
> > > > bagi pria dan wanita 
> > > > untuk fastabiqul khoiroot, balapan di arena
> > > > kebaikan.
> > > > 
> > > > Akan tetapi job description di arena kebaikan
> > > antara
> > > > wanita dan pria berbeda 
> > > > correspond dengan kapasitasnya yang berbeda,
> > > > perbedaan kapasitas tidak 
> > > > berakibat pada less atau more opportunity to
> > gain
> > > > gaji di akhirat.
> > > > 
> > > > Perbedaan kapasitas disebabkan perbedaan
> natural
> > > > fisik dan nature of 
> > > > emotional device installation control katanya
> > > orang
> > > > kampung hormon perasaan 
> > > > wanita lebih tinggi dari pria, ringkih,
> gampang
> 
=== message truncated ===


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