As an alumnus, I know what Duke Chapel means to that community. I know what it means to me. As a student, I regularly sought refuge in its nave for daily prayer every 5 p.m., as the bells tolled. A former classmate and friend, Sam, climbs those stairs everyday to chime the bells in an act of Christian devotion and love for his alma mater. As a student, I served as the Faith and Arts Intern at the Chapel, and learned so much about ministry alongside others.
So it may seem odd that I supported the idea of Muslims calling for prayer from atop my beloved Chapel. But for those who care enough to hear me out on this, here's my reasoning.
There's something else I know quite well: The recent attacks in Paris and Pakistan and renewed conflict in Nigeria have left us with so much negative press focused on parts of the Muslim world. From ISIS to Boko Haram to al-Qaida, Muslims in the media are portrayed as angry aggressors driven by values that are anti-education and anti-Western.
As a student, I worked in residential life. So I know a thing or two about the Islamic community on Duke's campus, too.
The Muslim community there represents a strikingly different face of Islam than is seen on the nightly news: One that is peaceful and prayerful. This face of the faith would have been given more of a voice as the Duke Muslim community when it chanted the adhan from the Duke Chapel bell tower on Fridays beginning today. It would have been chanted by Muslim students prior to the jummah prayer service that already takes place in the Chapel basement each Friday afternoon.
But I'm using the past tense because the University has nixed the idea in the face of security threats to my beloved alma mater, and death threats toward its Muslim students.
Let me be clear here: I don't give one whiff toward "religious pluralism". Because I think anytime Americans talk about "pluralism" they're using the language of Empire. And I know enough history to know that's always a bad thing.
No, I didn't support the idea of Muslims using the Chapel for a call to prayer because of some amorphous pluralism. I supported the idea precisely because I'm a Christian. I know the history of our relationship with Islam. I haven't forgotten the lessons of the sixth and seventh centuries, when the dialogue between us was far more charitable. More -- dare I say it -- Christian. I learned the lessons of the Crusades, of how evil we were in how we lived our discipleship to Jesus Christ with our Muslim friends.
But I appear to be one of so very few. Because my Christian brothers and sisters are calling for blood. Otherwise, Muslim students would be calling for prayer today.
Lots of universities have embraced the American liberal project of "pluralism" to insist that all religious traditions are essentially the same.
Not Duke.
Duke has always taken a different approach. Duke supports religious groups in their particularities and practices. With separate centers for Christian, Jewish and Muslim life and with dedicated prayer rooms for Catholics, Hindus and Buddhists, Duke responds to religious diversity not by reducing all traditions to one common denominator but by attempting to let each religious group on campus express itself in its own unique way.
That noble tradition would have continued today.
Except that Christians -- my fellow brothers and sisters -- stood in the way of others praying and demanded they conform to our way of doing things. (I wonder if they've even read the Book of James in the New Testament?)
So while it may have seemed odd to have Muslim students chanting the adhan from the top of the Chapel, as a Blue Devil, I got it. I understood. And I supported the idea.
In a world marred by violence and daily discrimination, students would have been given a chance to pray in peace.
And we Christians blew it.
Think about that for a minute.