This morning I read a blog article with a link to the Austin American-Statesman newspaper about an interfaith "worship" service that has been going on for 23 years. This year it had planned to be, and reserved the facilities at Hyde Park Baptist Church. You can read the article here.
So here is my question, is interfaith/interreligious worship actually worship?
Quite simply put, no. No. NO. In Christian worship we are coming before a Holy God and ascribing, telling, proclaiming His worth-ship to us. In the practice of doing this to also change "hats" to worship Buddha, Allah, or whatever counters everything that the Bible tells us to do. Here are some examples.
Exodus 34:13-16 You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.
(funny…the leaders of the synagogue in Austin must have forgot )
Deuteronomy 4:35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.
Acts 4:11-12 This Jesus1 is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.2
12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
This is by no means an exhaustive list of Scripture. Just a taste.
"(Simone Talma) Flowers said she was disheartened by the church's decision. "As a Christian, my first response is, what would Jesus do in this situation?" she said."
Probably He is rejoicing over this church keeping His bride pure. Should we mingle worship so as to provide peace between faiths? Does it mean that we cannot associate with those of different beliefs?
We absolutely should work to develop relationships with those of different faiths and be a witness to them, in loving, gracious, Christ-like love; not bending on the facts of Scripture that there is only one God, one Savior, Jesus Christ.
However, to welcome them into, and worshipping with, different faiths, dilutes and condones the cultural idea that there are multiple ways to heaven. Our children see, by our example, that other "ideas" or cultural "truths" all mean the same thing. This is the most dangerous threat to our churches today. A coalescing and watering down the truth of Scripture, intermarrying of children of different faiths (the only intermarrying banned in the Bible is different faiths-not race).
Those outside the Christian faith call this "Interreligious Ministries", in the Christian church we call it "Emergent".
More on that later.
Thank God this church had sense to realize the error and correcting it.
It was regrettable that someone rented the church facilities for this kind of service without checking it out thoroughly at first. Still, rather than let it occur, the church did the right thing.
Respecting people who have other religious beliefs does not mean that you have to worship with them, in their way, nor does it mean that you are "intolerant" if you choose not to allow the use of your facility for such a worship service. Even if the facility is not normally a worship location, those buildings are dedicated for Christian ministry purposes. To vilify the church the way the secular press in Austin is doing is also intolerant, and disrespectful.