“Larycia Hawkins ‘Flabbergasted’ by Wheaton’s Move to Fire Her”

It would be inaccurate to say that my vote would count for nothing at Wheaton College, near Chicago.  On the contrary:  With regard to theology, my vote, coming from a Mormon, would almost certainly do substantial damage to anyone or anything receiving it.

But I do want to publicly say, for what it’s worth, that I stand with Larycia Hawkins:  Muslims, Christians, and Jews do indeed worship the same God.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865644951/Larycia-Hawkins-6flabbergasted7-by-Wheaton7s-move-to-fire-her.html

As it happens, I also seem to stand with Pope Francis, whose 30 November 2015 remarks at the Central Mosque of Koudoukou, in Bangui, in the Central African Republic, appear to presume that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.  And, if that’s the case, he was simply reaffirming the 1964 “dogmatic constitution” Lumen Gentium, issued under Pope Paul VI, which said of Muslims that “together with us they adore the one, merciful God” (II.16).

And I seem to stand with such Protestant theologians and scholars as the late Montgomery Watt of the University of Edinburgh, the late Anglican thinker Kenneth Cragg, the late Annemarie Schimmel of Harvard, Yale’s Miroslav Volf, and too many others to name.

And I seem to stand with the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which, in a 1978 statement regarding God’s love for all mankind, specifically mentioned Muhammad as one of “the great religious leaders of the world” who received “a portion of God’s light,” and affirmed that “moral truths were given to [these leaders] by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals.”

I’m in good company.