Muslim-Christian Conflict: Lessons from History

05/10/19 • 32 min

Paul Marshall is a research professor in the Department of Political Science as well as the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR).

Marshall was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, particularly religious freedom, including Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (2013, with Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea), Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (2011, with Nina Shea), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2007), Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt’s Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics (1998), Heaven Is Not My Home (1998), A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996) and the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997).

Marshall’s current research is focused primarily on understanding how Muslims and Christians are able to live and work together peacefully in Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Marshall is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances and has been featured on ABC Nightly News; CNN; PBS; FOX; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African and Japanese Broadcasting Corporations; and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest and many other newspapers and magazines.

Marshall also is a Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute, a Christian public policy think tank in Jakarta, Indonesia, and was previously a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Sharif Hidayatullah Islamic University (UIN), also in Jakarta.

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Paul Marshall is a research professor in the Department of Political Science as well as the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR).

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Previous Episode

Is Nationalism Identity Politics for the Right? An Examination of Tribalism and Identity Politics in America

This Faith & Law Friday Forum will focus on tribalism and identity politics with Georgetown University Professor Paul Miller. Dr. Miller asserts that civilization is fixated on stories about the journey to discover our identity, and how the discovery of our identity is the key to unleashing our inner power and mastering our world. In this lecture, he will address this myth by sharing where it comes from, historically and spiritually. Next, he will tease out its political implications and show how it gives rise to both identity politics and to the current wave of nationalism sweeping much of the world. While demands for identity recognition are understandable, they raise serious social, political, and cultural problems without any corresponding solutions. Then, Dr. Miller will propose answers to the questions of identity, calling for a renewal of classical liberalism, federalism, and devolution as answers to identity politics, nationalism, and the centrifugal forces of tribalism that threaten to tear our polities apart. Finally, he will conclude with a note on the spiritual roots of this problem, suggesting where our need for identity and recognition come from, and what the answer might ultimately be.

Dr. Paul D. Miller is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He serves as co-chair of the Global Politics and Security concentration in the MSFS program. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

As a practitioner, Dr. Miller served as Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council staff; worked as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency; and served as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.

His most recent book, American Power and Liberal Order: A Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2016. In his first book, Armed State Building (Cornell University Press, 2013), Miller examined the history and strategy of stability operations. Miller taught at The University of Texas at Austin and the National Defense University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to his arrival at Georgetown.

Miller blogs on foreign affairs at Elephants in the Room. His writing has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Survival, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, The American Interest, The National Interest, The World Affairs Journal, Small Wars and Insurgencies, and elsewhere. Miller holds a PhD in international relations and a BA in government from Georgetown University, and a master in public policy from Harvard University.

He is a contributing editor of the Texas National Security Review, a contributing editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy, a co-editor of the Naval Institute Press’s Series on the Future of Global Security, a research fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a member of the advisory board for the Philos Project, and a member of the Texas Lyceum.

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Next Episode

The Role of Faith Leaders in Uganda and the U.S. in the Fight against Global AIDS

Canon Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda will share his personal story of living with HIV and about his work and leadership against stigma, shame, denial and discrimination, inaction and mis-action. Further, he will discuss his ministry and theology to uphold the human dignity and rights of people living with and most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS. Then, Dr. Jenny Dyer will will reflect on the critical role of faith leaders to shape policy and funding for Global AIDS since the beginning of the Bush Administration. She will look at the sustained support over the past three Administrations and the success of legislation, in part, thanks to their advocacy.

In 1992, Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda became the first religious leader in Africa to publicly announce that he was HIV positive. Before long, others came forward and Byamugisha founded the African Network of Religious Leaders Living with and Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (ANERELA+), now an international organization with 10,000 members in 48 countries.

Byamugisha holds a B.A in Education (Honors) from Makerere University, Kampala, a Bachelor of Divinity (First Class) from ATIEA Nairobi, and a Masters in Contextual & Applied Theology (University of Birmingham, United Kingdom). For his pioneering leadership, St Paul's Cathedral, Namirembe Diocese (Kampala, Uganda 2001), and Holy Cross Cathedral, (Lusaka Diocese, Zambia, 2003) conferred upon him the ecclesiastical title of Canon in the Anglican Church.

Canon Gideon, born in 1959, is the eldest of 14 children. In 1991, he lost his wife, Kellen to AIDS. Their daughter, Patience, is now 29. In 1995, Canon Gideon married Pamela (herself HIV positive and widowed by HIV/AIDS at a very young age). Thanks to advances in the prevention on Mother-to-Child Transmission, Pamela and Gideon have two HIV-negative children, Love, 15, and Hope, 13.

Jenny Dyer is the Founder of The 2030 Collaborative. As such, she directs the Faith-Based Coalition for Global Nutrition with support from the Eleanor Crook Foundation.

Dyer teaches Global Health Politics and Policy as a Lecturer in the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, and she has taught Religion and Global Health as a Lecturer at Vanderbilt School of Divinity.

Dyer formerly served as the Executive Director for Senator Bill Frist, MD’s Hope Through Healing Hands from 2008-2018, and prior to that, she was the National Faith Outreach Director for the DATA Foundation and The ONE Campaign, Bono’s organization, from 2003-2008. In these roles, she has worked with religious leaders, authors, artists, and other faith-based leaders to promote awareness and advocacy for global health and development issues.

Dyer has written several academic articles and opinion pieces on the intersection of religion and global health. She has been published in TIME, Forbes.com, Huffington Post, Roll Call, Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics, Patheos, Relevant Magazine, Christian Post, Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, and The Tennessean, to name a few.

She is a contributor of Why Save Africa: Answers from around the World (2011) and a co-compiler of The Mother & Child Project: Raising Our Voices for Health and Hope (2015) and The aWAKE Project: Uniting Against the African AIDS Crisis (2002). Her forthcoming book as a co-editor, The End of Hunger: Renewed Hope for Feeding the World, will release in October 2019 with InterVarsity Press.

Dyer holds a B.A. in Religion from Samford University (1999), a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt Divinity School (2001), and a Ph.D. in History and Critical Theories of Religion from Vanderbilt University (2007).

She lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband, John, and two boys, Rh

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