Lee C. Camp, professor of theology and ethics, this week released his second book,Who Is my Enemy, guiding Christians through the misconceptions of the Islamic Faith and self-contemplating questions of war and peace in a Christian society.
Camp’s interest in this issue was sparked several years ago after a Lipscomb seminar on the “theological rationale for peaceful coexistence with people of other faith.”
“I did this lecture…and the next day it was on the front page of the Tennessean,” Camp said. According to Dr. Camp, the front page article misquoted and mischaracterized his statements, which led to his deepening interest in the issue of the Islamic faith.
“It stirred up all sorts of deep anger and name calling,” Camp said. “By the end of the day, I had heard from people from California to Manhattan to Tel Aviv to New Zealand.”
Camp’s misquoted information in the Tennessean also caught the media’s attention from all over the world, which stirred conversation and public interest.
“I was intrigued with the anger and fear, especially towards Muslims that came out in that experience,” said Camp. As a result, he began to research, travel and learn more about the Islamic faith in order to compare the Christian and Islamic traditions in the realm of thinking about war and peacemaking.
“The methodology behind this book is: seek first to understand and then to be understood,” Camp said. This concept is an old prayer tribute to Saint Francis, Camp said, that sets the undertone for the book as Christians began to contemplate on the idea of the Islamic faith.
Instead of becoming defensive or fearful to the idea of Muslims, Camp embraced the concept of trying to understand the Islamic faith in relation to misguided perceptions of Christianity.
Camp’s personal narrative also touches on the issue of war and peace from a theological perspective. “A lot of people are unaware of the fact,” Camp said, “that in the first 300 hundred years of the Christian tradition, early Christian fathers when asked: Do Christians participate in war? They all said no.”
Regarding issues of war in relation to the Christian doctrine of ethics, many people have found war to be utterly wrong, Camp explained at his book-signing event. “If you review early church history and the New Testament there is a very strong strand of saying ‘war is not something we Christians do,’” said Camp. “This idea began to change starting in the fourth century with the mainstream Christian logic: war is lamentable; it’s never a good thing. But under certain conditions, we should participate.”
“The gospel calls us to practice nonviolence, and war is never a legitimate option for Christians,” said Camp. Although Camp makes this blunt statement, in his book he also refers to the “just war tradition” that validates the reasoning of war under certain conditions.
“I hope that this book causes people to step back and answer some hard questions about some of our assumptions that we assume too easily,” Camp said.