On Building Mosques and Worshiping in Caves
Saw this excellent article this morning;
This blogspot is about the ways Christians try to prevent Muslims from building mosques, and I'll get to that, but first, I want to tell you about a recent trip to Switzerland.
If I had to guess, I'd say my knowledge of German is slightly worse than is my sense of direction, but let's not quibble: both leave a lot to be desired. Nor am I particularly at home in places filled with ice and snow (I'm a Californian, after all), but despite my lack of confidence in hard-to-find places where people speak German while enduring bitterly cold winters, in January I traveled with one of my brothers to Switzerland to visit a cave in the hills southeast of Zurich where, during the 16th century, my wife's Anabaptist forbearers went to worship in a place where their singing and preaching would not be overheard by Zurich church leaders who objected to their rejection of earthly rulers, their embrace of believer's baptism, their pacifism and their simple, biblical faith.
Back in the day, a person could be punished severely for the kind of heterodoxy practiced by Anabaptists, and so out of necessity, the Anabapitsts were serious about finding a remote location for their clandestine gatherings. And they succeeded. Even with the aid of such modern conveniences as photocopied maps, hints for finding the place downloaded from the Internet, sturdy shoes designed to compensate for pronating feet and a warm jacket from L. L. Bean, it was hardly the kind of journey most Americans would be willing to undertake in order to worship with like-minded Christians.
The casual pilgrim could drive most of the way from Zurich to the Anabaptist cave (or, Tauferhole, as they say in German), but looking for adventure, my brother and I took a commuter train from Zurich to the town of Wetzikon, and then a bus into the hills, to a smaller town called Bäretswil. From there we continued farther into the hills on foot to the tiny hamlet of Wappenswil, where we turned onto an icy logging road that led us higher and deeper into the hills, to a place called Holenstein, which is too small even to be called a village. In Holenstein, the roads (such as they were) ended and a trail took us, through ankle-deep snow, up a steep meadow, and then into the woods, along the edge of a deep ravine. Finally we found the place at the end of a gulley: a cave whose mouth looks something like a giant eye, with a waterfall that cascades down directly over the center of the opening. Inside, a few benches arranged like pews and a memorial plaque were there to remind us that, after a long journey, we had come to a house of worship.
It might do various religious people in this country - Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant - well to remember this next time they feel compelled to whine about how that mean, evil, nasty President Obama and the Democrats are persecuting them.