An Email I Received Recently
Hi (Sherman),

I have some questions for you which need your response. Recently, my pastor shared with me about his struggle over a church member who was marrying a Muslim. He and other church members were invited to the wedding. He saw this as apostasy. The fact that the Christian girl had agreed to enter into union with a Muslim, it was an expression of her having renounced her Christian faith. So he decided not to go to their wedding and advised his church members who were invited not to go too. By going to their wedding, it would mean that they would be celebrating their union. Instead, he shared that we should mourn and pray as we had lost a sheep to a wolf. And he was disappointed with a missionary couple, who were close friends to the bride and who decided to attend the wedding.

Questions:

1) If you were the pastor, would you make the same stand? Why? Please also state the scriptural principles on the reason of your stand.

Perhaps, the only scriptural principle I can draw on for my pastor's position is from the book of Nehemiah, where Nehemiah and Ezra forced the exillic Israelites to divorce their foreign wives as they regained their land. In other words, we need to show we have a different stand from other faiths.

2) What are the practical steps we can take in order to win her back to the Christian faith and yet be able to show a stand in our belief so as not to offend our Muslim friends as we live in this pluralistic society?

The only answer I can come up with is to not attend their wedding and say it nicely that I will mourn for her as she has renounced her faith. After that, I would try to make an effort to remain a friend and try to win her back (together with her husband).

My Reply to the Email
I'm deeply saddened by the position taken by your pastor to not attend the wedding of the couple. To forbid the marriage to take place in the church premises is one thing, but to not attend the wedding is entirely another thing all together. Even if this sister has decided to become a Muslim and to marry a Muslim, there is still a human-to-human level at which we all need to honour one another's choices and to show acceptance and respect for one another. I think the refusal to attend the marriage doesn't speak very well of Christian goodwill. Because implicitly, that refusal speaks of a derogatory view of all other faiths and people who embrace other faiths.

I hold that we cannot get a direct scriptural reference on this issue. In fact, there is no explicit passage in scripture that forbids marriage between a Christian and a person of another religious tradition. We can use the Old Testament passage about God not wanting the Israelites to marry people from the pagan nations; but to extrapolate that and to equate that with the contemporary situation without taking variant factors into account is to be rather naive in our understanding of scripture. As far as scripture is concerned, it is most directly clear in the New Testament that when a union like that takes place, the Christian should not dishonour his/her spouse.

I think one of the greatest fears your pastor might have about attending the wedding is that it might show approval for the sister's decision. But to not attend the wedding would show disrespect; that we can respect only "Christian" decisions and not "non-Christian" decisions. I think we need to be gracious enough to see that every human person is an equal subject on a journey towards God; some have gone further in their journey, some have not. Your pastor's participation in the wedding would certainly have helped them progress positively in their journey. Sometimes we handle people as if they are objects of our faith and not equal subjects in our life journey.

I think if there's anything that can win them to faith in Christ, it would be love, friendship, acceptance, and respect with no hidden agendas. It becomes totally obvious if we establish relations with them for the sake of "winning them to the faith". Ultimately, the best representation of Christ we can offer them is to relate with them, person to person, human to human, friend to friend. Only then can our love be authentic and dignifying to those we relate with.