A Call for Action -- by Raymond J. Lawrence, CPSP General Secretary

I call on all in the CPSP community to make an effort to reach out collegially and in solidarity with members of the Muslim community in the face of the current irrational public outrage directed at Muslims as a whole. We are religious professionals, and now one particular religious group is being targeted and scapegoated irrationally.

Some of us have lived long enough to have witnessed this kind of pogrom before. Most religionists in the 1930s and 40s were silent in the face of the Nazi assault on Jews. Only a small number of religious people in Germany in that era publicly challenged the murderous and irrational rage against Jews. We remember some of those few who went into exile or to their deaths for standing against actions of the Germany government in that era: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and others were a small minority of courageous religious dissenters in the face the assault on Jews in that era.

Today in the United States we are witnessing an incipient replication of Nazi rage in all its irrationality and venom. Our silence in the face of this scourge will ultimately condemn us. I call you each of you to counter this terrible threat by doing all you can to embrace our fellow religionists in the Muslim community in any way that you are able.

Raymond J Lawrence
General Secretary, CPSP