In Bosnia, a Call to the Christian Conscience : Religion: In the Serbs’ victimization of Muslim Bosnians, we see the recrudescence of a dark evil in Christianity.

By all reports, the Serbian army is moving against the Bosnian Muslims with a holocaustic fury. The fall of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and the center of Islam for the region, is imminent, after which a blood bath is predicted to complete the “ethnic cleansing.”

As a minister of the Word, I do not feel competent to address the strategic and geopolitical issues of the conflict. But I do believe that the struggle for Bosnia cuts to the heart of the integrity of Christianity in the West.

The Muslims of Bosnia are ethnic Slavs, as are the Serbs--same race, same hair, same eyes. Thus “ethnic” cleansing is a misnomer. The Bosnia situation is unmasked for what it is: a war of religion. As the commandants of Auschwitz and Buchenwald were baptized Christians, so we may assume that the Serbian forces engaged in killing, raping and starving out the Muslims of Bosnia are baptized Christians.

We can no longer provincialize Christianity. The Body of Christ, like his seamless robe, is one throughout the world. In the victimization of Muslim Bosnians by Christian Serbs, we see the recrudescence of a dark evil in Christian civilization. Jesus spoke of the impending doom of spiritual emptiness as he told a parable about how an unclean spirit, having gone out of a man and finding no new abode, returns, bringing seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. When the essence leaves Christian civilization and just the structure remains, evil, always preoccupied with and tormented by Christ, moves in.

As we think of Sarajevo, remembrance is taken to another city, which fell to the Crusaders on July 15, 1099: Jerusalem.

The chronicler with the Crusader armies wrote that by nightfall, “the tunics of the soldiers were drenched in blood.” The only Muslims in Jerusalem to survive were the governor and his family. The Jews were slain as they gathered at the synagogue. Yes, the Holy Sepulcher was now in Christian hands, but that bloody day was one of the darkest in Christian history.

In the United States, we are familiar with crusades-- evangelistic crusades, crusades against disease, against poverty, drugs, violence in the streets. But the Crusader mentality as war against the “infidel” must stop. Let me speak plainly: For Christians to befriend Muslims (or Jews) is not to deny Christ. Indeed, to take Christ seriously in our time might include befriending Muslims (or Jews).

Today in America, Muslim citizens are as numerous as Jewish citizens. The Christian majority does not seem to be aware of that. There is a sentiment in the American Muslim community that many American Christians do not care about what is happening to the Muslims of Bosnia. American Jews, however, remember the Holocaust.

It was said of St. Francis of Assisi, who had friends in the Muslim world, that “he considered himself no friend of Christ if he did not cherish those for whom Christ died.” This is not a conversionary statement but a love statement. The members of Abraham’s family--the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims--are bonded together in a spiritual patrimony. Nothing will ever change that.

Bosnia will haunt the world for years to come unless ways are found to halt the atrocities and avoid the blood bath. In the spirit of St. Francis, this is the time for cherishing.