Studying history offers us a number of opportunities.   Whether or not we choose to take advantage of those opportunities is another matter.  History offers us more than learning interesting, or not so interesting, facts.  It also offers us the chance to better understand other cultures, what they believed and how they practiced their beliefs.  For many of us, studying history can be an exercise that reveals large gaps between what we think we know about another culture’s beliefs and practices and what in fact another culture actually believes and practices.  History offers us the opportunity to clarify some things that may be fuzzy for us. 

The study of religious history is a good example.  There is nothing more invigorating or challenging than finding out that what we thought we knew about another culture’s faith, all the sound bites, anecdotes, and Cliff Clavenisms “it’s a little known fact that…”, were in fact not accurate at all. 

For example, I recently taught a session on the history of Islam and the Crusades.  In the process I tried to point out that many Christians make an inaccurate comparison when they equate Mohammad with Jesus Christ: what Mohammad is for Muslims, Jesus is for Christians.  Actually, it would be more accurate to equate the Koran with Jesus Christ.  For Muslims the Koran is the perfect, complete and divine revelation of Allah, not Mohammad.  Mohammad is the blessed prophet of Allah.  Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the perfect divine/human revelation of God.  It is not Jesus’ prophetic office that Christians emphasize, it is his divinity as the Son of God.  The Bible for Christians is the divinely inspired, authoritative revelation of God, but there is a difference between saying that the Bible is divinely inspired and saying that it is divine.   The Bible for Christians is not like the Koran and Mohammad is not like Jesus Christ. 

That’s what I mean by history offering us an opportunity to clarify things.  Oh, and the part about these discoveries being invigorating and challenging, it might be better to say that they are more often irritating, frustrating and aggravating because clarifying things is the first step toward changing our minds.  “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” but first it might make you mad.

For those who are  interested in a book that gets at this business of clarification I would suggest Stephen Prothero’s Religious Literacy:  What Every American Needs to Know—And Doesn’t.

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