Father Abraham's Many Children: The Bible in a World of Religious Difference

By Tyler D. Mayfield and Eboo Patel

Reframing religious diversity through the stories of Cain, Ishmael, and Esau 

The way we read the Bible matters for the way we engage the pluralistic world around us. For instance, if we understand the book of Genesis as narrowly focused on primary characters like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, we’ll miss the larger story and end up with the impression that God only cares about those who are “chosen.” In fact, the narratives of marginalized biblical characters reveal that God protects and provides for them also. What might this mean for Christians living in a world of religious difference today? 

In Father Abraham’s Many Children, Tyler Mayfield reflects on the stories of three of the most significant “other brothers” in the Bible—namely, on God’s continued engagement with Cain after he murders Abel, Ishmael’s circumcision as a sign of God’s covenant, and Esau’s reconciliation with Jacob. From these stories, Mayfield draws out a more generous theology of religious diversity, so that Christians might be better equipped to authentically love their neighbors of multiple faith traditions—as God loves, and has always loved, all humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jan 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781467463041

Tyler D. Mayfield

Tyler Mayfield is the A.B. Rhodes Associate Professor of Old Testament and Faculty Director of the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Book preview

Introduction

Father Abraham had many sons.

Many sons had Father Abraham.

I am one of them and so are you.

So let’s all praise the Lord.

Right arm!

—(author unknown)

In 1955, Idlewild Airport in New York dedicated the second airport chapel in the nation—a Catholic chapel named Our Lady of the Skies. The decision to designate the sacred space as Catholic in affiliation makes sense in light of the Big Apple’s larger-than-US-average Catholic population. By 1966 the airport, now called John F. Kennedy International, had added a Protestant church and a Jewish synagogue, thereby affirming the mid-twentieth-century understanding of American religion: Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. These three were the prevalent ways to be religious. In 2001 an interfaith chapel that caters primarily to Muslim travelers and airport employees was added.¹ The expansion of airport chapels at Kennedy parallels the growth of religious diversity over the past seventy years in America. We are now a nation of people with a full range of religious commitments. Buddhists and Bahá’ís. Muslims and Methodists. Hindus and Humanists. Jainists and Jews. Americans cannot be sorted easily into three spiritual categories. We are living in the most religiously diverse nation in the world.

God’s concern for all people compels us as Christians to respond to the growth of faith traditions in our communities and neighborhoods. Religious diversity is a reality we cannot ignore or passively observe. Our coworkers, neighbors, partners, and friends represent diverse religious identities, and our faith necessitates a deliberate and constructive response to their faith. We ought not to be afraid of, or indifferent to, this growing diversity but should seek to explore its possibilities in our broader society with courage and hope. We can move beyond fear and ignorance to curiosity and even celebration. These adherents are our neighbors and fellow human beings. We have been given the gift of living alongside wise and faithful people.

But how do we participate in the religious diversity around us?

We are also compelled as Christians to respond faithfully to this diversity in conversation with the Bible, a source of conviction and encouragement. Although the Bible does not directly address, say, the Buddhist tradition, it does offer timely wisdom about perennial issues of faith. After all, we affirm that the Bible is a living word, a faithful message for today. We dialogue with the Bible because it contains wisdom and deep learning. It raises the profound questions of faith; it delights and inspires with its stories of complicated moral characters. Its questions help us explore our questions. Its theologies aid us with our ponderings. The Bible gathers up a multifaceted, ancient conversation about the meaning of life and faith so that we, as readers, might enter into that discussion. If we are willing to listen and to respond, the Bible becomes a dynamic conversation partner for contemporary lives of faith as we engage with those who believe differently from us. The Bible shapes our beliefs and responses to present-day opportunities such as religious diversity. This ancient story can become ever new to prompt our faithful engagement of various religious people.

But how do we revive our Bible readings to address these topics of religious difference?

In the pages that follow, I place into conversation our contemporary context of religious diversity and the ancient faith stories of Genesis, the first biblical book. As with any urgent issue of our time—evils such as ecological destruction and racism, or virtues such as neighborly love—to reflect in a Christian way on such matters necessitates an engagement with our tradition, including Scripture and the ways we have learned how to engage Scripture. I want to think with our sacred texts about these relevant issues, but not because I understand the Bible to have all the answers to our twenty-first-century challenges. It is not the answer key to the test of life. The Bible, as we will explore, has some problematic notions regarding diversity. It was, after all, written in a different historical era and contains ancient cultural attitudes. The human authors did not know about modern medicine, astronomy, or anthropology. The Bible is unavoidably a product of its historical time. In addition, the Bible has been read in specific and deep-rooted ways over the centuries to create questionable interpretations concerning diversity. Earlier interpreters have not always read generously. And they undoubtedly have not read with an eye to our contemporary context. In other words, the challenge may lie as much with the Bible’s interpreters as with the Bible itself. I discuss, then, both the historical contexts that gave rise to these ancient ways of thinking about diversity and the history of interpretation of these biblical passages, which diminishes the diversity apparent in the text. To attend to both of these concerns is to stand in a long line of faithful and necessary reflection on this sacred text’s meaning. We inherit our readings of Scripture, and we can choose to reexamine them.

To anticipate the journey ahead, I will be urging a broader approach to our faith that highlights the value of stories of faithful people in other religious traditions. In addition, I will be encouraging a more expansive approach to the stories of Genesis, particularly with regard to the repeatedly ignored elder brothers in the book. We will seek to move beyond our limiting approaches to differing religious traditions and our restrictive understandings of Genesis in order to claim a faith for our times, a faith grounded in generosity and respect toward our contemporary religious neighbors and our ancient biblical ancestors.

How are Christians to engage this increasing religious diversity? How might the Bible help us with this necessary engagement? These two questions guide our journey in this book. I hope to inspire us to bring back some of the theology of a favorite children’s song, even as we expand its meaning. In my childhood, small-town church, the children delighted in singing and acting out the motions to the camp song Father Abraham Had Many Sons. Of course, the song’s language is overly masculine (although Genesis records Abraham himself had only sons). We need to add daughters to the opening line—or, better, call them children—if we are to include ourselves as a part of the family. And we need to acknowledge the crucial labor of Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah in the begetting of these children. Mothers are indispensable to this big family. Nevertheless, perhaps we can return to this children’s song and imbibe its potentially inclusive theology. The song does not claim a single child for the parent. Many sons, many children. Not an only child of promise. Both then and now. Abraham indeed had many sons, as we will see soon enough. And Abraham has many children in our world today. I am one and so are you!

Discussion Questions

What interests you about the topic of religious diversity?

How have you and your community used the Bible as a guide or resource for thinking about ethical or theological issues?

Do you share the author’s understanding of the Bible as briefly described in this introduction?

If you sang Father Abraham as a child, who did you think the song was referring to when you sang, I am one of them and so are you?

1. Airport Chapels: Shifting from Denominational to Interfaith (2005), Pluralism Project Archive, Harvard University, https://hwpi.harvard.edu/pluralismarchive/airport-chapels-shifting-denominational-interfaith-2005.

CHAPTER ONE

Religious Diversity and Our Bibles:

Retelling the Ancient Stories

How does one account, theologically, for the fact of humanity’s religious diversity? … From now on any serious intellectual statement of the Christian faith must include, if it is to serve its purpose …, some sort of doctrine of other religions. We explain the fact that the Milky Way is there by the doctrine of creation, but how do we explain the fact that the Bhagavad Gita is there?

—Wilfred Cantwell Smith,

The Faith of Other Men

A World of Religious Difference

Prestonsburg, Kentucky, is a small Appalachian town in eastern Kentucky with a population of about 3,500. There are a few fast-food restaurants and many more small churches of various Christian varieties. And off one country road outside town sits the Islamic Center of Eastern Kentucky. It is a nondescript building, but its presence in Prestonsburg testifies to America’s growing religious diversity. You would not be surprised to learn that the much larger city of Louisville has a dozen mosques and a vibrant Muslim population. But Prestonsburg? Muslims living in Appalachia? Religious diversity has arrived not only in our major cities but across America’s smaller cities and towns. I’m thinking here about the Hindu temples in Spanish Fork, Utah, and Panama City, Florida; the large Buddhist temple in Hampton, Minnesota; and the mosque in Princeton, West Virginia. We can observe the growing number of sacred spaces such as mosques and temples in our neighborhoods.

In recent years, religious diversity has shifted from discussing the differences in worship styles between Presbyterians and Pentecostals to talking about Hindu holidays and Buddhist temples. Talk of ecumenical partnerships between Baptists and Methodists has expanded to include interfaith relationships with Jews and Hindus. The modern Christian ecumenical movement of the early twentieth century is waning as more interfaith organizations such as Interfaith Youth Core are created. Society now sees a need for people across all religions and no religion to work together with respect for the common good. For example, as I was writing this paragraph, I received an invitation to a local interfaith music concert.

Recently in Louisville, a seventeen-year-old broke into our local Hindu temple and spray-painted messages of hate on the temple walls. The supportive community response was overwhelming and immediate. Over five hundred folks from across the religious spectrum, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims, showed up on a Saturday morning to help paint over these offensive words and denounce the action. I attended the event to help but did not expect to arrive at a Hindu temple that looked like my childhood church. Redbrick. Tall steeple with a cross. Stained glass. Stone columns. A sanctuary with a basement. An educational facility with a gym/fellowship hall and kitchen. And a vibrant Hindu community with a message of peace and forgiveness for their community. I later discovered that the building belonged initially to a Presbyterian church, which sold it as the congregation aged and downsized. The Presbyterians—a model Mainline Protestant denomination—moved out and the Hindus moved in. A world religion with over a billion adherents found a home under a lofty white steeple. This is our new religious reality. But how did our nation and communities get to this place?

Religious diversity has been present throughout our country’s history. We need only to think of the faith traditions of Indigenous peoples, the colonial roots of Jews, and the waves of Irish, German, and Chinese immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century. Our religious history as a nation has always been more diverse than we typically allow. For example, Thomas Jefferson owned a translation of the Qur’an. And it is estimated that 14–20 percent of African slaves brought to America were Muslim.¹ Yet our nation diversified religiously primarily because of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which allowed