New Evangelical Manifesto; neighbouring Muslims

How do New Evangelicals relate to the religiously other? One of the most important test cases in this would be Muslims, and the appositely-name Rick Love takes up the task in this collection of addressing it. The interesting flash-point of departure is the question from a Muslim about why his Christian street-neighbour appeared to love his family less than did the non-Christian street-neighbours -a question intensified by  it being a response to a presentation stating that Christians are to love God and to love their neighbours as themselves. This leads into a reflection on why a Christian might treat a Muslim neighbour less generously than non-believing neighbours might treat them. Rick Love identifies three things that probably contribute to this sad state of affairs. One is terrorism and the ill-treatment of Christian communities in some Muslim-majority societies. A second is a theological bias to Israel and thus against Muslim middle-easterners. The third is negative stereotyping. And so in the face of this 'fear that drives out love' (nice soundbite); how should we seek to replace fear with love. Rick Love writes from a background well-able to remind us of the great diversity of 1.5 bn of the world's population -as against the stereotyping based on worst-cases. He points out that many perhaps 50% of Muslims are from a Sufi background where the love of God is more important than the externals of religion; where the poetry of Rumi is considered an important inspiration. Such an Islam is resistant to terrorism and more favourable to peace-making. It's a form of Islam which often sees Jesus as an inspirational figure. An interesting reflection on probable figures would indicate that there are probably about as many terrorists among the Muslim population as there are KKK members amongst Christians in the USA.

The chapter explores the interesting suggestion that Muslims are the new Samaritans -in terms of the way that Jesus related to them in the context of the NT. And it is followed up with a contemporary parable of the Good Samaritan with a Muslim family playing the role of the good Samaritan.

What I found interesting, because it's something I've become concerned about; is the critique of friendship evangelism because it violates the pure and direct obedience to the command to love neighbour by making serving them and genuinely befriending them instrumental to their conversion. Of course it is possible to love by sharing the most important beliefs we have; but that needs to find its place genuinely as love rather than a duplicitous ruse to propagandise.

The racial dimension of God's mission is the topic Lisa Sharon Harper tackles in chapter 11. "Is America a postracial society" (yeah, I know, the question assumes that the USA is America -Canada? Mexico? Brazil? ...) and reminds us of a series of issues and events of the 1990's when racism was very much an issue and the USA very much not 'postracial'. One of those issues was how the churches responded to the challenges, an example of Promise Keepers trying to address race but without realising that cultural power was (is) an important dimension of the matter. The problem here was/is that the individualism ('personal salvation through an individual decision for Christ') frames racial issues that way, and elide structural and culturally-wide dimensions. In fact dismiss them as distractions from personal (individual) responsibility. For white evangelicals, living self-segregated lives; the experience of encountering structural unrighteousness is rare and so the a-political view of the world is rarely challenged in a meaningful way. I'm reminded of the British evangelicalism that I was introduced to in the 70's and 80's which was heavily formed by public-school and elite university leadership and naturally tended to take the same sort of approach. But here, somehow, a lot of that changed. Perhaps it was the fair-trade and drop-the-debt campaigns combined with growing awareness of needs of our inner cities because these are actually mission fields and encounter bred fuller understanding and broader engagement. (That's not to say British Evangelicalism is hunky-dory on the race front).

Much of the chapter is a telling of USAmerican history of race and racial discrimination. the point being to show how fiscal and political instruments helped to create and solidify white domination and so to remind us that similar instruments are needed to redress matters. The word 'repentance' is chosen for this. Evangelicals were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement -but it turns out that this was something of a high-water mark and since then the movement has tended to quiescently take the segregationist side. But that is to fail to love neighbour.