Clash of Cultures or of Theologies?

I've just been catching up with some reading and realised that I'd missed this one in the first issue of Cultural Encounters journal, which is shaping up nicely to have some really helpful articles on the interface between Christianity and Culture, particularly from evangelical perspectives. As such, this article really deserves a look and it's going onto my bibliography for a couple of courses next academic year. You can find the abstract here: Cultural Encounters: Volume 1: and look for the article; "Clash of Cultures or Clash of Theologies? A Critique of Some Contemporary Evangelical Responses to Islam' Daniel W. Brown". However, I'll save you the clicking, here's the abstract: "This article describes approaches to Islam by evangelical authors after 9/11, and argues that the polemical tendencies in the writings of evangelical authors including R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, and Don Richardson are missiologically imprudent, a distortion of history, and a betrayal of biblical theology. A responsible evangelical approach to Islam, by contrast, will take account of the presence of evil in all civilizations, the sovereignty of God over all cultures, and the doctrine of common grace. Evangelicals should disengage from the so-called "clash of civilizations" which pits Western civilization against Islamic civilization and should instead focus their efforts on theological engagement with Muslims. The article concludes by suggesting some directions that a theologically informed evangelical engagement with Islam might take."
It's a good article in that it takes on an exposes some 'popular' Evangelical responses to Islam as not only ill-informed (possibly culpably so) but inconsistent. It's helpful in that it is relatively short, gets to the heart of the matter quickly and has some nice bibliographic follow-ups.

I was also pleasantly suprprised to find some useful cultural analysis based on the idea of 'the powers that be', an interest of mine. It raises the challenge in that way of seeking to see the positive aspects of Islamic cultures and civilisation; what are the providential dimensions of it? I'm thinking of turning that consideration into an essay question for next year.