Christian Missiology as a Field of Christian-Muslim Dialogue (original) (raw)
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Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Leiden) The Unexpected Popularity of the Study of Middle Eastern Christianity While the percentage of Christians in the Middle East continues to diminish, the interest in their fate has been on the rise. One important reason for this is the growing interest m Islam and the Middle East since the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing political turmoil in the region, especially after the western invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2003. The cascade of events that followed the invasions unsettled many of the Middle Eastern societies, to the detriment of most of its citizens. Minorities of all kinds (religious, ethnic and social) were affected even more seriously than other citizens by the uncertainties resulting from civU war and uprisings in Iraq, Egypt and Syria. The plight of Christians in these countries caught the attention of many in the west, more often than not accompanied by the surprise that indeed these countries comprised sizeable Christian communities. ' In the wake of harrowing stories of expulsion and displacement, abductions and murder, western journalists and other popular writers gradually began to pay more consistent attention to Christians in the whole of the Middle East even if news about their fate is easily sidelined by more pressing issues.2 In this volume in honor of our colleague Martin Tamcke, it seems fitting to discuss in somewhat more detail the rising interest in the Christian communities of this region, as a tribute to his lifelong interest in and extensive contributions to this field. Wliile it would be farfetched to attribute this growing popular interest to the developments in the academic world, including the work of Tamcke, it is clear that by the time a wider readership became interested in these themes, an impressive array of scholarship on Christians in the Middle East was available. What I propose to do in this brief contribution is to situate the popular interest in the 1 On Christians and the uprisings in Egypt and Syria, see Najib George Awad, And Freedom Became a Public-Square: Political, Sociological and Religious Overviews on the Arab Christians and the Arabic Spring (Studien zur Orientalischen Kirchengeschichte 46; Miinster: LIT, 2012). 2 At the time of completion of this contribution (July 2014), the advance of the radical Islamist caliphate' of ISIS in northern Iraq, with its destructive actions against Christians and other non-Sunni minorities, against shrines of all kinds, against minorities more generally, was receiving little attention amidst the deadly war against Gaza and the downing of the Maleisian/Dutch airplane MHi-j in Eastern Ukraine.
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A s I look at David Kerr's life and my connection with him during his various phases, I see some large themes. This article attempts to cover my reflections on some of those themes: primarily, a concern for dialogue, mutual understanding and peace, the continuing role of mission and da'wa (especially as it was set up by the WCC and in which David participated enthusiastically), and his role at Hartford Seminary and later at Edinburgh University. It is hard to follow the coherence of one life which runs as a thread through all these diverse issues in this medium. I have, however, tried to thread them as well as I can, so that they hang together in some theological and philosophical way, with an ultimate commitment to faith, peace, justice, ethics and aesthetics. Developing Theology in the Context of Islam Historically, of all the religions of the world, it is Islam that has most thrust itself onto the consciousness of Christianity as "the other." This otherness has broad ecumenical character and support because even when we have disagreed on some of the foundational theological, ecclesiological, sacramental, ministerial and missiological elements of our respective Some Critical Issues for Muslim-Christian Relations and Challenges
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The new Turkish Encyclopedia of Islam (DİA) was launched in 1988 as a corrective to Leiden’s Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI). In their introductory “manifesto,” the editors of DİA accuse EI of being a product of “religious, nationalist and Western bigotry,” in addition to having a “colonialist and missionary viewpoint” (“Önsöz” in DİA). Although DİA primarily focuses on religious phenomena mostly related to Islam, Islamic studies and Muslim countries, it includes entries related to other religious traditions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. In this paper, I examine the representation of the Christian tradition in DİA regarding Christian sacred texts, history and theology and explore the ways in which it is depicted. As a method, I scanned through the whole list of DİA entries and selected forty-six of them primarily related to the Christian tradition. I applied content analysis to each of these entries. I furthered my research with a postcritical approach in order to search for the “subtext” and “context” of the texts in question. In the end, I argue that DİA seems to be quite successful in presenting a scholarly attitude towards Christianity. However, it acquires a rather European-Catholic-centered attitude with respect to Christian history and theology.