Evangelicals have begun to enter into an interfaith dialogue with people of other religious faiths than Christianity. Historically evangelicals have been very tentative about such conversations, with some reason to support those feelings. But this is changing. Evangelicals are rightly fearful of reducing revelation to sociological opinion. They are also fearful of losing their biblical fidelity to “one faith, one Lord,” which they properly embrace with all their being.

At the dialogue table the problem for evangelicals has not been that they wanted to deny Christ but that they very often had wrong attitudes in the dialogue. Missiologist Ralph Covell noted, (nearly twenty years ago) in the  much esteemed International Bulletin of Missionary Research (1991), that evangelical attitudes could be expressed by descriptors like triumphalism, cocksure, attitude, aggressiveness, cold, analytic logic, no sensitivity to people and a continued colonial mentality (15:1, 12-17). This is the bad news.

But Ralph Covell claimed, and this was years ago, that “during the last two decades, we have turned […]

The old model of interfaith dialogue argued that the only way you could truly engage another person, who was not a Christian, was to give up a particularistic criteria of truth in favor of relativism and universalized faith.

Raimon Panikkar, author of The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), famously argued that support of pluralist conversation required us to embrace real pluralism “because no single culture, model, ideology, religion, or whatnot can any longer raise a convincing claim to be the one, unique, or even best system in an absolute sense” (23). Such arguments are adamant about  Christians actually embracing pluralism openly.

I believe such writers were right to recognize that modern society is increasingly pluralistic. They can assist us in conversation in one way. Quotes like that of Pannikar’s should make us realize that there is a big difference between equating a “single culture, model, ideology, religion or whatnot . . .” with living faith in Jesus Christ as revealed by the Holy Spirit. I think his words, when read one way at least, reveal the real heart of the problem that […]

Most of my Christian life I have heard Christians talk about interfaith dialogue. As a young Christian, and during the middle years of my life, I had no use for anything remotely like interfaith dialogue. The reason was simple. Liberal Christians thrived in such conversation precisely because they were more pluralistic and willing to entertain other faiths as equal to, or faithful to, the message of Christianity. Since I am not a pluralist, and because I believe John 14:6 means that Jesus “is the way, the truth and the life” then this dialogue has no real place in my understanding of mission or shared life.

Several things have changed my mind over the last decade or more.

First, a post-9/11 world compels us to engage in religious conversations in order to listen and to pursue peace, a goal which every Christian ought to embrace based upon the clear teaching of our Lord and the examples that […]