Ecumenical & Interfaith

If one reads the fly-leaf of Shabbir Akhtar’s book, one sees his intent is to “build bridges between the two religions.” One would expect that Akhtar, a research fellow at the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies in England, would strive to do that. But does he?

Book? The Christian good news? This short article sets out to determine from Islamic sources themselves, as to what is thought about when the word "Injil" is used by Muslims, and how it might affect Christian approaches.  

Hugh Fitzgerald, drew up a list of 38 questions about Islam. I wonder how the readers of The Network would answer these questions and what resources they would use to answer them. 

It would appear to be incumbent on the likes of Back to God Ministries, Home Missions, World Renew and World Missions to ask if their theologizing is driven more by the social sciences than by solid theological method. Here is where Eitel's simple schema is helpful.

A Muslim could engage a Christian or a Christian could engage a Muslim to become "dialogue partners" in order to eliminate prejudices, to come to understand the other, and possibly embrace their religion. But are the terms of the engagement as simple as meets the untrained eye? I would suggest absolutely not.

There are many people working in science who do not hold to evolution, and yet are scientists, some with a  PhD in science, or M.Sc. or BSc. Does an ecumenical attitude allow respect for these scientists, or is our ecumenical approach limited to "churchy" practices, or theological beliefs? 

In the relatively new push by the CRCNA to become a part of a much bigger organization (first WARC and REC, which folded into WCRC), I for one have a number of questions to which I lack answers.

What do you think makes for a good relationship between churches in other parts of the world and the CRC?