“A question on #2….are you saying that all believers are commanded to cross cultures? Does this mean that everyone has a blanket command to be a missionary….among a different culture?”

My response is below. How would you answer his question?

–

The short answer to your question is “yes”, but let me explain.

1. Remember that culture is a junk drawer term. There are many ways to define culture and numerous layers to a person’s, or society’s, culture. Therefore, crossing cultures is not as hard or flamboyant as it might sound. Crossing cultures may mean crossing economic, geographical, or ethno-linguistic barriers. This, by the way, is the difficulty with only defining “missionary” as one who purposefully cross cultures for ministry. Normally, people who do such are only thinking in terms of ethno-linguistic differences. Those are huge, but they are not the only factors that contribute to cultural identification.

I think James 2:1-13 is a great illustration here. The passage speaks to economic differences, not necessarily ethnic differences. But we all know that economic differences lead to cultural differences. This is an inevitable reality. Therefore, without speculating too much, I think James 2:1-13 speaks to culture as much as income levels. The main point is “don’t show favoritism to rich people, to people like you, or to people not like you”.

2. In most parts of the world, crossing cultures is a normal part of daily life. It is inevitable. Perhaps with the exception of North Korea, I’m not sure I can think of an area on earth that is not stock full of varying cultures and subcultures. Therefore, even if you boil down your missional strategy to making disciples of your “sphere of influence”, it will most likely include crossing cultures of some sort.

3. There is an undeniable cross cultural impulse in the New Testament and in the early church.

4. Similarly to other Biblical mandates (love your neighbor, remember those in prison, to look after orphans and widows, etc.), the Great Commission mandate to cross cultures does not imply every action of every Christian and every church ministry should directly and explicitly fulfill this mandate. That would be a Biblically inconsistent and physically unpractical interpretation of the Great Commission. But, given the overall missional drive of the entire Bible and the model of Jesus and the early church of making and multiplying disciples, I think it is fair to say that every Christian should regularly demonstrate reaching out to those of different cultures and subcultures. This may manifest itself in their daily lives in befriending someone not like them (an octogenarian and a young person, a middle class person and a homeless person, an African American and an anglo-saxon, etc.)

5. Remember, and this is important, the mandate to cross cultures stems from the very nature of God Himself. Under the New Covenant, God is not partial to any culture. And he calls us to the same impartiality in our ministry to others (James 2:1-13). Therefore, it is very natural for God and for Christians to impartially look past culture to the person in making a disciple.

In this series of posts, I give an overview of what the founder of sociology of religion, Max Weber, thought about Islam. Importantly, it will become clear that although Weber never wrote a book on Islam, his thought on the subject still influences us today. Amazing. Post 1 introduced Weber and the Protestant Ethic. Part 2 addressed why it is difficult to discern what Weber thought about Islam as well as the question, “Does Islam inhibit capitalistic development?”. Part 3 addresses the main critique of Weber’s thought on Islam: cultural essentialism. Part 4 discusses the effects of Weberian thought on Islam.

EFFECTS OF WEBERIAN THOUGHT

At the most basic level, Weber contented that religion was a significant determinant of variation in economic activity across different peoples and societies.  He posited that while Calvinistic Protestantism contributes to the development of capitalist society and therefore economic development, Oriental religions actually stifle development.  Development communication scholars fit Weber’s arguments into the Dominant Paradigm of development, especially since Weber argues that Islam stifles development (Melkote & Steeves, 2001: 181-182).  Obviously, the field of development communication today is critical of Weberian thought given its over simplistic analysis of eastern religions and development.  In many ways, Weber’s most valuable contribution was his concept creation of the Protestant Ethic. Thus, while Weber is not himself considered a scholar in development communication, I hypothesize that his work lays a conceptual foundation for development theorists and specialists, as well as religious pundits who focus on development issues.   This notion is shared by others: for instance, Matin-Asgari argues that Weber’s thought on Islam has significantly encouraged conceptions of Islam as a “stagnant culture, civilization, or historical tradition” (2004:294).  Matin-Asgari’s work traces Weberian influence on conceptions of Islam in the thought of Marshal Hodgson, Clifford Geertz, and Ernest Gellner.  The natural result of this, argues Martensson, is that essentialist scholars “explain the contemporary upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism as a necessary historical outcome of Islamic fundamentalism” (2007: 97).  Martensson, while aiming to explore the epistemological presuppositions of ‘culturalism’ as defined by Matin-asgari, also traces the relationship between Weber and Michel Foucault.  There are, of course, different interpretations of how impactful Weber’s thought on Islam has been.  Schluchter has claimed that Weber has not had any major impact on Orientalism or the sociological study of Islam (Salvatore, 1996).  Schluchter, though, stands in the minority.  Even Edward Said, though critical of Weber’s formulations, notes that he “nevertheless influenced the field considerably” (2003: 259).  Salvatore even links Weberian thought to the development of ‘Middle East Studies’ (1996: 472).

One of the most interesting aspects of how Weber’s thought has been applied is how Muslim reformers have used Weberian concepts to explain their civilization’s decline.  Turner (1974) points out that modern Islamic reformers have ironically imported Weber’s thesis to justify the decline of the Muslim world.  In short, Islamic intellectual elites such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida (the most famous three generation set of modern Islamic reformers) all embraced the notion that the Muslim world has lost prominence and power because it has deviated from its inherent rational ascetic nature – a clearly Weberian thesis. Capitalist development is indeed still possible for the Muslim world if they will return to “pure” Islam, one which embraces asceticism, activism, and a this-worldly ethic (Turner, 1974: 240).  In other words, Weber’s concepts, though criticized by many Western academics of the Muslim world, have taken root among some Muslim intellectuals themselves.

All the more interesting is how some scholars have used Weber’s own concepts to explain the development of some Muslim peoples!  This is the effect of Sukidi’s (2006) study on one Indonesian Muslim people.  Sukidi compares Calvinism and Islam with Weber’s PE thesis among an Indonesian Muslim “puritans” people, the Muhammadiyah.  He specifically looks at Weber’s thought regarding the doctrines of predestination, salvation, inner-worldly asceticism, and rationality.  He argues that the Muhammadiyah may be called “a Protestant type of Islamic reform” (200).  He finds the spirit of entrepreneurship, individualism, and rationalism among the Muhammadiyah and links that to the PE thesis.

CLOSING WORDS
The underlying critique of Sukidi’s article centers on Weber’s essentialist conception of the Muslim world.  Weber’s intention, as stated, is not to study the religion of Islam and its global variants as much as to understand why capitalism did not develop in the Orient as much as it did in the Occident.  That said, Sukidi brings the reader back to Weber’s greatest fault, his essentialism of the Muslim world; as Sukidi notes, “‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ are not univocal but multivocal” (2006, 195, Abstract).  Not only is this essentialism damaging as it leads future researchers to oversimplified conclusions about the Muslim world, but it also leads to overlooking critical ‘exceptions’ to the norm, such as the Muhammadiyah of Indonesia.  Essentialism is likewise incredibly damaging to the cause of development.  The implicit value of the participatory approach to development is that it allows for diversity of peoples as well as diversity within peoples.  Embracing diversity within the Muslim world would have been a significant step forward for Weber.  His focus on the relationship between different religions and capitalism is a worthy, scholarly endeavor in itself.  Tragically, though, he purposively or unconsciously failed to remember that people are not absolute constructs of their so-called religion; rather, religion is fundamentally the belief of individual people.  In other words, a Muslim is not defined by something called “Islam”; rather Islam is defined by the individual and collective voices of Muslims around the world.

[See the series bibliography here]

[Photo from Wikipedia]

In this series of posts, I give an overview of what the founder of sociology of religion, Max Weber, thought about Islam. Importantly, it will become clear that although Weber never wrote a book on Islam, his thought on the subject still influences us today. Amazing. Post 1 introduced Weber and the Protestant Ethic. Part 2 addressed why it is difficult to discern what Weber thought about Islam as well as the question, “Does Islam inhibit capitalistic development?”. Part 3 below addresses the main critique of Weber’s thought on Islam: cultural essentialism.

CULTURAL ESSENTIALISM

The major critique of Weber’s thought on Islam is his cultural essentialism. Salvatore’s point of origin in his work is that essentialism has been the major way in which the West has cognitively domesticated the Islamic Orient.  Ultimately, Salvatore hopes to defend the critique of Orientalism on the grounds of essentialism and show that essentialism is a “fundamental constraint of cross cultural cognizance” (1996: 457), which has plagued Islam/West relations.  Salvatore seeks to reconstruct the twentieth century trajectory of essentialism especially as it concerns Weberian applications to make sense of “what went wrong’ in the Muslim world.  He argues that Weber’s essentialism was a product of the Orientalist German scholars from whom he learned about Islam (1996: 461).

Another scholar which criticizes Weber’s essentialism is Matin-Asgari.  In his work, “Islamic Studies and the Spirit of Max Weber: A Critique of Cultural Essentialism,” (2004) an article which Martensson calls “brilliant” (2007: 97), Matin-Asgari examines the work of Marshal Hodgson, Clifford Geertz, and Ernest Gellner and argues that their cultural essentialism is rooted in the works of Max Weber.  This is an ambitious thesis indeed, but one that shows the lasting influence and importance of Weber’s thought on development, capitalism, and Islam.  He argues that these scholars see fundamentalist Islam as the natural development of Islam.  Ulrika Martensson (2007) follows up Matin-Asgaris work and goes deeper into the relationship between Weber and Foucault regarding their ideas on truth and power as well as Weber’s epistemological presuppositions of ‘culturalism’.

[See the series bibliography here]

WHY UNDERSTANDING WEBER AND ISLAM IS DIFFICULT

The difficulty in studying Weber’s thought on Islam is that, first, his references to Islam are scattered and confusing at best; second, he died before finishing his sociology of religion which would have included a full treatment of Islam; third, frankly, it is difficult to untwine Weberian thought into congruent, simple arguments; fourth, connecting Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis to Weber’s thought on Islam is all the more difficult considering there are significant differences of opinion among scholars in their interpretation of Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis!

DOES ISLAM INHIBIT CAPITALISTIC DEVELOPMENT?

In his article, “Islam, Capitalism, and the Weber Thesis”, Bryan Turner argues that Weber presented four different PE theses.  First, the PE is an idealistic theory of values.  Second, it is “an argument about the necessary and sufficient conditions for the emergence of capitalism” (1974: 231).  Third, it seeks merely to understand the capitalist (or non-capitalist) development of different societies. It is important to note here that others have felt that Weber desired to go beyond merely the study of western rational capitalism to understand the uniqueness of Western culture and Western science (Salvatore, 1996: 467).  Fourth, the PE thesis supports the idea that socio-economic contexts shape beliefs and economic development.  Turner argues that the fourth of these is the only one which is both theoretically strong as well as historical viable; the lack of Islamic capitalist development is due to the fact that Islamic society has a long history of the domination of patrimonialism (1974: 231).  Turner agrees with this last thesis that, “Islamic values and motives certainly influenced the way in which Muslims behaved in their economic, political and social activities, but we can only understand why these values and motives were present by studying the socio-economic conditions (patrimonial dominance and prebendal feudalism) which determined Islamic history.” (1974: 238).

The issue at hand in Turner’s analysis of Weber’s thought is whether the context of the development of Islam led to the absence of capitalism in Islamic society or whether this absence is due to something inherent in ‘Islam’ itself.  Turner argues that Weber thought that the idea here is not that Islam lacked the sufficient conditions for the development of capitalism, but that the dominance of the warrior mentality, mystical Sufism, and a qadi based justice system, actually inhibited the development of capitalism (1974: 234ff.).  It was patrimonialism in which imbibed the development of Islam that inhibited the development of capitalism.  As Turner puts it, “It is the patrimonial economic and political structure which explains the absence of a capitalist spirit, or rational law and of independent cities” (1974: 237).

Also relevant is whether in Islamic society there is asceticism concomitant to the rational asceticism that Weber argued was found in Calvinistic society.  In short, Weber argued that two social groups inhibited this rational asceticism in early Islamic society: the warrior tribe and the Sufi brotherhood (Turner, 1974: 234).  The warrior reframed the issue of salvation from the right of Providence to choose the elect to an issue of a warrior life-style where the warrior attained salvation through jihad (Turner, 1974: 235).  Sufi mysticism “watered down” Islamic monotheism as well as salvific themes with Islamic practice. Thus, Weber argued that ‘Islam was never really a religion of salvation’ (Turner, 1974: 235).  This conclusion cuts to the core of the PE thesis as Islam ‘could not provide the social leverage whereby the Muslim Middle East could be lifted out of feudal stagnation’ (Turner, 1974: 235).

That Weber needed the Orient to help him understand the Occident is consistent with Salvatore’s argument that “the intellectual distinction always needs an external Other in order to construct a framework of universal reference.  In the Western case, the view of the Islamic Orient, its ‘orientalization,’ was crucial for defining the Western path of modernity” (1996: 458).  It is no surprise that Edward Said was critical of Weber for casting ‘types’ between the Occident and Orient which ended up being “an ‘outside’ confirmation of many of the canonical theses held by Orientalists, whose economic ideas never extended beyond asserting the Oriental’s fundamental incapacity for trade, commerce, and economic rationality” (2003: 259).

Modern scholars that come to Weber’s defense are few and far between.  For instance, only two authors within one collection of essays come to the defense of Weber, namely, Hull and Schluchter, the editors of the volume (Collins, 2001: 344-345).  Another scholar, Niles Hansen comes to Weber’s defense in pointing out Weber’s stated data weaknesses, arguing that Weber was always merely interested in the “motivational forces behind the appearance of modern rational capitalism in the Occident and its failure to emerge in other cultural contexts” (464), and in asking the question of whether Weber’s theories are necessarily bound to the one specific dogma of Calvinism.  In Hansen’s view, Weber was more concerned with the social and economic actions that a dogma encouraged rather than the dogma itself.

[See the series bibliography here]

INTRODUCTION TO WEBER

Max Weber (21 April 1864–14 June 1920) was a profoundly influential German sociologist. He is regarded as the father of the sociology of religion. His most famous work is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (which has a nice Wikipedia overview).

The impact of Weberian argument on the field of sociology of religion cannot be understated; in fact, they produced “one of the most heated and prolonged intellectual controversies of the century” (Bouma, 141).  Thousands of pages have been written analyzing Weber’s most famous thesis — that of the relationship between the development of capitalism and the Protestant Ethic (PE) — through a multitude of intellectual angles.  In fact, Weber’s thesis spawned a new brand of scholar, the “Protestant Ethic researcher” (Bouma, 142).  There have been multitudes of studies applying the PE theory to different cases, such as comparing North American Protestants and Catholics (see Bouma, 1973, for a review of these studies).

While Weber himself did not write relatively much on Islam, his PE theory as well as his minimal writings on Islam have impacted tremendously Western ideas about Islam.  Through the late sixties, Weber’s theories were a “pivotal conditioning force… behind each effort to make sense of ‘modern Islam’ and its alleged ‘failure’” (Salvatore, 1996: 457).  This question of “what went wrong” has haunted Middle East scholars in both the Occident and the Orient,  no matter how valid the question is in itself. This is likely the question that Weber also struggled with as he thought through his theories on religion and the development of capitalism.  “Why”, he must have asked, “are there no viable examples of capitalist societies in the nineteenth century Muslim world?”  Weber’s thought on Islam and the development (or lack of) capitalism in the Muslim world is the topic of this literature review.

THE PROTESTANT ETHIC

The PE argument is based on four attributes of Calvinism: the doctrine of the calling, the doctrine of predestination, strong asceticism, and the doctrine of sanctification (Bouma, 142-143, originally framed the PE thesis in this way).  First, the call of God is upon all to work for His glory; in fact, this is the chief end of humanity, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” as the Westminster Catechism states.  By this, “secular” work was given a divine purpose.  Also, this doctrine led to a high value on excellence and honesty in the workplace.  The second doctrine is that of predestination.  Whereas the Catholic church has long held that salvation was based on fulfillment of the church’s commands as well as the sacrament, Calvinistic soteriology argued that God, and only God, chooses those whom He will save and those who He will damn.  Thus, God predestines whom He wills. With Calvinism, therefore, came a fundamental change in the way in which people viewed the connection between religion and money.  Since humanity does not know for sure who is ‘elect’ and who is not, they can only presume upon Biblical promises.  Thus, individuals who adhered to Calvinism were called to confirm their election via success in their worldly pursuits.  This led people to began to see the value of “secular” work.  Occupational success became a proxy of one’s Divine election.  Third, the Calvinist Protestant society pursued worldly success with puritan passion, or what Weber calls, ascetic rationalism. Even the poor were able, via their ascetic lifestyles, to amass capital and enter the market.  Lastly, the doctrine of sanctification led believers to hyper rationalized lives as they believed that throughout their lives God was sanctifying them to be complete and perfect bearers of His image.  Therefore, all of life should be ordered and pursued with the sincerest rationality.  In summary, therefore, Weber hypothesized a causal connection of some sorts  between Calvinistic Protestant society and the development of capitalism.

BLOG SERIES BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Randall. 2001. Book Review, Max Weber and Islam, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. V. 40, N. 2, pp. 344-345.

Huff, Toby E., and Wolfgang Schluchter. 1999. Max Weber & Islam. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Kaelber, L. 1996. “Weber’s Lacuna: Medieval Religion and the Roots of Rationalization”. Journal of the History of Ideas. 57 (3): 465-486.

Martensson, U. 2007. “The Power of Subject: Weber, Foucault and Islam”. Critique-Saint Paul. 16 (2): 97-136.

Matin-Asgari, Afshin. 2004. “Islamic studies and the spirit of Max Weber: a critique of cultural essentialism”. Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies. 13 (3): 293-312.

Melkote, Srinivas R., and H. Leslie Steeves. 2001. Communication for development in the Third World: theory and practice for empowerment. New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Said, Edward W. 2003. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Salvatore, A. 1996. “Beyond Orientalism? Max Weber and the Displacements of “Essentialism” in the Study of Islam”. Arabica. 43 (3): 457-485.

Seidman, Steven. 1984. “The Main Aims and Thematic Structures of Max Weber’s Sociology”. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, V. 9, N. 4, pp. 381-404.

Sukidi. 2006. “Max Weber’s remarks on Islam: The Protestant Ethic among Muslim puritans”. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. 17 (2): 195-205.

Turner, Bryan S. 1974. “Islam, Capitalism, and the Weber Theses”. The British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 25, No. 2. pp. 230-243.

(Weber Image from Wikipedia)

I don’t normally just post book notes, but I just read this one and since I am not a trained theologian or scholar of hermeneutics, I fear anything but mere reflection on the text and careful application.  For those readers only interested in matters regarding Christian-Muslim relations, see the last paragraph in this post.

I’m not sure that anything that D.A. Carson writes is easy to read, nor is any of it irrelevant. This book was originally developed and presented as lectures, hence is colloquial structure.

He begins by listing 5 reasons why the doctrine of the love of God is “difficult”:

1. Since most deists of any sort in Western civilization assume that God must be a loving being, it is difficult to distinguish in present culture what the Bible means when it says that “God is love”.
2. Western culture also has devalued God of most anything that it deems uncomfortable. This has led to belief in an overly emotional God devoid of any awkward or unpleasant characteristic (i.e., his lordship, his justice, etc.)
3. Postmodern reinforces “the most sentimental, syncretistic, and often pluralistic views of God, with no other authority base than the postmodern epistemology itself.” (p. 14)
4. The love of God is itself very difficult even for confessing Christians to grasp without precarious imbalance and disproportion to the Bible’s teaching.
5. Often, the doctrine of the love of God is portrayed over simplistically.

He then lists 5 ways the Bible speaks about the love of God. These 5 ways are the conceptual and theological underpinning for the rest of Carson’s book.

1. The peculiar love of the Father for the son, and of the Son for the Father
2. God’s providential love over all that he has made
3. God’s salvific stance toward the fallen world
4. God’s particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect.
5. God’s love is sometimes conditional upon the obedience of His people.

He admonishes the church not to absolutize or make exclusive any one of the different ways that the Bible talks about the love of God. This only leads to theological imbalance and pastoral carelessness.

In chapter 2, Carson rearticulates his argument that the “agapeo” word studies are a methodologically flawed manner of grasping God’s love. This argument first appeared in his book Exegetical Fallacies (Baker Academic, 1996). “What is now quite clear to almost everyone who works in the fields of linguistics and semantics is that such an understanding of love cannot be tied in any univocal way to the agapeo word group” (26).

He then exegetes John 5:16-30 in order to explain nuances of the intra-Trinitarian love of God. His main point, in the end, is that the intra-Trinitarian love of God is the theological under girding for understanding God’s love for us and how we relate back to God and to Jesus.  I.e., Jn 3:16 and Romans 8:32 make sense and are good news because we know how much the Father loves the Son.

As a quick critique: I find it fascinating that in the chapter on intra-Trinitarian love the Holy Spirit is hardly mentioned, even in passing. Why?

In chapter 3 Carson establishes 3 points:

1. God may be impassible, but only in the sense that he is without unconstrained and self compromising emotions, but he is certainly not emotionless – in fact, the whole corpus of Scripture illustrates emotion from his perfection. The doctrine of God’s impassibility is “trying to avoid a picture of God who is changeable, given over to mood swings, dependent upon his creatures” (49).
2. God is sovereign and transcendent as well as personal. These two parts are givens. Elevate over the other and you have yourself a nice destructive heap of heresy.
3. God has emotions, but they are perfectly constrained as a function of his own perfection and holiness. He is impassible “in the sense that he sustains no “passion”, no emotion, that makes him vulnerable from the outside, over which he has no control, or which he has not foreseen” (60). Passages like Eph. 3:14-21 are not using anthropopathism. God’s love, to go back to the argument over the agapeo word grouping, is not just willed altruism. In fact, his passions are perfectly unified with his other perfections. Specifically, God’s love is presented in the biblical text as tied to the other perfections of God. God’s love is one of His own perfections of being. In other words, his love is not dependent on the loveliness of the loved.

Chapter 4 is a meditation on God’s love and wrath. While God’s love is part of His perfect being, His wrath is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God (though He is perfect and holy when filled and when displaying his wrath). His wrath is a function of the rebellion of His people. He then delves into a strong discussion on the intent of the atonement. Is it limited or for all? He argues for a distinction between general and definite.

Carson is strongest in this book in the last few pages. Therein he takes the 5 ways that God’s love is described in Scripture and reflects on those ways elicits our love for God and for fellow mankind.

Finally, I find it fascinating that Carson feels drawn to make a comparison with the God of Islam (p. 39). He states that Allah is not eternally other oriented in the same sense of the Triune God in whom each Person exists in perfect submission, appraisal, and affection with the others.  Since Allah is not plurality-in-unity, only when in time he created all things did he have the capacity to love something other than himself. The theology aside. Isn’t it amazing that this renown Christian theologian finds it appropriate to make a pedegogical comparison between the Biblical and Qur’anic God while doing the same with no other deity of another world religion?!

Enjoy!

Wuthnow, Robert. 2009. Boundless faith: the global outreach of American churches. Berkeley: University of California Press.

In the first part of the book, Wuthnow’s critiques the Global Christianity paradigm popularized by Philip Jenkins, Andrew Walls, Samuel Escobar, Mark Noll, and others. Wuthnow summarizes the main tenants of this paradigm: “Christianity on a global scale has experienced significant growth during the twentieth century and this growth will continue. The majority of Christians now reside outside of the United States and Europe. The growth of Christianity in these other parts of the world has been exceptionally strong and will remain so. The growth is happening primarily through the efforts of indigenous Pentecostal and other Spirit-filled churches, and for this reason Christianity in the global South is especially vibrant and authentic. During this same period Christianity has been weakening in the global North and as a result countries in the South are now sending missionaries to the North” (p. 36). Wuthnow analyzes two forces which he believes have significantly shaped the Global Christianity paradigm: secularization and postcolonialism.

Wuthnow critiques the Global Christianity paradigm on the grounds that it is, in fact, not so “new”, that it oversimplifies the numbers, it speaks nothing to the issue of “influence” of different shapes of Christianity globally, and it avoids any mention of how the global Church is interconnected. Wuthnow wants to offer a more (in the words of Edward Said) contrapuntal approach to the study of global Christianity. In other words, the Global Christianity paradigm speaks of the globalization of Christianity only in terms of quantity concentrations and avoiding, ironically, analysis of the actual interconnectedness of global Christianity (the very essence of the flat world idea). This critique is worth mentioning, though perhaps too vehemently stated by Wuthnow. Rather than slamming the scholars of the Global Christianity paradigm for forsaking analysis of the interconnectedness of the church, it seams more reasonable to consider what has been written thus far (think: Jenkins, Noll, Todd Johnson, Walls, Barrett, etc.) as the first step in a broader, systematic analysis of the global church. After all, we can’t understand how the church is connected until we know that the church exists globally and some things about its many incarnations in the global south.

On another note, I find this statement very interesting and massively consequential:

“It is more likely that the new paradigm popularized by Jenkins, Walls, Escobar, and others gained popularity because it resolved — or appeared to resolve — underlying concerns about the fate of Christianity.”

This poses the general question on which I am currently writing: “What cognitive phenomena shape Christian thought?”

THE REPUBLICAN noise machine is making a lot of, well, noise, about Barack Obama’s supposed claim that America is one of the world’s biggest Muslim countries (what he actually said was that “if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world”).

This is dumb as well as disingenuous. Mr Obama has rightly recognised that America’s Muslim population is one of the country’s most powerful weapons in its struggle against radical Islam. America can proudly claim that Islam can flourish along with Christianity, Hinduism etc in the context of a peaceful, pluralist society. He can also point out that American Muslims are a relatively prosperous bunch. I touched on the case for America making more use of the example of its Muslim population in my recent book, God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World. Pew also has an invaluable survey of American Muslims, pointing out that they are, for the most part, successful, integrated, pious and pro-American.

Once again, Mr Obama looks smart and his critics look dumb–and not just dumb but malevolently dumb.

St. Francis Magazine released their June edition which includes an article of yours truly. Here’s the table of contents:

Reappropriation: an accomodationist hermeneutic of Islamic Christianity: Duane Miller writes about how Muslims who have become followers of Jesus Christ, sometimes adopt new hermeneutical methods for reading the Qur’an. What does Duane mean with this word ‘reappropriation’?

Take up and read: Kenneth Cragg’s call for Muslims to engage the Biblical Christ: Kenneth Cragg called Muslims to engage with the Biblical Christ. J. Scott Bridger discusses Cragg’s views in this article.

Reflections on the concept of creation in Muhyi’ ad-Din ibn al-’Arabi: Phil Bourne reflects on the concept of creation in Muhyi’ad-dīn Ibn al-‛Arabī. How deep was the impact of Platonism on the Sufi movement?

Butrus al-Bustani and the American missionaries: Joey Shaw discusses what role Butrus al-Bustânî and the American missionaries to Syria played in the Renaissance (Nahdah) of the Arab World in the 19th century.

The Qur’anic view of patterns in history: John Stringer introduces the theme of the Qur’ānic view of patterns in history, with a special focus on the role of prophets and the rise and fall of societies.

Cracks in the foundation of Islam? Duane Miller wonders whether it is justified to say that there are presently cracks in the foundation of Islam. This is suggested by many mission publications, but is it true?

See the Middle East Issue Guide as an example.

Zwemer’s influence on future evangelicals is not only via his prolific pen, but also due to his passionate longevity in ministry to Muslims. One of his colleagues said of him, “He may be said to be a man of one idea. While his interests and knowledge were wide, I never talked with him ten minutes that the conversation did not veer to Islam.” As much as any of his ideas about Islam, his unrelenting passion over decades for Muslims to know Jesus made him America’s “apostle to Islam”.

I read tonight an article on Zwemer that fascinates me [John Hubers, “Samuel Zwemer and the challenge of Islam: from polemic to hint of dialogue,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 28, no. 3 (July 2004): 117-121.]. This is a fascinating article because it highlights Zwemer’s “modification” of thought and tone towards Islam as he grew older and more endeared to actual Muslims (not just to the “Muslim world”).

In short, Zwemer’s tone changed from polemic to irenic. His thought on Islam changed regarding the person of Muhammad, the nature of Allah versus the Christian God, and the place of colonialization in mission.It is really encouraging to read about Zwemer in this way for the simple reason that his change provides us with model for our own personal change…

It is OK to change what you think or feel about Muslims and Islam.

It is OK to change how to think about Muhammad and Allah.

It is OK to let Muslims become your “brethren” and become endeared to Muslims in the path of Zwemer.

It is OK to still critique Islam but with an irenic and thoughtful tone.

Interestingly, the more irenic Zwemer did not abandon his critique of Islam and Muhammad. Instead, his critique became more thoughtful. As his relationships with Muslims grew, his critique also became more respectful. We learn from this that a Godly approach to Islam does not mean abandoning critiques of Islam, but rather refining them according to the Gospel, in both substance and tone.

With Zwemer, this refining took decades. I hope that we can learn from Zwemer’s life (Heb. 13:7) and let this Gospel re-callibration happen more quickly in our own lives.

Mark A. Noll, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (IVP Academic, 2009).

This book surveys American evangelicalism using the analytical mirror of global Christianity, or in the words of the subtitle, it looks at how the American experience of Christianity reflects global faith. Noll asks the question how we should understand the role of American Christianity and American history in shaping global Christianity. The central argument is that American Christianity is incredibly important for the world, not necessarily though, because of its direct influence on the multiplicity of indigenous Christian forms throughout the world, but because the development of American evangelical Christianity in the eighteenth century is the model for Christianity’s development throughout the majority world; in Noll’s own words, “American form rather than American influence has been the most important American contribution to the recent history of Christianity” (p. 15).

Noll begins in chapter 1 by laying out the magnitude of changes in global Christianity since 1900. His examples are no less than incredible: this past Sunday more Christian believers worshiped in China than all of “Christian Europe”, this past Sunday there were more Presbyterians at church in Ghana than in Scotland, etc. These changes have been documented in length also by Phillip Jenkins in his global Christianity trilogy. Noll also explains briefly how the multiplicity of new Christian expressions – most of them direct products of the singular task of Bible translation (!) – have tremendous implications for economics, policy formation, nation building, and international relations. New Christian expressions (“new” in their incredible predominance since 1900) have also revealed 3 main theological questions for Christianity: How close is the world of spirits to the everyday world? What is the unit of salvation? And how should believers read the Bible?

I fear that books on global Christianity are undervalued in Western evangelicalism – probably because of their academic style as well as their unfortunate classification as “missions” literature, rather than “theology” or “ecclesiology” literature. But books like this challenge the fundamental conscious and unconscious assumptions of every day Christians about their mundane religious thinking and practices.

It is good for us to evaluate our own American Christian expressions by the standard of Chinese ecclesiology, or by Ghanaian worship forms, or by Nigerian missiology, or by Indian theology. Indeed, this is one of the great, unique, aspects of the Kingdom of God – our diversity reflects the God who is, as Jonathan Edwards once described, the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies”. The multiplicity of Christian expressions arising out of the teaching of a single Book keeps us humble and constantly investigative in our own forms of the Christian life. In this way, global Christianity, in its diversity, is a tremendously sanctifying gift of grace to the local church.

“Our country must also build a dense network of personal relationships and partnerships between Americans and Muslims globally.”

I totally agree. I argue that the most effective, lasting, and expedient solution to Christian-Muslim relations is the development of healthy personal relationships between Muslims and Christians. Policy matters. But relationships make the lasting difference. If relationships are the solution, knowledge of others is the metric. That said, the unfortunate reality is that most of us don’t know much, if anything, about actual Muslims.

“A new relationship between Americans and the Muslim world must start by overcoming high levels of anger, distrust, and misunderstanding. In a Gallup poll of Muslims worldwide, a majority cited a sense of humiliation and a perceived lack of understanding from the West as key factors in shaping negative attitudes toward the United States. A majority of Americans surveyed answered either “nothing” or “I don’t know” when asked what they admired most about Muslims and Islam.”

We need change within the international community. We need to change not only Islam-West relations but also Muslim-Christian relations. This will happen by relationships and policy – not one without the other. While policy requires the commitment of certain high level organizations and politicians over (typically) a sustained period… relationships can happen anytime and among anyone.

That is good news that should give us hope that change can happen.

Hear me: addressing our country’s financial problems is good. We need to help our people walk through recession (of all kinds) with steadiness, faith, joy, and worshipful hearts. Listen to the very excellent series on “Recession” by my pastor here.

But how many times do we think about the recession of others outside of our own country? Perhaps in the event of great catastrophe, we are moved to give or pray for a day or a few weeks at most. But, no matter how incredible the suffering of others outside our own context, we too often allow our suffering to trump that of all others. Oh, I am so deeply guilty of this!

We have a simple command: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Phil. 2:4). This command applies in times of suffering and blessing. Could it be that the “others” referred to here are even those outside our own personal circles of interaction? Perhaps even those outside our culture and country?

Suffering then provides an incredible opportunity to display the power of the Gospel in our relentless championing of the needs of others, those in our country, and those outside.

[Pic from gwydionwilliams, used by CC permission]

I am spending this week giving my full attention to writing. Writing what? You may ask!

Here’s the scoop. I am writing my graduate school thesis and using it to prepare a book for the popular Christian market.

The book will be the first book length analysis of post 9-11 American evangelical Christian thought on Islam.

I am arguing, among other things, for a re-callibration to the Gospel in Christian thought and engagement with Islam. The way we think, feel, and act towards Muslims and Islam should flow distinctly and unashamedly from the river of the Gospel. At the core, the book is really about applied doctrine.

As with every breath that I take, I am dependent on the Father for all things. Writing all day is fairly taxing, as you might imagine. I’m hoping to knock out about ~75 pages this week of actually writing. We’ll see. I am about 30 pages so far.

Friends: I cherish your prayers.