("Loving God and Neighbor Together"…)

January 24, 2008

Foreword

"A Common Word Between Us and You": A Path to Progress?

Much ink has been spilled in recent years on the subject of interfaith dialogue, and particularly that between Christians, who nearly always are Western Protestant or Roman Catholic, and Muslims. The discussion peaked in recent months with the public letter ("A Common Word Between Us and You") organized by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, Jordan and signed by 138 Muslim clerics. The October 13, 2007 open letter was sent to Christian leaders throughout the world.

Little more than a month later, on November 18, 2007, Christian scholars and church leaders, largely from the United States, responded en masse via a full-page advertisement in the New York Times. The letter, titled "Loving God and Neighbor Together: A Christian Response to `A Common Word Between Us and You,`" was drafted by Evangelical Christians at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and signed by more than 300 Christians leaders, a great majority of whom were Western Evangelicals.

Little of the discussion has focused on the history of such dialogues, and the discernable results of interfaith efforts between Christians and Muslims - especially with regard to how these various efforts have positively or negatively affected Christian minorities living in Islamic-majority contexts.

Within the Western Church, and particularly among Evangelicals, there is increasing debate over how to "dialogue" with Muslims. Western Christians have a growing awareness of the need to understand Islam and Muslims, and to foster relations that finds effective common ground for working towards increasing peace, while faithful to the Gospel.

Much of the contemporary debate in the Western Church focuses on practical issues of "how" to relate to Islam and to Muslims, which seem the most pressing and thus important. At the same time, the more profound and difficult questions of understanding Islam and its contemporary expressions seem often to be lost or left unexamined.

It goes without saying that the latter concern is more important, as it shapes the former. Both of these are however secondary to the Church`s understanding of truth, meaning the Truth that forms its own identity and which wholly defines its purpose. Truth is what God revealed through the Law, the Prophets and in the fullness of His incarnate Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christians answer any of the questions regarding interfaith in light of this Truth, but also recognizing the Islamic point of view that truth is defined in the Quran and hadith, institutionalized in Islam`s laws and expressed throughout its formative and later history. In the following report, we focus on these areas in depth, and address some of the more complicated issues relating to interfaith dialogue, with particular reference to the Yale Statement.