So speaks Jay Smith, an English Christian who routinely debates Muslims in Hyde Park and elsewhere.
Western seminaries taught Smith "friendship evangelism" as the primary way to share Christ with Muslims. Nothing should offend. Never point out contradictions, inconsistencies, or historical inaccuracies in another person's religious beliefs. Everything aims to convert. Judge results by the number of conversions.
Smith decided to take an alternate approach:
Defend historic, orthodox Christianity.
Answer untruths that Islam proclaims about the Bible, Jesus, and Christians.
Hold Islam itself accountable for the actions of its followers.
"We have to start taking Christ back to his Mediterranean roots," says Smith. "True love confronts friends when they go wrong. Paul certainly argued. Jesus certainly argued. That's the kind of love Muslims need to hear.
"Propositional truth confronts," he argues, in fundamentalist fashion. "If there's not a reaction, we're not preaching the gospel."
In most Muslim-Christian dialogue, Smith believes Christians typically concede on points of orthodox doctrine to make the faith palatable to Muslims. Smith asks: Why should Muslims respect any Christian who distances himself from what he claims to believe?
Read the whole thing.
A middle-aged husband, father, bibliophile and history enthusiast commenting to no one in particular.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Secret to Thriving during the Eastern Great Lent.
A couple secrets, actually. The first is Lebanese and Syrian cooking. At our new Melkite parish, the Divine Liturgy has been followed by Len...
-
Edward Feser is an admirable thinker and superb digital pugilist. He makes the Thomist case with considerable energy, and is a welcome read....
-
The Catholic Church announces that it is discontinuing support of its previous OS. I mean, TC and the Coddling of the Krauts makes that cl...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Be reasonably civil. Ire alloyed with reason is fine. But slagging the host gets you the banhammer.