Bible Study

This Bible study is part of a six-session resource, God for the World —Church for the World: The Mission of the Church in Today's World, by Shirley C. Guthrie, published by Witherspoon Press (to order a copy call Presbyterian Distribution Service at (800) 524-2612). This resource may be used with any group interested in a foundational understanding of mission within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

God for the World — Church for the World: The Mission of the Church in Today's World,
by Shirley C. Guthrie

Session 5

Mission as Dialogue

You Will Need*

• Crepe-paper rolls in at least two colors
• Playdough
• Crayons and markers
• Newsprint
• Construction paper
• Pipe cleaners
• Glue
• Scissors

Introduction

In the past, the Presbyterian Church thought about its mission to the world as “foreign missions” and thought about its mission work in the states as “home missions” or “evangelism.”

Foreign missions were often based on the conviction that the churches in the “Christian West” or “Christian America” were to take the good news of God in Jesus Christ to the “heathen” worshipers of “false gods” in other parts of the world. The church’s task was to work for the conversion of these “outsiders” to Christianity, the one true religion, and to convince (and sometimes to force) them to think and live like American Christians.

Home missions or evangelism had to do with inviting people to claim for themselves the Christian gospel, which was not totally strange to them as they lived in a society shaped by Christian ideas and values but which they had wandered away from or never taken seriously.

But now these old distinctions no longer make sense. On the one hand, the church and Christian faith are alive and well in all parts of the world. On the other hand, followers of other religions who once lived “over there” are now our fellow workers and next-door neighbors, in some places outnumbering Christians. (There are, for instance, more Muslims than Presbyterians in the United States, and mosques as well as churches can be found in our cities and towns.)

Moreover, even in so-called Christian Europe and America, more and more people live without any religious commitment at all, or with commitment only to vague “moral principles” and “religious values” without any specific Christian content. Even when such people do not openly reject the Christian faith, they often believe that they can live just as happily and successfully without it. They are what is called “practical atheists.”

Whether we look abroad or at home, it has become increasingly clear that we live in a pluralistic world in which Christians are the minority, as they were at the beginning of the Christian movement. In the middle time (between the persecuted, fledgling church and the church up through the middle decades of the twentieth century) the Christian church in Europe, and then in the Americas, acquired the power and influence to shape the political and social world around it. As religious conflicts in our own country and (more violently) around the world have made increasingly clear, there can be no peace within or among nations unless people of different religions—or no religion—learn to respect one another and live together in peace.

What is the church’s mission in such a pluralistic world? Many deeply committed Christians believe that before we can invite people to believe in and live by the Christian gospel, we must enter into “dialogue” with people of different or no faith with the goal of simply understanding and accepting them despite our differences. Such dialogue is no substitute for the evangelistic mission of the church, but in a pluralistic world it is the necessary beginning of evangelism. In this session we will talk about this beginning, and in the next about evangelism as such.

*These materials are used in the alternative activity.

The Christian Basis for Dialogue

Why should we become involved in an open and friendly conversation about faith and life with people outside or inside the church who do not share our understanding? The reason is not only that our country but our world will self-destruct if people who are different from one another cannot learn to live together with mutual respect. Though that is true, it is certainly not in the interest of a broad tolerance and inclusiveness to compromise or sell out the Christian gospel and adopt an “anything goes” religious and ethical relativism. Rather, we must enter into dialogue because the Christian gospel itself permits, invites, and requires it—specifically because of what (as we have seen in earlier sessions) it tells us about our fellow human beings and about our triune God.

First, our own Christian faith tells us that all human beings are created in the image of God and are dearly loved by God. That includes Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and followers of other religions. It includes people who live without any faith at all. And (lest we forget) it also includes other Christians whose denominational affiliation, or whose liberal, conservative, or evangelical interpretation of Christian faith and life is different from our own. To love God is to love them too. Not just from a distance or in condescending superiority but in taking the time and effort to share ourselves and what we believe with them and to invite them to share themselves and what they believe with us. To refuse to enter into such conversation with them is to say that they are not important to us or to our God. It is to deny (and withhold from them) the good news of our own gospel. They too are created in God’s own image, and they too are important to us and our God, whether or not they believe and live as we do.

Second, people who believe differently from us, people who interpret Scripture differently (or even read a different Scripture), people who have had different life experiences—all will have insights to share with us. They will give us new understandings of God, humanity, and the world. None of us knows God perfectly. No denomination or religion can capture God in a box and claim that their knowledge and perception is all there is to know about God. In dialogue, we share our perceptions and experiences. In dialogue we learn from one another—learning not only with our minds but also with our hearts.

Third, our faith in the triune God impels us to open and friendly conversation with people of other faiths or no faith. It teaches us that our God is present and at work not only inside but also outside the Christian circle. There too God the Creator is at work to preserve human life and welfare and to do justice for the poor and oppressed. There too the risen and living Christ is at work forgiving and befriending sinners, reconciling enemies, caring for the suffering, loving the unloved. There too the life-giving, life-renewing, community-building Spirit of God is at work to bring truth, beauty, kindness, and freedom from everything that dehumanizes and enslaves. Since that is true, we may expect to find some awareness of the grace and truth of the triune God we confess in the thinking and lives of non-Christians too. Sometimes, in fact, we may discover among these “outsiders” a personal integrity, gratitude for the goodness of God, self-giving love and commitment to justice, and seriousness about what they believe that puts us Christians to shame.

We do not go into foreign territory when we enter into conversation with unbelievers or other-believers; we enter into territory where our God has already gone and is already at work before us. To refuse to enter into such conversation is to deny the good news of our own triune God—and to cut ourselves off from the possibility that we might sometimes learn from them what our own faith looks like when it is actually practiced.

The kind of dialogue we have been talking about, in other words, is not something different from, or only preparatory for, the church’s mission to proclaim the good news of God in Jesus Christ. It is itself a demonstration of that good news.

Assignment 1.. Think of positive examples of conversations you have had with people whose views differed from yours. Don’t limit yourself to faith conversations. Briefly tell the situation and the outcome. What made the experience a positive or negative one?

Assignment 2a. As you read these guidelines, ask yourself how they might be helpful in one or more of these situations: (1) a conversation with a Jewish or Muslim or unchurched neighbor, friend, or fellow worker; (2) a conversation with another Christian whose understanding of Christian faith and life is different from yours; (3) an ecumenical discussion among the Christian community and other faith communities where you live.

Engaging in Fruiful Dialogue

1. Fruitful dialogue is a two-way conversation. Fruitful dialogue involves both speaking and listening on both sides. This may seem obvious. But, in fact, Christians (not to mention others) often enter into conversation with people whose faith is different from theirs with an attitude that says in effect: “Since we have the truth and you don’t, and since we are right and you are wrong, we do not need to listen to you and have nothing to learn from you. So sit down and shut up, and we will tell you what you need to learn from us.” That is not dialogue!

Real dialogue involves listening as well as speaking on both sides. Such two-way conversation can enable both sides to discover: (1) some unexpected points of agreement between them, (2) what their real differences are, and (3) new insights.

In the first place, true dialogue enables both sides to correct some misunderstandings and caricatures they have of the other side. So, for instance, conversation with real, live Muslims may help Christians to learn that all Muslims are not Arab terrorists, and Muslims to understand that the doctrine of the Trinity does not mean that Christians believe in three Gods. Conversation with Jews may help Christians to understand that Jews, too, know something about the grace of God who loves and forgives sinners, and Jews to understand that Christians, too, are committed to social justice here and now and not just interested in the salvation of individual souls for the hereafter. Dialogue may sometimes reveal that the two sides are not as far apart as they thought and have more in common than they thought.

4. In a genuinely open dialogue with others, Christians will expect to be changed as well as hope that others will change. When partners in dialogue are serious about their faith commitments, they will always hope to have an influence on the thinking and way of life of those on the other side. But they often are less willing to entertain the possibility that they themselves might need to change.

But Christians who confess their limited understanding of God and God’s will, and who know about their own as well as about other’s sinfulness, will be willing to change their minds about some things as a result of their conversation with others—Christians or non-Christians—especially when they learn from others what they should have learned from their own Bibles.

So, for instance, while the white churches in the United States were still heatedly arguing about whether they should welcome African Americans into their fellowship, some Jews and some purely secular people without any faith commitment were standing up for racial justice and inclusiveness. Some Christians had to learn from “outsiders” how shameful their behavior had been.

To believe that the risen Christ and the Spirit of Christ are at work also among people who do not share our faith is to be ready to learn from them as well as to instruct them.

5. Christians should enter into dialogue with non-Christians with confidence in the good news of God in Jesus Christ, not confidence in themselves, their church, the Christian religion in general, or their particular interpretation of it. The good news of the Christian faith is about how good and great God is, not about how good and great we Christians, the Christian church, or “Christianity” are.

Unfortunately, we often forget that. The tendency of Christians in dialogue, both past and present, has been to assume, if not openly assert, the superiority of Christianity in comparison with other religions, the superiority of Christians to those who do not share their faith, and the superiority of the church (or at least our church) to other religious communities.

Such an attitude is self-defeating and inevitably boomerangs with embarrassing questions: What about the crusades when Christians set out forcibly to convert or kill “Mohammedan infidels”? What about the inquisitions when Christians burned “heretics” at the stake? What about the religious wars in the century after the Reformation when Catholics and Protestants slaughtered hundreds of thousands of fellow Christians in the name of true religion? What about the way Christians have for centuries excluded and often persecuted Jews and, in our time, refused to come to their aid during the Holocaust? What about the way Christians exterminated native Americans in the United States? What about the exploitation and oppression of people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia when the Christian church (Protestant and Roman Catholic) cooperated with colonial or economic imperialism? What about the ways Christians and Christian churches have used their religion as a cover to justify and defend the self-interests of their particular nation, race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, and their liberal or conservative political and economic agenda?

Dialogue with others will be more honest and successful—and more Christian—if we on the Christian side freely acknowledge the past and current sinfulness of the Christian community, if we openly admit that we ourselves as well as others are judged and found wanting by the gospel we confess, and if we make clear that it is the good news of God in Jesus Christ, not our religious and moral superiority, that we bring to the conversation. Such an admittance is not an excuse for ways we fail to live by the faith we confess. But it is a way of demonstrating our confidence in our living God rather than in ourselves. And that in itself is evangelistic witness in word and deed to the grace and truth of God in Jesus Christ.

Guidelines for Fruitful Dialogue
Following are some of the rules for fruitful dialogue that have emerged from the experience of Christians who have actually been involved in conversation with followers of other religions and secularism (itself a kind of faith):

1. Be prepared for, and encourage, two-way conversation.
2. Be honest and faithful in expressing who you are and what you believe.
3. Recognize those on the other side as friends, not enemies.
4. Expect to change and to be an agent of change for others.
5. Only be confident of God’s good news in Christ. Put no confidence in your, or your congregation’s, or your denomination’s interpretation of God’s good news, or the implications for others of God’s good news.

Assignment 2b. Discuss how the guidelines could be helpful in specific situations (as mentioned in assignment 2a) or in a particular situation you’re aware of.

For Further Reflection and Study

1. Discuss and evaluate the guidelines for dialogue listed in this session in light of the following statements from Reformed confessions:

[Christians find] parallels between other religions and [their] own and must approach all religions with openness and respect. Repeatedly God has used the insight of non-Christians to challenge the church to renewal. But the reconciling word of the gospel is God’s judgment upon all forms of religion, including the Christian. The gift of God in Christ is for all [people]. The church, therefore, is commissioned to carry the gospel to all [people] whatever their religion may be and even when they profess none.1

The church has often lived and worked among those who do not share the Christian faith.
It has been sometimes corrupted and sometimes helped by other religions, and by secular faiths and ideologies. . . .
We do not fully comprehend God’s way with other faiths.
We need to listen to them with openness and respect,
testing their words to us by God’s Word.
We should be loving and unafraid in our dealings with them.
We know God calls us to share the gift of Christ with all who will receive it.
We are confident God judges all faiths, including our own.2

2. What is the difference between faith in the Christian religion (or Christianity) and faith in Jesus Christ?

3. Discuss your faith with one another by answering the following questions:

• What do you believe about God?
• Why do you believe in Jesus?
• Where have you seen the Holy Spirit at work?
• How does the church express its faithfulness and its understanding of its ministry in the world?
• Who helped you grow in the faith, and how did they do that

1. The Confession of 1967 in the Book of Confessions, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1996), 9.42.

Study Helps

Here are some helpful works on dialogue between Christians and those who do not share their faith, and on guidelines for dialogue:

Always Being Reformed: Faith for a Fragmented World, by Shirley C. Guthrie (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).
See especially chapter 1 (“The Double Crisis of Identity and Relevance”) and chapter 5 (“Jesus Christ and the Religions of the World”).

The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, by Lesslie Newbigin (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990).
See especially chapter 14 (“The Gospel and the Religions”) and chapter 15 (“The Gospel and the Cultures”).

Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation, by William C. Placher (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
See especially chapter 9 (“Dialogues”).

A Wideness in God’s Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions, by Clark H. Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992).
See especially chapter 2 (“Jesus, Savior of the World”), chapter 3 (“Religions Now”), and chapter 4 (“Religions Tomorrow”).