We read in the Holy Bible that “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16) Because of this verse, and others like it, Christians believe that God’s love is at the very center of their faith. Similarly we read

Did Jesus die on the cross and then rise from the dead? This question has remarkable power to generate vigorous discussion between Muslims and Christians. Indeed, whenever Muslims and Christians discuss religious matters together, the topic of conversation almost always seems to turn sooner or later to this question. Perhaps

The Gospel text which we are considering in this book frequently uses the term “Son of God,” and this has led to much puzzlement and unfortunate misunderstanding between Christian and Muslim brothers and sisters (athāra al-kathīr min al-tasā’ulāt wasū’ al-tafāhum mu’sif bayna al-ikhwa al-masī­iyyīn wa-l-muslimīn). Therefore it is very important

Can one be a Muslim and a follower of Jesus? Tens of thousands believe so, and in this third installment of the Global Conversation, Yale University scholar Joseph Cumming describes the furious debate their example has fueled. The question of following Jesus while remaining within a practicing community of Muslims

A few days ago I was interviewed on radio station KBRT about the conversion to Islam of Sean Stone, son of legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone. At a press conference last week in Iran the younger Stone publicly announced his conversion, but added he does not understand himself to be abandoning

While it is true that basic to our Christian presence among Muslims is simple witness to the Good News with reliance on the Holy Spirit and humble, godly character, and while we would be remiss to forget that the Lord Jesus was born in simplicity as a carpenter’s son, one

Secular pundits have debated endlessly the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. Does Christian faith offer resources for thinking faithfully about this controversy? Here are a few: False witness Jesus says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” (Mt 19:18). We sometimes forget that this is one of

When you talk about matters of faith with your nonbelieving secular neighbors, what Christian belief do they object to most? Is it the biblical concept of hell? Your views on gay marriage? The inerrancy of Scripture? For many of your Muslim neighbors, these Christian beliefs are not offensive. Indeed, your

In recent years a growing chorus of voices around the world is criticizing the idea of monotheism as being a root cause – if not the chief cause – of conflict, imperialism and intolerance in the world today. This critique is important because it not only addresses wrong actions of

The Gospel text which we are considering in this book begins with the words, “In the beginning (i.e. fī al-azal) was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning (fī al-azal) with God. All things came into being through it,

Because of my position at Yale University, I have unique opportunities to meet regularly with some of the very top Muslim religious leaders around the world. For some I am the only evangelical Christian they have ever met, so they naturally ask me about issues in Evangelical-Muslim relations. They are

The recent campus forum on hate speech brought into question whether certain acts, such as the recent depiction of the Prophet Muhammad as a mad terrorist, qualify as “hate speech.” Some students insisted on according the most charitable of intentions to the perpetrators, stating that it might be hurtful to

All of us attending to this conference have come because we care deeply about making peace among the world’s Muslims, Christians and Jews, and because we believe that peacemaking is central to the teachings of our faiths. Our three religious communities represent, among them, about 55% of the world’s population.

Muslims, Christians and Jews constitute among them 55% of the human race. Through the last fourteen centuries of history, our relations have often been far from peaceful. And the events of these first years of the 21st century have made clear that if the followers of the Abrahamic faiths do

I write these words at a very painful time for me personally, after events which make us acutely aware of the urgent need for peacemaking. I write from the city of Nouakchott, Mauritania, where two days ago Al-Qāʿida in the Islamic Maghreb murdered a very dear friend and colleague of

David Johnston, author of Earth, Empire and Sacred Text, Christine Schirrmacher, a scholar with the Institute of Islamic Studies of the Evangelical Alliance in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and Joseph Cumming, director of the reconciliation program at Yale Divinity School, discuss whether Christians should support laws that ban Muslim women

It scarcely needs to be stated that Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Ismāʿīl Al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935) is one of the three or four most influential and orthodox thinkers in the history of Islam since the generation of the Prophet and Companions.[1] Ignaz Goldziher refers to him as “this greatest theological authority