Nee-Evangelical Missiology and the Christian Mission to Islam

During the last two decades, some severe criticisms have been levelled at the missionary work which has been undertaken since the days of William Carey. We are told by these critics, for example, that missions among Muslims have been a failure. Most missionaries in the past, the critics say, were not good at “cross-cultural communication.” They failed to “contextualize” the Christian message.

In this paper, I refer to evangelical missionary theorists who have espoused and propagated this way of looking at the modern missionary enterprise as the neo-evangelical missiologists. Let us examine their thesis about the alleged failure of missions among Muslims from three inter–related perspectives: the historical, the theological and the Biblical perspectives.

I – The Historical Perspective

In attempting to work out a new methodology of missions, several neo-evangelical missiologists base their endeavor on their own interpretation of the history of missions in the last 200 years. This is especially the case when they are re-thinking the Christian mission to Muslims. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that the Christian-Muslim encounter began almost fourteen centuries ago! The difficulties we face as we seek to reach Muslims with the Gospel were embedded in history long before the rise of the Protestant missionary enterprise. To put all the blame on the messengers of the Gospel during the last 200 years does not only ignore history, but it dishonors the testimony of countless Christians who lived under Islam and who were not ashamed of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We must never forget these facts of history: According to the Arabian prophet, Christ never claimed to be the Son of God, the belief in the Trinity amounted to faith in many gods, and, most importantly, the Messiah never died on the cross. In the Islamic tradition, the whole system of Christian doctrine has been judged inferior and corrupt. Islam alone is the final and complete faith. As some Muslims remind me in their letters, the preaching of the Christian faith is anachronistic. As far as Allah is concerned, INNA DEENA INDA ALLAH! ISLAMU, i.e. the accepted religion with God is Islam!

Rather than indulge in too much introspection as we survey the history of missions to Muslims during the last two centuries, we must bear in mind that, as far as Muslims are concerned, there is no real need to seriously consider the claims of the Christian message. The Gospel, the Injeel, no longer exists, for the Christians have corrupted it. Anyhow, the Quran has superseded and supplanted the Gospel. There is nothing more striking about the Muslim’s attitude to other religions than his absolute assurance about the superiority and finality of his faith!

The majority of the people conquered by the Arab armies in the initial days of the conquest were Christian. Their Christianity was not pure. Some were Chalcedonian while others entertained erroneous teachings concerning the two natures of Jesus Christ. But in all fairness to the Eastern Christians, we must not write them off as if they presented no Christian testimony to the invaders. Granted that they were weak in the areas of Biblical anthropology and soteriology, they all confessed their faith in the triune God, the deity and sonship of Jesus Christ, His atoning death on the cross and the complete trustworthiness and final authority of the Bible.

The writings of the Christians of the Middle East who lived during the caliphates of the Umayyads (7th and 8th centuries) and the ‘Abbasids (8th–13th centuries) reveal that they did not hesitate to explain why they did not Islamize. It is very surprising to read the contents of their apologetical and polemical works. Many Christians worked in the courts of the Caliphs in Damascus and later on in Baghdad. They conversed freely about points of difference between the two religions. Some neo-evangelical missiologists seem to forget that the core of the Christian message was adequately defended by the conquered Christians of the Middle East. The hardening of the attitude towards the Christian faith among Muslims happened before the conversion of the ancestors of many European and American missionaries!

Having referred briefly to the role played by the Christians of the conquered lands, we may consider the record of some of the pioneer missionaries who worked in the Arab world. I am better equipped to deal with this part of the Muslim world, since my pre-seminary education took place within the Arab world. Furthermore, my own involvement in the Muslim world has continued because of the very nature of my ministry. I have had the privilege of corresponding with thousands of Arabic speaking listeners, both Muslim and Eastern Christian. And thus, my knowledge of Islam is neither purely academic nor archaic.

Does the historical record uphold the charge that the pioneer missionaries who labored among the Muslims were intent upon spreading their culture as well as the Gospel? Let’s take the history of the American University of Beirut. This institution of higher education is considered as the most powerful academic institution in the entire Middle East. But it was not founded as an American cultural mission. Its original name was the Syrian Protestant College and it was founded by Presbyterian missionaries in 1866. The founders planned to teach all the subjects in Arabic. The Evangelical Church which they organized was an Arabic-speaking church. Its liturgy was simple, the Word of God was central and every part of the worship service was in Arabic. When we think of the translation of the Arabic Bible we think immediately of the pioneer missionaries Eli Smith and Cornelius VanDyck. But their work was not accomplished without the help and cooperation of Lebanese scholars such as the famous Yazigi and Bustani. Some of the early missionaries learned Arabic so well that they actually composed Arabic hymns which are sung today in the evangelical churches of the Arab world!

Of course one should not hide the fact that some of the later missionaries did attempt to foist western concepts on the people of the Middle East through the instrumentality of educational institutions which were modeled after Western schools. This is part of my personal experience as I have had the privilege to study and later on to teach in Roman Catholic and Protestant mission schools. But this later development took place after the triumph of religious liberalism in Protestant missionary circles. That this was a factor in the decline of missionary work among Muslims cannot be denied. I am puzzled by the fact that neoevangelical missiologists do not seem to take this sad fact into account. I am still referring to the impact of liberalism on missions. Why this silence? Is history a lesser discipline than the newer discipline of cultural anthropology? May we give less heed to history when we are dealing with Muslims who happen to be the most historically conscious community in the world? How can anyone maintain that Christian missions among Muslims have failed when for more than a quarter of a century (i.e. between the two great wars while the Middle East was under British and French colonial rule) the gospel was seldom heard in most of the mission schools? I can never forget many commencement speeches in mission schools which were disgusting because they contained nothing Biblically Christian, just plain platitudes. No wonder that some graduates of mission schools joined radical movements including the Communist parties of their respective countries.

To sum up, a careful study of the history of Islam and the Christian presence in the Muslim world indicates that the thesis that missions to Muslims have failed and that this failure would not have taken place had the pioneer missionaries and those who followed them contextualized the Gospel, cannot be sustained. Islam from its beginnings had a built-in bias against the Christian faith. This strong anti-Christian motif has solidified across the centuries. Western culture has indeed invaded the Middle East and other Islamic countries. This took place primarily because of the triumph of Western imperialism among the followers of Islam. We cannot speak of the temporary setbacks of missions to Islam without taking into account the destructive role played by the liberals in the mission field. And finally , as we end this historical excursion, we must thank God for the advent of radio missions and the awakening of many nationals to expound the Biblical Gospel to their fellow citizens who follow the Muslim way. The Gospel is being proclaimed without Western baggage and equally without the novel methods of syncretistic missiologists.

Bassam M. Madany has for over 25 years been the minister of Arabic broadcasting of the Christian Reformed Bock–to–God Hour at Palos Heigh ts, Illinois. Born in Lebanon and preaching in his native language, he is well acquainted with the Muslim world.