Interview: Part Two, About the Article

Apologia Report Interview with Terry Muck

AR: First let me say I agree with the opening line in your article in that "it is frightening" for me to talk about this subject as well. You describe it as the fear of being misunderstood. I don't disagree, but for me it is frightening not because of others, but because of ourselves -- the element of the flesh. We are passionate to a fault at times, passionate sometimes about the wrong things with regard to dialog.

Considering the three different levels of interreligious discourse you present, I see here as complementary too -- and best when experienced in reverse order (disclosure, proclamation, and argumentation).

As I was reading I came to a spot on the second page, where you write: "I believe both evangelism and interreligious dialog are extremely important functions of all religious systems." Evangelism and interreligious dialog are also somewhat at odds with each other. Interreligious dialog requires trust. Evangelism requires repentance. Repentance from a non-Christian faith is impossible for non-Christians to truly understand.

At the same time, are we compelled to point out that evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists are often particularly at a disadvantage regarding interfaith dialog for numerous reasons? One reason could be insecurity due to a lack of biblical acumen, of understanding one's own faith. Another reason might be poor experiences in interfaith communication, often due to poor mentoring, emotional overload, and/or unrealistic expectations regarding the results of an evangelistic encounter.

We have a propensity for poor communication for all of these reasons. We distrust each other at the front end. Often the average guy in the pew stereotypically tends to write off those with different worldviews perceiving them as people who have been "deceived by Satan because they are believing the lies of the devil." On top of all this is apathy.

TM: I agree that we bring a lot of those things to the table, but I think that people on the other side of the dialog table bring the same kinds of feelings. We often tend to either idealize the other religious person and tend to forget that they, too, are human and bring some of those foibles, actually most of them, to the table, too. That is what makes it such a difficult setting. They believe their religion is the right one too. They believe that change is required in order to get in line with their program. What we call "repentance" they usually call something else -- "enlightenment" or whatever. That for me was the biggest thing that I learned from living in another culture. I discovered that people of the other religious traditions have these same kinds of feelings that "I'm right and everyone else is wrong," and certain insecurities: "I don't want my religion to lose its place." So, in that sense what we evangelicals experience at the dialog table is not all that different from what people from other religions experience.

AR: Has this been, consequently, the discovery of the most effective door to dialog -- this sort of disclosure? If I can come to this sort of parity in understanding the one with whom I desire to pursue interreligious dialog, is this perhaps the most effective means to begin?

TM: Yes it is. It is the thing that allows dialog to happen. You have to be careful when you talk about it, though. When you say it is the common human experience that allows us to talk to one another, the next jump that is often made is: "Well then, it doesn't really make any difference what we believe. We are all human, and that experiential base is essential." So I always make a clear distinction. I say that it is through the door of the mutual human experience that we begin to talk with one another. For the Christian, and actually for most religious people, experience isn't the first thing in the faith. Some kind of revelation from God or the gods is the first thing in religious faith. In a way you might say that this is the difference between evangelism and interfaith dialog. In dialog you are putting an emphasis on the experiential end of things and then going to compare one another's revelation. In evangelism or in Buddhist dhatu, Buddhist witnessing, you are starting with revelation -- or, in the Buddhist case, with what the Buddha taught -- and then trying to talk about that in a winsome way. That's why they are different modes of relating. They are both ways of relating to one another, but they tend to start and emphasize different aspects of being human.

AR: In your article you write: "[L]et's retain all three levels of Krieger's conversational pyramid, but simply invert the pyramid when it comes to ideologically evaluating them." Do you have any examples that you would care to share?

TM: Sure. Last year I was on sabbatical and I spent a year at the Ecumenical Institute in Collegeville, Minnesota at St. John's University. They put on conferences where they bring in different Christian groups. They have a method there for getting people to talk to one another. They start by having everyone who comes to a conference, a range of from twenty to thirty people, explain why they've come and give a little hint of how that decision to come is an expression of their own personal Christian journey. That is dialog at its best. It is when you start with personal experience. It works very well. All of a sudden the first thing I know about these other people, most of whom I've never met before, is that they are on a spiritual journey, too, and it's both the same and different than mine, but it's obviously very real.

AR: What a commitment that requires to communication on the part of the leadership!

TM: Yes, it takes the whole first day of the conference to just do this. What happens then is when they actually get to the subject of the conference -- it may be a conference on the sovereignty of God, for example -- by the time you actually start talking theology you have built a rapport that, in my experience, did not change people's views of their theological commitment, but it made them much more understanding, open, and loving about the way they presented their views, because they were presenting them to real-live human beings that they knew a little bit about rather than just putting the bare bones of the idea out there. It allowed talk about disagreement that was much richer than simply beginning by saying: "Well here's what I believe, take it or leave it."

AR: Two things in response to that. One is about the movie Shadowlands. I'm reminded of a line by Anthony Hopkins that went something like: "Prayer doesn't change God. It changes me." In the context of our discussion, we've identified a means of progress in understanding where others are coming from. The process helps us discover that the experience isn't so much that I'm seeing others change: I'm actually changing because I'm understanding them, and it is causing me to realize how unrealistic my expectations have been.

TM: That's a good comment. I think that's really helpful.

AR: Can you give an example of applying the inverted pyramid we've been talking about in your own personal experience?

TM: I enjoy and believe in both dialog and evangelism. It is usually the situation or the context that determines which approach one uses. My experience has been that the best kind of evangelism is done after a certain kind of dialog is done. The idea of learning to relate to one another invariably helps the evangelism process, but I don't ever feel guilty if I don't get to the evangelism end of things. That is because I see evangelism as a function of the church and not Terry Muck. If my dialog leads to a mutual kind of witnessing to someone else, then that's fine. If it doesn't, then I figure my dialog experience with someone will make that person more open to talking to Christians, and then someone else down the line will do the witnessing.

I often use the example of the story that Lesslie Newbigin tells in one of his books about a study he did while he was a missionary to India. He decided to do a study of people in India who have converted to consider the actual process. So he went where a whole village had converted to Christianity and he asked the people how they had converted. I don't know if he found anyone who converted to Christianity the first time they met a Christian and heard the Christian story. It was almost always 10, 12, 15 exposures to the gospel before they became Christians. And many of the exposures were not verbal. They were: "A Christian did a kind thing for me" type of thing. So that's why I feel very comfortable saying that I believe in both evangelism and dialog and that they are not mutually exclusive,. But they don't depend on one another in any particular order, either.

AR: To most people interested in interfaith dialog, isn't the concept of Christian evangelism considered an unpleasant, counterproductive activity? Don't most see evangelism and interfaith dialog as mutually exclusive?

TM: That is very true. This is odd. Most of the people in my audience would think and believe that we ought to be moving beyond evangelism. I'm writing a book regarding something I call "religious advocacy." The basic argument of the book is that all religions do what Christians call evangelism. They just do it in a way that is more congenial with their belief system. I call that cross-religious category "advocacy." Everyone who is a sincere believer in their religion in some way advocates the way they understand their religion and religion in general to other people. It is not an unusual thing. This concept is a challenge to liberal Christians who think that we ought not to do evangelism.

AR: Apart from yourself, we are not aware of many other evangelical scholars in the field of world religions. Can you help us identify some for the sake of our readers who may wish to study further?

TM: I'm starting a discussion group in the Evangelical Theological Society. The steering committee is made up of people who have been trained as historians of religion and who are to one extent or another involved in certain kinds of interreligious dialog. My co-chair is Harold Netland, who teaches at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is a philosopher of religion. Another member is Dudley Woodberry who is the dean of Fuller's School of World Mission and an Islamist. James Lewis teaches missions at Wheaton, and has a background in Buddhism. Last, Mark Heim is an evangelical who teaches at Andover Newton and has written a book called Salvations [Orbis, 1998]. There are other evangelical scholars working in the field of world religions -- not a lot, but there are some.

We want to pull together all the work that evangelicals have done on the subject of world religions, from biblical studies to theology to missions. After we have identified what has been done we will consider what yet needs to be done. I see the group as doing an assessment of where we are.

AR: Something we would like to see result from efforts such as this ETS study group is the growth of vision for the great need of more work to be done in the field of world religion by evangelicals. We would like to raise the visibility of this need for those going into graduate study who are undecided in their concentration. In this day of predatory pluralism the church needs more evangelical scholars of the world's religions. What voice will we have if there is no one to represent us among top academics in tomorrow's pluralism debates?

TM: That is very true. It's a good thought.

AR: What are your goals in regard to seeing the church grow in its communication with other world views?

TM: One is to be a faithful Christian. Two is to promote the peaceful cooperation among peoples of the world. I think that happens to be a part of being a faithful Christian, but it sometimes gets lost in our evangelism emphasis. I think these are goals that most non-Christians would understand the best. A more specific goal is -- since I believe one is a better Christian and a better evangelist the more one knows, understands, and respects people of other faiths -- I believe education is a very important part of being a world citizen. That is my most specific goal in teaching Christians what other people believe.

Continue to the full text of the article