From the Book Shelf

Is it Insensitive to Share Your Faith:
Hard questions about Christian mission in a plural world
~ James A. Kraybill
book review by Torin Eikler
(as published in the Wiles Hill Witness)

Recently, the Allegheny Conference pastors committed to read this book together as we seek to explore our own habits and tendencies around sharing our own faith with others. Yet, this is not a handbook for evangelism. It does not present a program that will help us reach out to the un-churched or to find the seekers in our community. Instead, Krabill explores the heart of issues of embarrassment, uncertainty, and a desire to respect others’ beliefs as we seek to follow the Great Commission: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

In a pluralistic world filled with moral, faithful people who follow any number of religious paths or shun religion all together, it is often difficult for modern and post-modern Christians to feel comfortable sharing their faith with family, friends, colleagues, and those we meet on the “street corners” of our lives. We fear that we may be insulting them or at least stepping on their toes since their beliefs, in some ways, stand in opposition to the claims of Christianity. We want to be sensitive to their worldviews and their traditions, and we are aware that our own tradition’s history and worldview admit of a certain intolerance and uncaring arrogance. At a deeper level, we often wonder why we should risk insulting or alienating those we work and live with when they often live lives just as moral as our own (or perhaps more so.)

Krabill draws on his extensive experience in the mission field on several continents and in both developed and developing countries to address these issues. The result is a fairly accessible book that proposes some helpful thoughts about how we can move from the historical models of crushing or coercing people of other faiths into clones of our own Christianity and the more recent model of respectful co-existence into a mode of confession to, conversation with, and commendation of Christ to others. What he provides in this book is not a program or an evangelical self-help tool (and that is good since every person and every situation is unique and requires a unique response). Rather, he builds a solid foundation from which we can engage with concepts and questions essential to Christians in a pluralistic world and encourages us to carry the conversation further.