Category: Articles

This interview is between Michael Badriaki who is African, and Dr. Jim Harries, a Western missionary in Kenya. Michael has been working with missionaries from the West who seek to help and have done some positive things in Africa in God’s name.  However, he finds that they tend to work from a place of power, assuming that the Western evangelical way of doing Christianity is paramount. Unfortunately, this life view encourages patronage, dependency, and undermines people’s dignity in Africa. It also displaces unity, compassion, humility and mutuality.

The interview explores Harries’ work of encouraging Western missionaries to do ministry from a position of vulnerability; along the way, it further demonstrates the profound need for any efforts toward global mission to be relational, and include the servant leadership, mutual participation, and listening to the voice of God’s people in Africa and the global church.

 

Using a recent Time magazine article titled, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care about Peace,” as a springboard, Metzger discusses why Israel, God, and the American Evangelical should care about peace between Israel and Palestine. He first discusses what is keeping both Israel and the American Evangelical from concern for peace, including the assumption for the Evangelical that God himself does not care about peace. Metzger shows that God has promised to bless not only Israel but also the Arab nations through Ishmael. The Arab peoples are not enemies of God. More so, he argues that as followers of Jesus we are called to love our enemies and the “other,” working for justice for all peoples. Instead of isolating ourselves from the conflict between Israel and Palestine, we are called to love our neighbors and enemies and seek reconciliation between Israel and Palestine, Christians and Muslims, ourselves and the “other.”

David Austin was the Executive Director for a quiet diplomatic initiative of the US State Department, led by Ambassador Tony Hall and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from 2007 – 2009 to the Middle East. For the first time, they brought together the politically recognized religious leaders of the Holy Land to acknowledge and publicly support the peace process. Including the Chief Rabbis of Israel, the Christian Patriarchs of Jerusalem, and the Chief Justice of the Shari’a Courts of Palestine, this interfaith initiative produced a framework to settle the status of Jerusalem and other sensitive issues which have evaded the political negotiators. During Mr. Austin’s 13 trips to the Holy Land from 2007 – 2009, he met routinely with the established political leaders engaged in the conflict; the various religious leaders involved in ministering to and protecting their communities; and hundreds of people working for peace at the grass roots level on all sides of the many issues involved in this difficult struggle. From these relationships and experiences, he acquired a deeper understanding that peace is possible in the Holy Land, and that most people living there know what it will take to achieve it.

By examining the accounts of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis 16 and the Magi’s visit of the Christ child in the book of Matthew, Maalouf seeks to dissolve the popular assumption among Evangelicals, including his own formerly held view, that Ishmael, and Muslims by heritage, are cursed by God and the enemy of Israel. By approaching the text of Genesis 16 with objectivity, he asserts that Ishmael is included in God’s blessing on Abraham. God promises Hagar freedom and a great nation for Ishmael. When Christ returns, the Arab nations will be blessed alongside Israel. Added to this, he argues that the Magi were Arab descendants of Ishmael who participated in the celebration of the Messiah’s birth. This blessing for Ishmael and his descendants and an Arab presence in redemptive history bears upon our treatment of Arabs and Muslims. Maalouf calls Christians, particularly Dispensationalist Evangelicals, to seek to bring all people including Arabs into the blessing of Christ.