Lesson #14 -- Navigating Through the Minefield of World Religions

If you are going to serve as a missionary, or as someone supporting a missionary, you will inevitably find yourself interacting with people who adhere to a different religion than your own. Actually, in most places around the world today, even if you are not directly involved in official missionary activity, you will rub shoulders with people from other religions. You can either treat these people as competitors (threats!) or you can see the situation as an opportunity to demonstrate the love and kindness of Christ.

My strong inclination is to treat all such situations as God-given opportunities to share the love of Christ. In order to do that well you will need to have some basic knowledge about what people believe. You obtain this knowledge through both study and personal relationships with people from other religions. Toward this end we offer a PIU class dedicated to the study of different religions (THEO 403 / PHIL 403).

If you are involved in missions figuring out how to relate to the other religious groups can be especially challenging. For an introduction to these unique challenges please read chapter 18,  "Encountering the Religions of the World" in the textbook (pp 281-293 in the print edition, Kindle locations 7402-7787). 

Use what you have read in the chapter to respond to the three questions at the end of Sidebar 18.1 "Spectrum of Muslim Contextualization" (pp 284-285 in the print edition, Kindle locations 7463-7507)
OR
Tell me what Stephen decided to do at the end of the case study, "The Buddha Pedestals" (p 293 in the print edition, Kindle locations 7744-7787). Explain why Stephen decided what he did. What are the negatives and the positives that he weighed when deciding? 

  

Do only the sidebar or the case study. Do not do both. Send your assignment embedded in an email to me at bboydston@piu.edu or share it with me as a Google Doc. 

This assignment is worth 30 points.