Missiological Studeis

In spite of overexposure and considerations of being outdated, indigenous church principles, as espoused in one form or another since the mid-1800s, continue to be a popular mission strategy for many sending agencies or churches. The concept has persisted and remains a viable tool in spite of having often been discarded as archaic, outmoded and
abandoned in favor of partnership, or other newer strategies. It resulted as a reaction to the missionary paternalism that prevailed within the church and mission circles during that period and has carried forward to this present time.

For fruitful evangelism and people movements, we should use the terms, concepts and teachings, including of “merit-making" and "grace" of karmic peoples in leading them to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and follow Him in networks of micro-communities called “house churches networks” (HCN) which adopt this understanding of faith.  Any diversion from this “radical contextualization” approach has been a major reason for the failure to effect Christward movements among karmic peoples, especially Buddhists.

Since the 1960’s there has been a marked increase in the number of known conversions from Islam to Christianity. This thesis asks whether certain of these ex-Muslim Christians engage in the process of theology-making and, if so, it asks what these theologies claim to know about God and humans’ relation to God.
Utilizing the dialectic of contextuality-contextualization of Shoki Coe, and the sociology of theological knowledge of Robert Schreiter, the thesis seeks to answer these questions by the use of two case studies and an examination of some of the texts written by ex-Muslim Christians. Lewis Rambo’s theory of religious conversion and Steven Lukes’ theory of power will be used to clarify the changing dynamics of power which have helped to foster modern contexts wherein an unprecedented number of Muslims are both exposed to the Christian message and, if they choose to do so, able to appropriate it through religious conversion.
The two case studies are of a Christian community which founded a Muslim-background church in the Arabophone world and some Iranian Christian congregations in the USA and UK Diaspora.
Aspects of the contexts of these believers are investigated in some detail, including motives for religious conversion, numbers and locations of the converts, how apostates may be treated by Muslims, changes in migration and communications, and the Christian concept of religious conversion.  The concept of inculturation which helps to describe the meeting of a specific community with the Christian message will aid in analyzing the communities and individuals being studied.
The final chapter brings together the various threads which have been raised throughout the thesis and argues that ex-Muslim Christians are engaged in theology-making, that areas of interest to them include theology of the church, salvation and baptism, and that the dominant metaphor in these theologies is a conceptualization of love and power that sees the two divine traits as inseparable from each other; they represent a knowledge about who God is and what he is like, which, in their understanding, is irreconcilable with their former religion, Islam.

In the conclusion of his 1997 revision of his study of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movements, Vinson Synan states, “Christian affairs of the twenty-first century may be largely in the hands of surging Pentecostal churches in the Third World and a Roman Catholicism inspired and revivified by the charismatic renewal.” 1 Hollenweger likewise indicates that Pentecostalism today is centered outside the West in a growing Third World movement.2

Robert Milton Evans had the privilege of living during changing times in two centuries. His life began in the middle of the nineteenth century and bridged over into the twentieth. Evans was born in 1847 in DeKalb, Mississippi, USA and grew up in the rural farm community of Live Oak, in the north-central area of Florida. Evans was 25 years old when he entered the pastoral ministry of the Southern Methodist Church in 1872.