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    INTEGRAL CHRISTIANITY Review

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    Kis Dániel
    This document provides a summary of the book "Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve" by Paul R. Smith. The book argues that all religious traditions allow for diversity of beliefs and that the role of faith is to unite rather than divide. Smith draws from his experience as a pastor and teacher to discuss how most religious adherents seek common ground with other faiths through dialogue, while a minority take a more defensive "warrior" approach and see other faiths as threats. The book promotes an open and inclusive view of Christianity that embraces encounters with other religions.

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    INTEGRAL CHRISTIANITY Review

    Uploaded by

    Kis Dániel
    154 views1 page
    This document provides a summary of the book "Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve" by Paul R. Smith. The book argues that all religious traditions allow for diversity of beliefs and that the role of faith is to unite rather than divide. Smith draws from his experience as a pastor and teacher to discuss how most religious adherents seek common ground with other faiths through dialogue, while a minority take a more defensive "warrior" approach and see other faiths as threats. The book promotes an open and inclusive view of Christianity that embraces encounters with other religions.

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    INTEGRAL CHRISTIANITY review

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    This document provides a summary of the book "Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve" by Paul R. Smith. The book argues that all religious traditions allow for diversity of beliefs and that the role of faith is to unite rather than divide. Smith draws from his experience as a pastor and teacher to discuss how most religious adherents seek common ground with other faiths through dialogue, while a minority take a more defensive "warrior" approach and see other faiths as threats. The book promotes an open and inclusive view of Christianity that embraces encounters with other religions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    154 views1 page

    INTEGRAL CHRISTIANITY Review

    Uploaded by

    Kis Dániel
    This document provides a summary of the book "Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve" by Paul R. Smith. The book argues that all religious traditions allow for diversity of beliefs and that the role of faith is to unite rather than divide. Smith draws from his experience as a pastor and teacher to discuss how most religious adherents seek common ground with other faiths through dialogue, while a minority take a more defensive "warrior" approach and see other faiths as threats. The book promotes an open and inclusive view of Christianity that embraces encounters with other religions.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
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    Book Reviews

    Integral Christianity:
    The Spirit’s Call to Evolve
    Paul R. Smith
    St Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2011
    Cloth, 381 pages, $24.95

    Paul R. Smith has written a lively reminder that in all religious traditions
    “there are many mansions” and that the role of faith is to unite and enlarge
    rather than to divide and build walls of defense. Smith has been a pastor
    of a Southern Baptist church in Kansas City, Missouri as well as teaching
    in Protestant seminaries elsewhere in the US. His focus is on Protestant
    Christianity, especially as it lived in daily life and worship. However many
    of his insights hold true for other religious traditions that are increasingly
    in contact with each other. Some form of encounter among faiths can no
    longer be avoided, and we see fairly similar reactions among both church
    leaders and ordinary members.
    One reaction is what Paul Smith calls the “Tribal and the Warrior
    church,” closed in upon itself, seeing others as a threat. The theology of
    churches with such a consciousness is based on a vision of constant conflict,
    the battle between God and Satan, and they see God acting to punish,
    “vengeance is mine,” with Sodom and Gomorrah as prime examples. One
    can find the same “Warrior church” consciousness in the Sunni-Shiite divide
    and in armed attacks upon worshipers of rival mosques and shrines as these
    days in Pakistan and Bahrain.
    While the Warrior church is a minority in all religious traditions, its
    preachers are particularly active on the internet and among those who feel
    at home in a tightly defined world of good and evil, of friend or foe, of
    “you are with us or you are against us.”
    Fortunately, the great bulk of active religious people are not in the
    Warrior church and are increasingly active in meeting people of other faiths
    in discussion and dialogue. They seek out what is common and what unites.
    In Europe, there tends to be one major Protestant church in each
    country with members and pastors having differing theological positions
    and concerns but who are bound together by a common history and often
    a status as a state Church—the “Church of England,” the “Church of

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE


    102 VOL. XXix NO. 2 June 2012

    IJWP 2-12.indb 102 5/9/2012 10:56:32 AM

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