Ministry and Theology in Global Perspective: Contemporary Challenges for the Church.

Falconer, Alan D.

Edited by Don A. Pittmann, Ruben L. F. Habito, and Terry C. Muck. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996. Pp. 524. $35.00, paper.

This volume aims to provide materials for a course on interfaith dialogue for college and seminary students. Under three major headings - "Towards a Christian Theology of Missions," "Mission and Ministry," and "Dialogue and Ministry" - the authors, all of whom are trained as historians of religion, have introduced extended essays on the themes after a collection of appropriate texts demonstrating or suggesting how the matter has been addressed in Christian history and thought and provided concluding discussion questions and brief bibliographies.

The context for this book is that of globalization. In a helpful preface, Robert Schreiter seeks to give substance to this term by his characterization of it as the experience of "compression of time and space" - one of the most helpful descriptions that this reviewer has encountered. The various elements of this sense of compression (and, at times, of oppression) are outlined, and a convincing plea for the urgency of a ministry of interfaith dialogue is made. The introductory essays to the various sections are also illuminating and challenging and give a sense of coherence to the texts included. Undoubtedly, this volume will provide a useful course for colleges and seminaries.

The selection of texts illustrates different approaches to the question of interfaith dialogue. In a collection of this type, it might have been helpful to have had a number of examples from medieval Spain, with its rich encounter between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and through this to have opened up the question of the interdependence of those religious traditions (an issue that Wilfred Cantwell Smith has addressed in his work). It would also have been helpful to have had some extracts from Christian writers who assert that dialogue is impossible, writing as they do from a conflictual or potentially conflictual setting (e.g., Sudan).

The tension in the volume between mission and dialogue is well represented in the extracts, but these could have been supplemented by including the CWME San Antonio conference report, which in four pages neatly and challengingly suggests that mission and dialogue are two modes of Christian witness. The volume would also have been enhanced by the inclusion of material from texts illustrating different approaches to interfaith dialogue. The Chiang Mai Guidelines (1977) provides a deductive approach to the issue, while the World Council of Churches' "Theological Principles of Interfaith Dialogue" and the 1992 study guide, My Neighbour's Faith and Mine, offer an inductive approach. The inclusion of these might have helped the course to address not only the "why" of interfaith dialogue but also the "how."

The editors conceived this project in response to the call of the W.C.C. in 1979 to promote new educational programs to enhance understanding of the cultural, religious, and ideological traditions of humankind and to prepare ministers for interfaith dialogue. This book is a valuable response to that call and provides a helpful introduction to engagement with the issues. I am not convinced by the title of the book and would urge its reconsideration for the next edition.

Alan D. Falconer, Faith and Order Commission, World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland