About the book
Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?
Who was Muhammad?
Is Islam inherently violent?
What about Israel-Palestine?
And just what is Islam anyway?
This is not primarily a book about Islam. Nor does it set out to answer these explosive questions for the reader.
Rather, it is a book about Evangelical Christians around the world and how they are answering these questions. It is also a book about the public sphere and how we conduct our debates and handle our disagreements.
A public sphere is a zone of rational debate taking place between a group of people in order to influence the opinion of others. It consists of three things: an issue of public interest, people who have opinions about it, and the texts they produce to make their argument.
Evangelical Christians, with their intense interest in Islam and Muslims, are one such example. Drawing on over 300 texts published by more than 200 Evangelicals from a dozen different countries in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, this book explores what the Evangelical micro-public sphere has to say about key issues in Christian-Muslim relations today.
It is clear from the books they write, the blogs they post and the videos they make that Evangelical Christians disagree profoundly with one another over the answers to the questions above. Their answers range from seeing Muslims as the enemy posing an existential threat to Christians, through to welcoming them as good neighbours and even embracing them as close cousins. This book looks at some of these answers and considers where they may lead in the future. The diversity revealed blows apart the stereotype of Evangelicals in the popular imagination.
Scroll down to watch a video introduction to each chapter.
