Christianity & Islam

The book is called Beyond Mere Christianity for two reasons. First, in response to C.S. Lewis’ influential 1952 work, Mere Christianity, which stands as a masterpiece of Christian apologetics. The second reason, perhaps less obvious, is that a case can be made, based on current, responsible Gospel scholarship, that Jesus was calling his people to the Salvation that lies beyond the worship of the merely created, the Salvation that relies instead on the direct worship of the Creator. I believe emphatically that the authentic words of Jesus invite us to move beyond what is conventionally understood as Christianity for this Salvation.

In The Cross and The Crescent, Dr. Dirks, a former ordained minister (deacon) in the United Methodist Church, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and with a doctorate in clinical psychology, reaches out to the Christians and the Muslims for an interfaith dialogue. Drawing on his seminary education and thirty years of interaction with Muslims in America and overseas, the author digs deep into the roots of Christianity to bring out obscure information that highlights what was once common between Christianity and Islam. He envisioned that, “In writing this book, I would like to touch the lives of those Christians who have not been given the knowledge that I have gained both about Islam, from my direct contact with Muslims, and about Christianity from my seminary education. I want to share with those Christians, who are willing to listen, what is so often known by their clergy and church leaders, but seldom finds its way into their knowledge of their own religion. Likewise, I would like to reach out to the Muslims, in order to help them understand the religious commonality that they share with Christians”.

This interesting, topical and sometimes heated, conversation among theologians, social scientists and policy experts on British secularism helps to shed vital light on the challenges of accommodating religious minorities and majorities within modern societies. The contributors question a number of received assumptions about the public role of religion, and also challenge traditional Muslim suspicions of secularism, thus succeeding in moving the debate on Islam in Britain, and secular polities in general, to new and very promising ground. This is a vital contribution to ongoing topical debates on secularism, pluralism, inclusion and the direction modern societies should take. Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, University of Westminster Religious voices in favour of secularism are often absent from the debate on religion and politics. But as a political attitude that will guarantee freedom of belief for all, secularism is relevant to all. This volume – though non-religious secularists may find much to challenge within it – is a welcome contribution to this most important of modern debates. Andrew Copson Chief Executive, British Humanist Association –Commissioned

This volume on the role of Muslims in British society very helpfully addresses two concepts about which there is currently much confusion, namely secularism and secularity. The fact that it does this in conversation with some of the other interested parties, namely Jews and Christians, and that it seeks to combine specifically religious, or theological, and political, or social-scientific, approaches, means that it will be of interest to both theoreticians in the academy and practitioners in different areas of society, and it therefore deserves a wide readership. Professor Hugh Goddard, Director of the HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World, University of Edinburgh –Commissioned

The question of the relationship between politics and religion tends to generate more heat than light, especially when the focus is on Islam. This book, with its careful analysis and respect for facts, helps dispel the smoke. It is an invaluable contribution to the public debate, especially in the British context, and will assist people of good will – of all faiths and none – to clarify their own thoughts about ‘the secular state’. Dr. Brian Klug Senior Research Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy, St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford –Commissioned

This book is a highly relevant piece of research for our turbulently chaotic world today. The heavy baggage of mutual distrust and detestation from the days of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Spain through to the Crusades and Colonialism has left behind a fuzzy and muddled image of Islam and Muslims in the eyes of others; Muslims too, have been seeing the West as the primary cause of all their woes and vilification.