Weekend Reads: Evangelical conversations with Muslims and Catholics

When you’re a missionary in a country where it is illegal for Muslims to convert to Christianity, what do you do when your Muslim hosts corner you and say, “You’re here hoping that we become Christians”?

Mennonite missionary David W. Shenk has been in that situation, and his response is brilliant.

He points out that Christians and Muslims both abhor proselytizing, where “proselytizing” is defined as presenting material rewards to encourage people to change their religion. Instead, the Quran claims, “Let there be no compulsion in religion!” (2:256), just as the Bible calls salvation a “free gift” (Revelation 22:17). But, adds Shenk, Muslims often have invited him to be a Muslim, even though conversion is, strictly speaking, between a person and his god.

With this background, Shenk turns the question around: If a Muslim comes to him and wants to follow Jesus the Messiah, must he turn that person away? Should he make him unwelcome? Shenk writes, “Would that not be religious imperialism to say, ‘Jesus the Messiah is only for us, and not for others?’”

Seldom have I read a modern book so filled with wisdom and grace. Christian. Muslim. Friend. Twelve Paths to Real Relationship (Herald Press, 2014) exemplifies all that is best about the Anabaptist tradition. For example, Shenk insists up front that Christians must live with integrity. If your visa says you’re in the country to run a business, you need to run that business. Don’t evangelize deceptively. How would you feel if a Muslim pretended to be a Christian, joined your church, and eventually started teaching Sunday school? What would you think when you found out your children were learning, at church, that Muhammad is the seal of the prophets?

Shenk also demonstrates repeatedly that attacking Islam is inappropriate. Commend Christ.

Pastor Chris Castaldo emphasizes the same truth in Talking with Catholics about the Gospel: A Guide for Evangelicals (Zondervan, 2015). “Of all the things we can say and do among Catholic friends,” he writes, the most important and enduring is to maintain authentic devotion to Christ.” Also like Shenk, Castaldo insists that it is important to get the other side right. For example, Catholics don’t believe that Jesus is physically present in the sacramental wafer—“substantially,” yes; “physically,” no.

Castaldo was born into a Catholic family and later came to the evangelical faith, while Shenk is the son of Mennonite missionaries to Tanzania. Castaldo says he has gotten over the negative, reactionary phase of his ex-Catholicism, but he freely admits it was not an immediate event. One thing he learned: Don’t accuse a cultural Catholic of shallow faith, even if it’s obviously true. To many people, that’s not just a personal insult, but an attack on their family too.

Cultural Catholicism is not the only kind of Catholicism. Castaldo quotes a Catholic who says some “refer to Catholicism as the Hinduism of Christianity, because it is infused with so many different schools of prayer, ritual, and perspective, much like the native and diverse religions of India.” Know your audience: Evangelical Catholics and traditional Catholics may have very different views than cultural Catholics.

Talking with Catholics is more a how-to guide than a sustained theological investigation of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s written at a popular level, but the extensive bibliography and endnotes betray the fact that Castaldo has a Ph.D., and that one could spend a lifetime researching the battle between Rome and Protestants. (Or you could read a scholar who has.)

For a quick, if far from comprehensive, overview of where Rome is and how to engage Catholics, read Castaldo. But if you want advice on evangelism in general, read Shenk. You won’t be disappointed.