Tuesday, September 29, 2015

“Finding an End in the Beginning: eschatological trends among ex-Muslim Christians” (Chapter)

In 2014 the book Islam and the Last Day: Christian Perspectives on Islamic Eschatology was released by MST Press (Wantirna, Australia). This volume was co-edited by our seminary vice-president Brent Neely. The book is about Christian perspectives on Islamic eschatology.

In that book Alex Miller published a chapter on how some ex-Muslim Christians agree or disagree with Islamic eschatology, and how they envision certain features of apocalyptic and eschatological realities.

I have recently posted the PDF of that chapter at my academia.edu site. It can be read HERE.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Publication: "The Growth of Iranian Christianity since 1979"

Dr. Alex Miller, a member of our seminary faculty, has recently published an article in the journal Mission Studies. The title of the article is "Power, Personalities and Politics: the growth of Iranian Christianity after 1979" (2015).

Here is the abstract:
While Christianity has existed in Iran/Persia since the fourth century, if not earlier, at the middle of the twentieth century almost all Iranian Christians belonged to an ethnic minority, especially the Assyrians and the Armenians. Ethnic Iranians were almost all Muslims, and then mostly Shi’a Muslims. Since the Revolution of 1979 hundreds of thousands of ethnic Iranians have left Islam for evangelical Christianity, both within and outside of Iran. This paper seeks to explore the multifaceted factors – political, economic and technological – that have helped to create an environment wherein increasing numbers of ethnic Iranians have apostatized from Islam and become evan- gelical Christians. A concluding section outlines Steven Lukes’ theory of power and analyzes the growth of Iranian Christianity in the light of his theory.
Download the article PDF from the author's website HERE.