Brent Neely reviews "Living among the Breakage"

Brent Neely has reviewed Miller's recently published book Living among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians. Here is a portion of the text:

I begin with a direct assessment. This is a fresh and compelling study in what is sure to be an increasingly important field. Miller has provided us with pioneering research in an emerging sector of World Christianity: the indigenous theology of Christians from a Muslim background. Miller deserves commendation for doing well a work that needed doing.  

[...] 

A key contribution of this study, then, is to elicit, search out, analyze, and order the “theology” being produced by these new groups of believers in Christ. The point is not that these CMB communities feature “professional theologians” or the publication of formal theological texts. No, rather, the point is that in reality the CMBs are “working out their faith” in practice, in church life, and in various forms of communication from popular-level books to online poetry. Thought, talk, and action about God (or even “for” God) constitute “theology.” 

Read the complete review which appeared in the International Journal of Pentecostal Missiology.

Living among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians, by Alex Miller

Our institute is proud to share with you Living among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians, written by Dr. Duane Alexander Miller. This book is based on his doctoral research carried out through New College at the University of Edinburgh.

From the publisher's page:

Around the world people are leaving Islam for Christianity in unprecedented numbers. This book seeks to look into the world of some of these converts, trying to discern the shape of their newfound faith. Why do they convert? What challenges do they face? And ultimately, what do they in their own complex and sometimes difficult circumstances claim to have understood about God that, while in Islam, they had not? In other words, what is the content of their contextual theology? In seeking to answer these questions, Miller looks into the world of an unintentional church plant in the Arab world consisting of believers from a Muslim background, visits with groups of Iranian converts in the diaspora, and examines the written testimonies of still other converts. In a world where Muslim-Christian relations are increasingly important and sometimes tendentious, this book examines the lived faith and contextual theology of people who have chosen to leave Islam and embrace Christianity.

Buy it at the publisher's website or Amazon. 

Publication: Alex Miller on the C-scale

Our lecturer in church history and theology, Alex Miller, has recently co-authored with Dr. Roger Dixon, an article/interview on Dr Dixon's many years in Indonesia. Here is a section on the 'C-scale' in the introductory section of the article by Dr Miller:

In terms of background information, the C-scale refers to an early attempt to classify congregations or ‘Christ following communities’ (but not ‘churches’) according to how ‘contextualized’ they are. The word ‘contextualization’ originates with the educational and missiological theory of Shoki Coe (1973, 1974), a Taiwanese pastor and educator, and in its original form envisioned the next step beyond indigenization. That is, contextualization was something done by the indigenous Christians, it was not done for them. By the time that Travis devised his scale, which ranged from c1 (a church speaking a foreign language and Christians exist as an ethnic/religious minority) to c5 (people who identify themselves as Muslims of some kind[1] and use the religious and cultural forms of Islam, and remain culturally and officially Muslim). Western evangelicals had lost the original (Asian) meaning of contextualization and had instead decided that contextualization was something to be done by missionaries for people of other cultures. The intention behind this was to ensure that the Good News would reach people in a cultural and religious form that would not be objectionable to them. This vision of contextualization (in Islamic contexts, at least) placed a great deal of emphasis on how people dress, what greetings they use, whether or not they eat pork or drink alcohol, whether their women cover their heads, and so on. Some missionaries even went so far as to legally convert to Islam so they could be a Muslim to the Muslims, in their attempt to imitate St Paul’s own practice (1 Cor 9:20).  This concept, that a Muslim (or Buddhist or Hindu or Taoist) can follow Jesus while remaining an ‘insider’ to their religious community is at the heart of so much debate today, and Dr Dixon shares his insights on the topic in the interview.

Read the whole article/interview, in the Journal of Asian Mission, a publication of the Asia Theological Association, of which NETS is a member. Links for the PDF can be found at academia.edu or Miller's blog.

---

[1] Some (like Travis 2000) have advanced the unfortunate term ‘Messianic Muslims’ for such people. All Muslims, though, accord the title ‘Messiah’ to Jesus son of Mary, so technically, all Muslims are already Messianic.

Doctoral Thesis of Duane Alexander Miller

Nazareth Seminary is glad to announce that Alex Miller, lecturer in church history and theology, has completed his doctoral work for the PhD in Divinity through the University of Edinburgh. The thesis is titled Living among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians. The citation information follows:

Miller, Duane Alexander. 2014. Living among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. Edinburgh, UK: University of Edinburgh.

The thesis has been printed as a book (Sep. 2016) and is available from the publisher or Amazon.

Key words: contextualization, religious conversion, contextual theology, liberation theology, Iranian Christians, theology-making, world Christianity, Shoki Coe, Lewis Rambo

Here is the abstract:

Since the 1960’s there has been a marked increase in the number of known conversions from Islam to Christianity. This thesis asks whether certain of these ex-Muslim Christians engage in the process of theology-making and, if so, it asks what these theologies claim to know about God and humans’ relation to God.

Utilizing the dialectic of contextuality-contextualization of Shoki Coe, and the sociology of theological knowledge of Robert Schreiter, the thesis seeks to answer these questions by the use of two case studies and an examination of some of the texts written by ex-Muslim Christians. Lewis Rambo’s theory of religious conversion and Steven Lukes’ theory of power will be used to clarify the changing dynamics of power which have helped to foster modern contexts wherein an unprecedented number of Muslims are both exposed to the Christian message and, if they choose to do so, able to appropriate it through religious conversion.

The two case studies are of a Christian community which founded a Muslim-background church in the Arabophone world and some Iranian Christian congregations in the USA and UK Diaspora.

Aspects of the contexts of these believers are investigated in some detail, including motives for religious conversion, numbers and locations of the converts, how apostates may be treated by Muslims, changes in migration and communications, and the Christian concept of religious conversion. The concept of inculturation which helps to describe the meeting of a specific community with the Christian message will aid in analyzing the communities and individuals being studied.

The final chapter brings together the various threads which have been raised throughout the thesis and argues that ex-Muslim Christians are engaged in theology-making, that areas of interest to them include theology of the church, salvation and baptism, and that the dominant metaphor in these theologies is a conceptualization of love and power that sees the two divine traits as inseparable from each other; they represent a knowledge about who God is and what he is like, which, in their understanding, is irreconcilable with their former religion, Islam.

Samuel Kuruvilla, Mary's Well Occasional Paper, Vol 3:1

Dr Samuel Kuruvilla is the author of our first Occasional Paper for 2014. The name of the paper is 'Contextual Theological Praxis as Resistance: Palestinian Christian Peace-building in the Occupied West Bank'.

Click HERE to download the PDF.

Abstract: This article deals with the different approaches that the Palestinian contextual theology movement ‘Al-Liqa,’ the liberation theology movement ‘Sabeel’ and the intercultural movement ‘Diyar’ consortium have taken towards resolving the Palestine-Israel conflict, given their similarities as well as divergences in the light of the intersection between theology and politics. The contextualisation of theology and politics in Palestine has a long history, especially in the light of the tortured history of that nation in world affairs. Palestinian Christians have long been controlled and influenced by Western Christendom and it was only in the middle part of the last century that a so-called ‘contextualisation’ movement rose among them that sought to place the culture of the Palestinian people right at the centre of their faith and practice. This article has sought to show how the Diyar Movement in Bethlehem has and can have an impact on Palestinian society, irrespective of party and religious affiliation, as it has sought to bridge the secular-religious divide within Palestinian society. 

Keywords: Palestine, Palestinian Theology, Liberation Theology, Sabeel, Al Liqa’, Contextualisation, Diyar