Anglican Contributions to the Church’s Mission to Muslims
A funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: after over a millennium of almost no conversions from Islam to Christianity, a small trickle started to appear in the 1960s, and it grew—not into a great river but a reliable and steady brook. Whether it was Blessed Ramon Llull (died c. 1315, the father of Christian mission to Muslims) or the Presbyterians and Congregationalists of the American Board (est. 1810) in the Ottoman Empire, the main nut to crack was how do we get Muslims to really consider our claims about Jesus Christ?
That is still a valid question, but the drip that turned into a brook confronts us with another question: we have these believers from a Muslim background, and now what?
Sponsored
We want to draw on our combined years of ministry experience to and among Muslims and Muslim-background believers (MBBs) to share ideas about what the Anglican way has to contribute to that great mission. We feel that Anglicans are at our best when speaking broadly to the Church universal—think of T.S. Eliot, J.I. Packer, N.T. Wright, Madeleine L’Engle, and, of course, C.S. Lewis—while remaining aware of our own… peculiarities. Some of our observations are born from an Anglican missiology, while others are more personal observations from two Anglicans.
Governance
I love Augustine’s incisive summary of the state of his heart as he reflected on his ordination as a bishop:
Where I’m terrified by what I am for you, I am given comfort by what I am with you. For you I am a bishop, with you, after all, I am a Christian. The first is the name of an office undertaken, the second a name of grace; that one means danger, this one salvation… So I hope the fact that I have been brought together with you gives me more pleasure than my having been placed at your head; then as the Lord has commanded, I will be more effectively your servant, and be preserved from ingratitude for the price by which I was bought to be, not too unworthily, your fellow servant.
St Augustine of Hippo Regius (AD 354–430), Sermon 340 “On the Anniversary of his Ordination“
Anglican ecclesiology follows Augustine in emphasizing that bishops, priests/presbyters, and deacons are, first of all, “lay” people—they are part of the laws, the people of God. They are no different in being or status to their brothers and sisters in every church congregation. Salvation for every person is by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord. It is from this conviction of our common standing as “lay people” in front of a holy God, a blessed Saviour, that Anglicanism inherits its fundamental perspective on the church. Arising out of this basic conviction, I would like to offer some thoughts about what the Anglican strain of ecclesiology might offer, which is of considerable benefit to the church’s mission to and among Muslims.
My starting point is that of Anglican convictions about governance.
God calls his people to follow Christ, and forms us into a royal priesthood, a holy nation, to declare the wonderful deeds of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 John 1:7). The Church is the Body of Christ, the people of God and the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:27). In baptism the whole Church is summoned to witness to God’s love and to work for the coming of his kingdom. To serve this royal priesthood, God has given particular ministries. Bishops are ordained to be shepherds of Christ’s flock (Acts 20:28) and guardians of the faith of the apostles (1 Timothy 6:20), proclaiming the gospel of God’s kingdom and leading his people in mission. Obedient to the call of Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, they are to gather God’s people and celebrate with them the sacraments of the new covenant. Thus formed into a single communion of faith and love, the Church in each place and time is united with the Church in every place and time.
extract from the Anglican ordination of bishops
The Anglican missional imperative sees a consecrated diocesan bishop as responsible under God for sharing the gospel and forming the Church in a particular region (a diocese). He shares that responsibility with ordained priests or presbyters, deacons, and laypeople. Often, such sharing of responsibility for “mission” and “church” is explicitly expressed in the institution of an ordained priest to a particular benefice or parish office, as here:
The most solemn moment of an institution service is, for me, when I commit the licence to the candidate and say these words:
Receive this cure of souls which is both yours and mine.
We will need to exercise this cure of souls as never before over the coming weeks as clergy, lay ministers and disciples together.
The cure of souls we are given is, of course, of the whole parish and benefice. The term cure means more than care (although all cure of souls is built on love). At its centre is the ministry of reconciliation between individuals and God and between people and communities through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Bishop Steven Croft of Oxford
An Anglican diocesan bishop shares the “cure of souls” with colleagues whom he institutes, licenses, or appoints to various ministries or positions of responsibility. Sharing such spiritual responsibility for mission and church development, prophetic ministry, and building the common good with fellow citizens of other faiths or none is indicated in a variety of ways (e.g., through licensing or the giving of “permission to officiate” or via contractual agreements).
All this is to say, there is a clear hierarchical element to Anglican governance. That hierarchy of authority is not absolute, for a diocesan bishop is supported and held to account through diocesan synods, which are composed of three “houses”: the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy, and the House of Laity (that is the case, at least in the Churches I know best—England and Alexandria. Other Anglican provinces may have slightly different arrangements.) A particular church with a particular burden (e.g., for what it sees as an inadequate representation of certain members of the church in the structures of that diocese) can, through representation at the parish, deanery, or diocesan level, bring its burden to the attention of those in diocesan authority. A deanery is an administrative grouping of congregations in a region. A diocese might have several deaneries.
The bishop in synod is required to face up to such burdens expressed from the ground up, as it were. But spiritual and contractual authority is expressed hierarchically, and “in all things lawful and honest,” clergy are required to obey their “father in God” as they are included in sharing the bishop’s cure of souls in a particular part of his diocese.
Most Muslim societies in the world tend to be hierarchical. Most Muslim cultures in the world tend to be patriarchal, often patrilineal and patrilocal. It is not strange to believers in Christ from a Muslim background that Anglican governance preserves a certain hierarchical character: it is familiar, and they understand where they stand, where leaders within the church community stand. It is reassuring to know that a lay assistant of the church who may deal with them in specific ways (e.g., in providing financial or accommodation or employment support) is accountable to a priest and church council. To know that their priest is accountable to a bishop is reassuring. Someone holding some local spiritual authority over them has a license “from above” that specifies what s/he is permitted to offer in the church’s name and is to be welcomed.
There are other advantages to this form of church governance. Governments and businesses in the Muslim world may have interacted with the existing, ancient church (usually Orthodox of some type). That Anglicans maintain the principle of having an acknowledged and visible ‘head’ for the local Church who uses the same title (bishop) can be reassuring. This can communicate that there is continuity and respect for tradition. It can also be helpful to point to an Anglican Communion that extends worldwide and includes some 70 to 80 million members. This communicates to suspicious families or a worried member of the secret police that they are not dealing with a strange cult or radical religious movement.
Of course, the smooth growth and functioning of a church subject to such vertical governance depends very much on its character and the quality of life of those entrusted with authority. Are they servant leaders? Are they humble? Do they encourage the gifts and the development of those entrusted to their spiritual oversight? Too much hangs on it. The Anglican safety net is that, should leaders prove to be less than faithful in their functioning, there are clear channels of appeal and, if need be, redress.
Balancing Pioneer Mission with Pastoral Care and Counselling
It is a truism that much of the current evangelizing of Muslims is being carried out by people whose primary gifting is in mission/evangelism. Communication of the gospel, especially across cultures, and the leading of people to Christ, especially across cultures, are delicate and, in most cases, fulfilled by men and women gifted explicitly by God for doing that.
In my observation and experience, it tends to be precisely those specifically gifted evangelists or mission experts who lead the small communities of believers that begin to form the local church. Mission groups themselves deliberately seek to recruit pioneers, people with the gift and stamina to “reach the unreached.” Often, there is not the same effort to recruit pastors and teachers as part of their frontline teams. Because of this, from the very beginning of forming communities of believers from a Muslim background, their spiritual direction and guidance end up in the hands of people (most often) with relatively little pastoral gifting or experience.
Issues of Authority in Turkey
I (Bill) remember being part of a mission team in Turkey in 1970. We brought together a few believers in the country’s southeast who had all come—individually—to faith via a Bible reading program organized through the cooperation of radio and literature ministries. We then visited individual Turks in-country to follow up on those who had reached a certain stage in their study of, for example, Luke’s Gospel. Some of them professed faith in Jesus Christ.
Those Turks living reasonably near each other were gradually introduced as new brothers or sisters in Christ. I recall one small meeting of a few Turks who had become used to gathering with a few of us foreigners.
In the meeting, one of the Turks accused another of the Turks of adultery. These old men were looking to us foreign Christians to adjudicate this argument. One was 21 years old, as was my friend, while the older team member was maybe 30; we were all single people. And we were supposed to handle that kind of scenario?! We had been trained to do exciting pioneer work, which we were indeed doing. What would have been very helpful in that case would be to have access to a mature pastor with experience in mediation. The tradition of Anglican mission, at its best, tries to balance the ministries of evangelism with those of pastoral care and guidance.
A Hierarchical Society
In hierarchical societies, there is the risk of those with authority taking advantage of those without authority. Normally, children can be encouraged and disciplined by adults of an extended family beyond their parents only. Older brothers have a lot of responsibility for siblings, especially when a father is temporarily absent from the family home or dead. Certain male family members in my Muslim societies have access to young male and female family members because they are seen as having a mahram relationship with the family members concerned—that is, they are forbidden to marry them. Their presence in the family home is not seen as threatening or indeed forbidden, as the presence of non-family members might be.
As a result, the abuse of minors—especially but not exclusively females—by mahram males is rife. My wife and I grew sadly aware of this reality as we counseled (female) believers who had been abused in childhood by uncles and elder brothers. The pastoral care of such abused sisters and brothers is central to their finding security and healing in Christ and requires expert—or at least experienced and responsible—help. mention this as another example of a situation where sensitive, well-trained pastoral counseling is needed to go hand in hand with the pioneer worker planting churches and evangelizing Muslims.
Tunisia in the Jasmine Revolution
My wife and I (Bill) lived in Tunisia through the period leading up to and following the Jasmine Revolution, which occurred from December 2010 to January 2011. had been serving as Rector of St George’s, Tunis, and Assistant Bishop for North Africa since 2008, and we left for retirement at the end of 2015. Most believers who got to know in the period after the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia—when many Muslims were coming to churches to ask about dreams of angels they had experienced earlier in their lives, or to seek answers about aspects of Christianity, or to express anger and frustration over the state around the world of their own faith—were aged between 18 and 36 years.
In discovering political freedom, discovering the permissibility of expressing their own opinions out loud, and discovering a new existence as they got to know Jesus Christ, many of these youngsters came up against trouble. Others beat sons and daughters. Parents expelled teenagers from their homes. Others ostracised or mocked new believers. Some brothers and sisters lost jobs, were reported to the authorities, or were hunted and humiliated by local religious leaders or newly-appeared Islamist societies. In other words, “persecution” was their very real experience.
However, for some of them, some of the time, it was really “persecution” for the sake of Christ. Or was it a somewhat deserved, if inappropriately expressed, response to a teenager-like capacity for winding up, testing the boundaries, being ungrateful and rude, expressing too strongly disapproval of their background and family circumstances? I often remarked that apart from pastors or counselors, mature youth workers/leaders would be a high priority on my list for churches and mission groups to provide for emerging Christian congregations of young people from a Muslim background.
Sodalities and Modalities
Within Anglicanism, there exists a strong tension, or mutual acceptance, of sodalities and modalities. By this, I mean that Anglican support local, regional, national, and global missions. It is part of the DNA of being Anglican. mission groups and evangelists connected in sodalities can be fast-moving and respond to changing circumstances without the encumbrance of heavy structures. However, another part of Anglicanism’s DNA, which is just as significant, is the emphasis on pastoring and teaching. Churches and congregations earthed local communities, and having a history” can provide stability and a forum for consistent care and character development.
Another couple of contrasting metaphors might be “army” and “hospital.” Anglicans embrace the value of both and, in healthy situations, seek to express both aspects of discipleship, even if in tension. Anglicans have the heritage and sense to develop hospitals for the souls of humanity. They have the nerve and resources to stay on the challenging course in difficult situations, such as taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Teaching Heritage
I (Duane) teach Old Testament at one of Spain’s four accredited residential Protestant seminaries (there is one more that only offers online courses and a slew of non-accredited institutions.) I take my students through Old Testament I (Torah), Old Testament II (Prophetic Literature), and Old Testament III (Historical Books and Wisdom). I sometimes assign them an obscure passage to preach on, like when YHWH comes to kill Moses (or maybe his son—the text isn’t clear), or when fire comes out from the altar to consume the sons of Aaron or the instructions for the high priest’s ephod. I don’t do this to torture the students but to challenge the evangelical practice of only using, say, 5% of the Old Testament for preaching and teaching. My students come from churches without any lectionary, and the pastor preaches on whatever they feel like.
Use the Lectionary
But consider another (Anglican) option: using a lectionary to guide Bible reading throughout the year. This ensures that Anglican ministers and preachers must address subjects brought up in different parts of the Bible rather than be satisfied with speaking only to their adherents about favorite verses or incidents from scripture. Cycles of readings usually align with the season of the Christian calendar (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and so on). The cycle of readings repeats itself every two to three years.
The consequence of this is that you must deal with challenging passages sometimes. It’s also a safeguard against Christians hearing the same sermon repeatedly. It even has themes: prophets foretelling the birth of Christ, the ministry of John the Baptist, and that time when Christ will return to “judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” And so on, each season with its themes and corresponding passages. In my [Duane’s] book, I Will Give Them an Everlasting Name: Pastoral Care for Christ’s Converts from Islam, I have entire chapters on the liturgical calendar and its relevance for pastoral formation for MBBs.
The Strength of a Global Tradition
The global reach of the Anglican church means that the insights of folk from multiple cultures can easily enrich all. Theological education can draw on such insights and make available various ways of understanding texts that—for the most part—found expression within societies that were strongly hierarchical and significantly involved in hosting/guesting.
Retreats in Tunisia
In Tunisia, “retreats” were a significant contributor to helping people—especially young people—from a Muslim background either become sure of their commitment to Christ or grow in their commitment to Christ. They regularly occurred in a Roman Catholic monastery on the city’s outskirts. There were separate dormitories for men and women. There was a dedicated chapel for guests at the monastery to use. Worship and prayer functioned significant components each day, and often, these times were punctuated by dealing with demons, oppressions, or strong bonds of evil that dominated different people’s lives.
My (Bill) primary role was to offer teaching from the Bible. Sometimes, that meant introducing different books or going through portions or whole books. It was important to help these young people not only to memorize texts but also to come to some understanding of them in terms of their original contexts (something not really emphasized within Qur’anic appreciation) so that they might have the tools to apply the texts to themselves. I gained more than I gave; the epistles of the New Testament came alive to me as Paul, Peter, James, John, and others sought to dress the ups and downs of life and faith in communities of new followers of Christ from pagan and Jewish backgrounds.
Mature Leadership
However, the way the retreats were run and experienced in Tunisia emphasized to me the vital need for a mature team to lead or facilitate them. For some believers, a retreat became the first time they had stayed away from the eyes of family members in their own homes. Many men and women found themselves together and had to learn to limit themselves to appropriate inter-relationships.
Monks at the monastery complained about the noise at night (as we dealt with demons and screaming adolescents) and eventually banned the group from using their premises! The potential for developing inappropriate attachments and dependencies is strong unless those leading young believers through their early, delicate days in a new life of faith are rigorous in their safeguarding attitudes and responsibilities.
A Broad Body
This takes us back to the importance of balanced and mature instruction in Scripture. The Anglican Communion is a broad body. You will find in it progressives and conservatives, Anglo-Catholics who love their chasubles and incense, and drums and guitar evangelicals. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But one of the strengths that flows from this is that Anglicans tend to be good at staying, interpreting, and applying Scripture in a manner that is not sectarian and that has been informed by these different streams of Anglicanism (and global Christianity, in general). In the use of a lectionary for personal devotions and/or the preaching schedule, you have a balanced and fruitful foundation for preaching and teaching, whether that be at a retreat, a home church, or a cathedral.
Money and Stewardship
We believe that a necessary part of the nurture of new believers in Christ from a Muslim background must be the willingness to offer protection and support to new members of the church family—for “family” is how most new believers from this background see “church.” Family is about being together, not simply “meeting.” Family is about “my home is your home.” This means shared resources and mutual support—including financial. Anglican monastic communities have long injected a stream of life into the larger denomination that holds these kinds of convictions, so they are not strange to us. In fact, we strongly admire them.
Financial Integrity
Priests and deacons learn accountability for financial integrity and spending records in their ordination training. Anglicans are well placed to promote an ethos of embracing the newest family members and providing for their needs as necessary and wisely, with generosity and transparency. Hopefully, that good practice will become the norm for those who, in turn, will help other, newer disciples in their time of need.
This is helpful on an administrative level, to be sure. However, it also provides a sort of witness to integrity and transparency in Islamic cultures, where these are not the norm. (D ne) minister at Kanisa, an Arabic-language Christian fellowship in Madrid. We received a grant from a church in the USA for start-up expenses and have been careful to keep receipts of some form—physical or digital—to account for our expenses, whether a coffee and a sandwich over a pastoral visit or hundreds of euros to repair the security gate at the church. All of this has meant spending additional time and energy, but I have noted that the practice itself can lead people to ask why we do this. And what is the answer? Faithfulness? Responsible stewardship? Honesty, all of these flow from our commitment to being disciples of Jesus Christ.
Another brief example: Years ago, we (the Millers) lived in Nazareth. We had some funds to use to help pay for Christian education. A promising young lady from a Greek Catholic (or Melkite) family applied and recieved the scholarship. We verified that she was a student in good standing at the prestigious Hebrew University. The easiest thing would have been to give her cash to pay for the tuition. But there was a concern: would having over $1,000 in cash not be a temptation to use it otherwise? I don’t mean to waste it, but to help her uncle with his medical bills, to help her father with emergency business expenses, or something like that.
We did the extra work, and so did she: she got us the bill from the university, I went to the bank to buy a cashier’s check, and I mailed it directly to the university. A lot more time-consuming for everyone involved, yes. But the message is financial integrity. That’s not unique to Anglicanism but is vital within the tradition. Th e is an entire chapter on money matte in Duane’s book, I Will Give Them E rlasting Name: pastoral care for Christ’s converts from Islam.)
Sacramental Worship
Many are the times when I have been passing through an airport in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunis during the season of hajj. t is remarkable to observe the joy on the faces of pilgrims returning from visiting the epicenter of their faith. In their hands are special containers holding Zamzam water for sick relatives and friends. Those gathered in the terminal to welcome their loved ones home, stroke their cheeks and clothes, thankful to transfer to themselves the baraka adhering to the pilgrims.
Sacramentality
There is an understanding that Allah’s powerful acts in the past continue to be present in some way today. Muslims would not use the word ‘sacramentality,’ but we will. A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace. Sacraments are memorials, but more than that, they are a recognition that what God did in the past is something that we participate in through those sacraments. I (Duane) think of a passage I discuss with my students at the seminary. Deuteronomy 5:1–5 (NASB):
Then Moses summoned all Israel and said to them:
“Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I am speaking today in your hearing, that you may learn them and observe them carefully. The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, with all those of us alive here today. The Lord spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire, while I was standing between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain…”
In this passage, Moses is near the end of his life. He has led Israel through the wilderness so the previous rebellious generation could die and a new, faithful generation could replace them. Moses will not enter the Land himself. So, you need to ask, why does Moses go out of his way to say that YHWH did not make the act with their fathers, but with them? Their fathers were actually there at Horeb (aka, inai).
Translate this to Holy Communion, and Jesus says to you, “This is my body…” It may not make much sense to us, but this is a facet of who God is, of how God is, of how God chooses to interact with Creation and with us. Maybe he could be otherwise, but he is not. e is the God who chooses to knit together the past and the present, and the future in holy rituals where he is present to us, and we are present to him.
For Anglicans, the sacraments of baptism and holy communion constitute such profound, holy moments. Baptism marks a spiritual rite of passage, a point of no return—like when Israel passed through the Sea of Reeds—a confession of trust in Jesus Christ as Saviour and King. In Tunisia, I baptized new believers in a large, mosaic-lined baptistry (built into the ground of the church site). It was a copy of one of the best-preserved baptistries from the early period of Christian her age in the country. For new believers from a Muslim background, the experience of being baptized was often strongly transformative. It allied them to brothers and sisters supporting them in their present act but also making them feel part of a family that had long ago (long before Islam) found expression in their homeland: “The Lord spoke to you face to face at the mountain…”
Communion and the Household
The sharing of holy communion conveys a similar sense of “householdness”—of connection to saints throughout history and around the globe today. It also has the potential to bring with it the sense of the numinous. For most of us Anglicans, the special thanksgiving meal (Eucharist) means much more than a mere remembering,” and probably less than bread physically turning into flesh and wine into blood. But in the Lord’s Supper, we seek the sense of the holy, numinous, and divine presence with joy.
The meal can be both contemplation and communion. The symbolism of the elements (one bread and one cup) is swallowed up in the experience of Christ renewing the communicant—of Christ feeding us with his own life. The clean, holy baraka transferral, if you like, in which the Blessed One blesses with his Spirit. What is not to like? Who is this God who feeds his humble people, putting bread and wine in their mouths? It is the Lord and commander of the heavenly armies who presides over the divine tribunal of the son of God, the angels and archangels, the seraphim and the cherubim. It is the Creator of the heavens and the earth who puts this bread and wine into our mouths and, in so doing, nourishes his people.
Historical Humility
A year or so after departing from Tunisia, I (Bill) was invited to give a series of talks on “church” at a long weekend series of seminars organized by one of the lay Tunisian believers who was a member of our church. Most persons who attended these seminars were not from St George’s but from a couple of the other larger church fellowships in the city. In one of the seminars, I focused on what we might call “ecumenical relationships.” I gradually discovered during our years in Tunis that there was an attitude of suspicion and jealousy between various Protestant church groups promoted by their leaders—who had evidently learned this attitude initially from foreign missionaries.
I recall my shock hearing the priest in charge of our own Tunisian congregation forbidding his flock from attending a teaching/training session being organized by one of the other churches in town. This attitude was more than reciprocated in other Tunisian believers’ view of the Anglicans, or “Episcopalians”—a kind of dirty word conjuring up all that was seen as unbiblical or immoral or “liberal” and currently being demonstrated within the Episcopal Church in America. St. George’s was suspect or guilty through association in the eyes of the evangelical congregations in Tunisia.
In passing, in one of my seminars, I mentioned the origins of the Church of England—and how, from one perspective, the denomination might be seen as originating in the unsated quest of an English monarch for a male heir to follow him to the throne! There was a titter in the room and a relaxation because many of my hearers had been fed this line as the only or real reason for the emergence of the Anglican denomination. They had never heard an Anglican being anything but defensive in describing his denomination’s beginnings—and I mean as an institution independent from the See of Rome.
Ancient Anglicanism
Historically, Anglican Christianity goes back to the 3rd century, maybe earlier.) But what if that scenario is the actual case (however untrue or inadequate an explanation I or others might feel that to be), and what God was an expert at bringing something extraordinary out of things done for lousy motives? Isn’t that how he works in our lives so often? ut of polygamy emerged the people of Israel; out of adultery, murder, and lifelong sadness (for mother Bathsheba) came a Solomon; out of a violent zealot came a self-sacrificing Paul. Similarly, Anglican Christianity spread worldwide on the skirts of the British Empire.
Cannot God bring something good out of something much less than “good,” if that is how British imperialism is viewed? Actually, Tunisians have more of a love-hate relationship with the French than the British, so this “problem” with Anglicanism didn’t really feature very much! The ability for us Anglicans to admit something of the mixed motives in our Church’s origins in becoming the national Christian expression in England sets a good example. t wins more trust than the constant claim of most missionaries in Tunisia and their Tunisian surrogates for their church or denomination being the only real New Testament church around.
Part of a Broad Family
While this example is from Tunisia, it applies in other places, too. Anglicans are part of an ancient and fruitful branch of the ancient Church. On the other hand, unlike our Roman and Orthodox brethren, we do not claim to be “the True Church,” much less “the one founded by Christ and birthed at Pentecost.” We are glad to be part of a broad family, which, yes, means you have the crazy uncle or the wayward cousin. But in that breadth and width, in that historical depth—warts and all—we find a freedom and a power that enables us, by the grace of God, to carry forth the word of Christ to all the nations of the world, working with brothers and sisters om other churches and traditions.
Conclusion
In this article, Bishop Bill and I have highlighted some aspects and facets of Anglican Christianity that we feel mark a substantial contribution to the global Church’s mission to and among Muslims. We know that most people working to take the gospel to the roughly one-quarter of the world population who are Muslim are not Anglicans; for them, we wanted to share these insights. For readers who are not Anglicans but are engaging in such a mission, it is our hope that you will thoughtfully contemplate what you might be able to put into practice in your own ministry based on what we have mentioned here. Indeed, we’re glad to be in touch and answer any questions you may have.
For our readers who are Anglicans but have no ba ground in the mission to and among Muslims, we’d ask you to pray and ask the Lord if (and how) he would have you engage in the mission to Islam—one of the greatest challenges the Church catholic has ever faced, no doubt.
Finally, we wish encouragement for our readers who are Anglicans and who are engaged in this mission in some way. As Anglicans, it is easy to become discouraged by global and ecclesiastical politics—no doubt our brethren from other global Christian denominations can sympathize—but we have much to commend the Anglican way in relation to our mission to Muslims.
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