Abstract
Over the last fifty years, British society has changed from a Christendom model, where the default religious identity was Church of England, to a religiously diverse society, where religious identity is a significant marker for minorities in the population. Among Christians, strong religious belief and belonging is most likely to be expressed by those who identify as evangelical. In many parts of the world, and especially in the USA, evangelical discourse on the subject of non-Christian faiths, especially Islam, suggests profound antipathy to ‘other’ beliefs and sometimes hostility to their adherents. In contrast, evidence presented in this paper from a recent Evangelical Alliance panel survey suggests a range of nuanced viewsin the community of evangelical Christians in the UK. Although over 80% affirmed that Jesus is the only way of salvation, and 84% thought Christianity is the only path to God, more extended comments show that a wide range of views exist, from the paranoid or exclusive to a view that is tolerant and broadly inclusive. The paper will examine the associations between these views and various demographic and theological factors and seek to explain the data in terms of the patterns of contemporary everyday inter-faith encounters, with specific emphasis on the Abrahamic faiths, especially Islam. The situation is discussed in a framework of dynamics and stability, where religious contact between faith communities has both crystallized beliefs and identities and opened up new possibilities for alliances against the secular world.
Highlights
Continuity and Change in Christian Views of Other Faiths1In the contemporary era of globalisation and electronic communication, religious diversity in cities and the negotiation of relationships and interactions between individual members of different faith communities is an everyday experience
It could be argued that a contrast of two main approaches to the relationship between Christianity and Islam goes back at least to the age of the Crusades in the twelfth century CE, when one section of the church was engaged in armed conflict with the Muslim world while the Franciscans sought peaceful relations through which they might convince Muslims of the truth of the Christian gospel (Cunningham 2004, 2006)
In a question used because it could be compared with an earlier YouGov survey (2014) by Woodhead, over 80% were clear in their understanding that Jesus is the only way of salvation and 84% thought Christianity is the only path to God
Summary
Continuity and Change in Christian Views of Other Faiths1In the contemporary era of globalisation and electronic communication, religious diversity in cities and the negotiation of relationships and interactions between individual members of different faith communities is an everyday experience. Continuity and Change in Christian Views of Other Faiths. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the relationship between societies and communities based on the residual Christendom of Europe and North America and those rooted in the world of Islam has been one of the most pressing issues of the age. Both nation states and non-state actors have been engaged in armed conflicts, which have been described variously as “the war on terror”, “jihad”, and “the war on Islam”, in which millions (the vast majority being Muslims) have died or suffered. The aim of this paper is to test how far the ‘Crusader’ view, which seems dominant in the USA, is adopted among the evangelical Christian community in the United Kingdom
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