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Nternattona Ettn Vol. 8, No.4 nternattona• October 1984 ettn• Mission in Wilderness Places artin Luther once wrote a trenchant warning about the Doubtless all of us long for the days when mission issues Mlimitations of pure research: "No one is taught through were more pleasant, or at least more easily defined. We dread the much reading and thinking. There is a much higher school where journeys into the wilderness of our world. But as Luther reminds one learns God's Word. One must go into the wilderness. There us, they may be the very places where we encounter Christ, and Christ comes and one becomes able to judge the world." become able to judge the world. The world is still full of wilderness places where those in­ volved in Christian mission must venture in faith. Despite the fact that both the problems and their outcomes in some of those wil­ derness spots do not seem to be clearly discernible, we need to throw out some experimental probes toward an uncertain future. Norman Horner looks at Christian mission in Lebanon, and affirms that despite the monumental uncertainties about the On Page future of the tragic situation there, Christians will have a vital role to play in the life of that land. 146 The Future of Christian Mission in Lebanon The wilderness of urban mission is the topic of the next two Norman A. Horner articles. Raymond J. Bakke reviews four years and sixty-eight cit­ 149 Urban Evangelization: A Lausanne Strategy since 1980 ies visited with urban consultations under the Lausanne Strategy RaymondJ. Bakke for world-class cities. He finds that a crucial element involving those working in what seem like urban jungles is not simply 156 Nineveh Revisited: Theory and Practice in Interfaith amassing more information, but creating networks among those Relations committed to Christian ministry in the cities and empowering Christopher Lamb them to carry on amid overwhelming odds. Christopher Lamb ex­ amines some of the problems in interfaith relations that arise in a 160 Five Statistical Eras of Global Mission: A Thesis and city like Birmingham, England. Here again, matters are not re­ Discussion solved solely through "much reading and thinking" but through DavidB. Barrett commitment to what Lamb calls a "missionary mode" of interfaith 169 Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, and Jesus Christ, Image encounter. of God: A Personal Testimony David Barrett takes us on a historical tour of five eras of global Lamin Sanneh mission, and discusses the increasingly important role that statis­ tical information can play in developing mission strategies. Our 174 The Legacy of D. T. Niles readers have been, and will continue to be helped by Barrett's Creighton Lacy incisive analysis. Lamin Sanneh tells of his striking-and to most readers, very 178 Noteworthy surprising-journey from Muslim to Christian faith, in his search 179 Book Reviews for divine transcendence. This intensely personal journey had a remarkable outcome. 184 Index,1981-1984 Another journey of personal experience, that of the mission statesman D. T. Niles, is outlined by Creighton Lacy, in our con­ 192 Book Notes tinuing Legacy series. Niles faced a series of undefined, bewilder­ ing tasks in his eventful career, and was sustained throughout by a deep personal faith in Jesus Christ. of issionaryResearch The Future of Christian Mission in Lebanon Norman A. Horner n January 1977 I published an article in the Occasional and business, better educational facilities than existed anywhere I Bulletin of Missionary Research' under the title "The else in the region, and relative economic affluence. It was also the Churches and the Crisis in Lebanon." I had just returned from a one country of the area where Christians and Muslims collabo­ mission of eight years in the Middle East, with primary residence rated more or less harmoniously in the social and political order. in Beirut, and had personally experienced the first eighteen Under the surface, however, there was resentment in other months of the Lebanese civil war. In that article I maintained that Christian communities as well as among the Muslims and Druze this war is basically over social and political issues rather than re­ against the Maronite hegemony. There was also as much resis­ ligious issues as such. I believe that my analysis accurately re­ tance to any change in religious affiliation as existed in the more flected the situation at that time, and I would not now retract any conservative Muslim states of the region. Any increase in the ratio of the statements except for a too-eas y assumption that the coun­ of Christians to Muslims was seen by the Muslims as a further try was even then on the road to recovery. The war has instead threat to the uneasy population balance and to their already sub­ dragged on for seven more years, reaching an intensity that no servient position in the body politic. Hence there were actually one dreamed possible even in the dark days of early 1976, and no less Muslim converts to Christianity in the otherwise liberal real solution has yet been reached. atmosphere of Lebanon than in Iran where the population is 98 I shall here introduce three propositions: (1)The future course percent Muslim . of Christian mission in Lebanon will be conditioned very largely Today the demography of Lebanon has changed. There are by the future of Lebanon itself as an autonomous state-and that probably sixty Muslims and Druze to every forty Christians. An is presently quite unclear. (2) Evangelization, if it is to be authen­ unofficial estimate published on November 5, 1975 in Beirut's tic, must be characterized by genuine outreach to the non-Chris­ prestigious French-language newspaper al-Nahar,» edited by tian population. It can no longer consist of intra-Christian Greek Orthodox Lebanonese Christians, gave a combined Muslim proselytism, of merely winning people who are already at least and Druze total of about 2 million and a Christian total of approx­ nominally Christian from one ecclesiastical allegiance to another, imately 1,200,000. Those numbers would obviously be somewhat a procedure that has too often stained the record of the past. (3) different nearly a decade later, in 1984, but the ratio of Christians The healing of a sorely broken Lebanese society will require an un­ to Muslims has surely not increased on the Christian side, and it precedented measure of collaboration among all the churches rep­ is probable that proportionately more Christians have emigrated resented in the country. If the currently warring factions , during those years of almost continuous warfare. Christian and Muslim alike, are to regain enough mutual trust If Lebanon's confessional system of government is to survive even to coexist peacefully in a common political order, such rec­ in an autonomous state, it is clear that the representation of the onciliation must begin within the household of Christian faith . several religious communities must reflect the actual demographic situation and not that of forty years ago. This would not only I. The Future of Lebanon as an Autonomous mean the end of Maronite hegemony, but it would also require a State more equitable representation of the Shi'ite Muslims who now considerably outnumber the Sunnis. The current Shi'ite unrest is Lebanon is the only country in the Arab East where Christians still in fact caused no less by the intransigence of the Sunni establish­ constitute a large percentage of the total population. No official ment than by that of the Maronite Christians. census of religious affiliation has been taken since 1932, but that There is no evidence to suggest that the confessional system census gave Christians a slight majority over the combined total of of government is doomed. For the first thirty-two years, from in­ Muslims and Druze. The country's full autonomy in 1943 was dependence in 1943 to the outbreak of civil war in 1975, Lebanese achieved largely at the initiative of the Maronites, an Eastern-rite Muslims as well as Christians benefited from that collaboration. Catholic community and the largest of several major Christian They enjoyed more freedom and prosperity than in the tradition­ churches in Lebanon. A unique "confessional system" of govern­ ally Muslim states of the region, and they would be reluctant to ment was established, the distribution of representation based on see it disappear. There is even now no Widespread popular objec­ the 1932 census. By gentlemen's agreement rather than constitu­ tion to retaining a Maronite as president of the republic,' so long tional mandate, the president of the republic would always be a as other Christians as well as Muslims and Druze are equitably Maronite Christian and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim . represented in the decision-making process. This leads the pres­ Although the Shi'ite and Druze communities were represented ent writer to speculate that Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian in parliament according to their presumed numerical size, and in and the current president of Lebanon, will survive politically. Un­ the less sensitive ministries, the major political, economic, and like his brother, Bashir, who was assassinated only weeks after as­ military power remained in Christian hands. suming the presidential office, Amin has not been as identified The result was outwardly spectacular. Lebanon came to be with the right wing of the predominantly Maronite Phalangists called " the Switzerland of the Middle East," with a free economy, and has shown himself to be more politically astute in dealing freedom of the press, a favorable climate for international banking with both Lebanese Muslims and the Syrian government. Ifa po­ litical structure based on Christian-Muslim collaboration fails, it will be because external forces oppose it and not because it is ob­ Norman A.
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