Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear

by Matthew Kaemingk, James K. A. Smith (Foreword by)

Overview

An alternative, uniquely Christian response to the growing global challenges of deep religious difference

In the last fifty years, millions of Muslims have migrated to Europe and North America. Their arrival has ignited a series of fierce public debates on both sides of the Atlantic about religious freedom and tolerance, terrorism and security, gender and race, and much more. How can Christians best respond to this situation?

In this book theologian and ethicist Matthew Kaemingk offers a thought-provoking Christian perspective on the growing debates over Muslim presence in the West. Rejecting both fearful nationalism and romantic multiculturalism, Kaemingk makes the case for a third way--a Christian pluralism that is committed to both the historic Christian faith and the public rights, dignity, and freedom of Islam.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802874580
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	01/25/2018
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	873,193
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Matthew Kaemingk teaches theology, ethics, and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: My Enemy, Too 1

Part 1 Mecca and Amsterdam: A Case Study

1 The Myth of Multiculturalism 29

2 Marginalizing Islam 54

Interlude: A Christian Defense of Islam? 70

Part 2 Christian Pluralism: A History

3 The Emergence of Christian Pluralism 77

4 Kuyper's Deconstruction of Uniformity 91

5 Kuyper's Construction of Plurality 118

Interlude: Beyond Kuyper 159

Part 3 Christian Pluralism: A Future

6 Pluralism and Christ 165

7 Pluralism and Worship 196

8 Pluralism and Action 237

Part 4 Islam and Christian Pluralism in America

9 Islam and Christianity in America 263

10 Muslim Spaces in America 278

11 American Evangelicals and Islam: The Pluralist Option 286

Epilogue: The Politics of Holy Week 300

Bibliography 306

Index 326

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/13/2017
This fantastic debut by Kaemingk, professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, pairs philosophical rigor and practical advice in a powerful call for Western Christians to deal more justly with Muslims. Using the left-leaning Netherlands as an example of the failure of unquestioning multiculturalism, he assails liberalism’s inability to account for the real problems of integrating Islam into Western life, namely, fundamental cultural differences that should be acknowledged and celebrated rather than elided. His answer to this is for Christians to cultivate a pluralism that celebrates diversity while maintaining theological commitment. He builds his argument off the work of Abraham Kuyper, a late-19th-century Dutch theologian who critiqued liberalism’s shallow view of faith. Kaemingk offers suggestions for outreach efforts (including Dutch success stories such as that of a group of Christian women in Rotterdam who spend a weekend each month in the Muslim area of the city to “stitch, knit, and talk” as the communities make clothing together) that he says will cultivate the kind of respect for difference his new expansive orientation requires. He closes with 10 ways for American evangelicals to mend the rifts between Islam and the West. Despite the seriousness of his argument, Kaemingk’s tone is encouraging throughout. This useful and accessible academic work provides Christians a compassionate, coherent approach to the pressing problem of how religious difference should be handled in a secular society. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fantastic. . . . This useful and accessible academic work provides Christians a compassionate, coherent approach to the pressing problem of how religious difference should be handled in a secular society."

Shadi Hamid
-- author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam Is Reshaping the World
"This is a wonderfully written, ambitious, and urgent work of theology, ethics, and political theory. It rings with unusual vitality and passion."

Joshua Ralston
-- University of Edinburgh
"Through an in-depth, critical engagement with Abraham Kuyper's theological ethics, Matthew Kaemingk shows why and how commitment to Jesus Christ should issue in a political pluralism marked by hospitality to and solidarity with Muslim neighbors."

Kevin den Dulk
--Calvin College
"Kaemingk is a winsome guide through difficult terrain. He avoids the easy dead-ends--assimilate or stay out--that too often shape responses to the real challenges of Muslim immigration in western democracies. But he also doesn't assume that we'll find our way somewhere in the middle of those opposing poles. Instead, he charts an alternative course, using a theological map that takes pluralism seriously. Along the way, he stays grounded in real-world experience while never losing sight of basic convictions. The result: A book that is both timely and compelling."

Kristen Deede Johnson
-- Western Theological Seminary
"While engaging lived realities and introducing us to actual people impacted by those lived realities, Matthew Kaemingk provides a compelling vision for Christian faith to serve as a bridge, not a barrier, to loving the many different neighbors we live alongside within our contemporary pluralistic context. This extraordinary book is of tremendous import for the big questions the church needs to ask in this complex cultural moment; at the same time it affirms the significance of the small, daily ways Christians can love their neighbors through their regular lives and callings. I wish all Western Christians would engage with Kaemingk's exceptionally readable and timely book as they wrestle with what it means to be a Christian called to love with generous hospitality in our pluralistic culture."

Jordan J. Ballor
-- Acton Institute
"In this compelling work Matthew Kaemingk asks what Amsterdam has to do with Mecca, and the answers he finds turn out to have implications the world over. . . . The charity and clarity on display here will challenge Christians to think more deeply, and to act more responsibly, in response to the call to live peacefully and faithfully with Muslim neighbors."

Jonathan Chaplin
-- author of Multiculturalism: A Christian Retrieval
"A pathbreaking, theologically rich Christian intervention into contemporary public debates over the place of Muslims in western societies. . . . Matthew Kaemingk has pulled off a feat many would have thought impossible."

-- Christianity Today
"Kaemingk gives several splendid examples of ordinary hospitality that, as they develop into consistent practice, make an extraordinary impact. . . . A timely, instructive book."
-- Matthew Soerens in Sojourners
"Superb. . . . I hope that you will read it, apply it by welcoming Muslim immigrants into your own life and community, and advocate for their rights and their well-being, both among Christians and in the public square."

Reading Religion
"An insightful account of how religious ethics, particularly Christian ethics, is equipped to provide a vision of radical hospitality that secular liberalism promises but ultimately has failed to deliver. "

Gospel Coalition
"Comprehensive and well argued. Those from the Reformed (especially the Kuyperian) tradition will find it essential; those outside the tradition will profit too. The book marks one of the first and most serious theological attempts to wrestle with Muslim immigration into free societies where Christians will have the opportunity to engage them with hospitality in a culture increasingly hostile to any sort of serious theological commitment."

Jason Byassee in Christian Century
"Some will argue that evangelical beliefs have yielded the xenophobic madness that marks politics on both sides of the Atlantic. But Kaemingk has marshaled enough evidence to say that it need not be so. Christians have someone to obey other than the stock talking points of the left or the right. The fruits are stories as surprising and delightful as Kaemingk's."

Calvin Theological Journal
"Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear is a book for today. It is a book that focuses on the central questions being dealt with in the current American political landscape. It is a book that is written for millions of evangelicals who are wondering how their faith should inform their personal and public views, if at all. It is a book of great importance for thousands of churches dealing with an increasingly globalizing world, where 'fear of the other' has become the ingrained reality."

Theology
"Substantial and thoughtful ethical study of Christianity and Islam."

Religious Studies Review
"Informed by Kuyper's concept of pluralism, while also critiquing and going beyond it, Kaemingk describes a Christian pluralism for our twenty-first century context that is Christo-centric, liturgically informed, and oriented toward action in local communities."

From the Publisher