Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD (Science of Religion and Missiology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Science of Religion and Missiology / unrestricted

When Bishop Robert Gray arrived at the Cape in 1848, he was concerned at the large percentage of the former slave population who had been attracted to the Muslim faith. He appointed Michael Angelo Camilleri (1848-1854) as a missionary to the Muslims of Cape Town. Camilleri's tenure was short and he was frequently used to fill other ecclesiastical posts. From 1854 until 1911 the responsibility of mission to the Muslims was given to priests whose parishes had large Muslims populations. In 1911 a fulltime missionary was once again appointed. Thomas Fothergill Lightfoot, arrived at the Cape in 1858 and served at St Paul's, Bree Street until his death in 1904. His was a ministry of love and caring. He was greatly respected for his work by all sections of the population. John Mühleissen Arnold worked in the parish of St Mary's, Woodstock. His aggressive missiological technique broke down much of the religious tolerance which had existed. His publication of a pamphlet supposedly written by a Muslim, raises doubts about his integrity as a missionary and his ethical stance as a Christian. In 1907 the Diocesan Mission Board took control of the Muslim mission and in 1911 appointed Stephen Garabedian as director. Under Garabedian the policy of the mission was aimed primarily at preventing Christian women 'lapsing' from Christianity and becoming Muslims through marriage. After his resignation in 1922, the work continued under numerous women workers who concentrated on Muslim women and children through sewing guilds and childrens' clubs. In 1960, George Swartz was appointed as director. Swartz was the first Coloured and South African-born priest to hold the post of director. Swartz served as director until he was appointed to Bonteheuwel as parish priest. He subsequently chaired the board until it ceased to meet in 1976. Throughout its one hundred twenty eight years of active existence, the Anglican mission to the Muslims failed to attract a large number of converts. Initially this could be attributed to the attraction the Muslims had to those seeking a strong community life. Later, outside influences from the Islamic world strengthened the faith of the Muslim community against any Christian conversion attempts. During the latter part of the twentieth century the mission viewed its tasks as preventing the conversion of Christians who wished to marry Muslims and informing and educating Christians on the Islamic faith. In the late 1960s, the Board encouraged dialogue rather than confrontation. It changed its name to the Board of Muslim Relationship. Apartheid was seen as the common enemy of both Christians and Muslims and they worked together against its evils. The need for a Mission Board was seen as redundant and from 1976 it ceased to be active.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 525-540).

This study has as purpose to verify the best possible strategies that can be used both in encounter and evangelization of Muslims in order to avoid persecution of Christians and destruction of their property in Africa, especially in Northern Nigeria. This Twenty first Century has witnessed numerous violent attacks against Christians which resulted in vandalization and looting of their property. Many lives of Christian men and women have been sacrificed amidst the violence. As a result, some Christians decided to flee the affected areas, abandoning in the process mission work to Muslims in order to safeguard their lives. This study proposes as research method the use of the pastoral cycle to arrive at these methods. From the study, it was discovered that several factors were responsible for the Islamic attacks against Christians in Northern Nigeria. Many negative effects had been noted as a result, mostly serious negative emotional scars left in the heart of the Christians believers and missionaries living and working in Northern Nigeria. Based on the findings of this study, new approaches towards coexistence and especially for the evangelisation of the Muslims in Northern Nigeria, especially in view of reduced bloody encounters. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

The thesis looks at Protestant missions to the Ottoman Empire and the countries which emerged from it through Bosch's "Enlightenment missionary" (2003) and Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" (1996) paradigms. It argues that Muslim resistance to Christianity is rooted in innate Muslim intransigence and in specific historical events in which missionaries played important roles. The work utilizes a simple formula: it contrasts the socio-political and cultural framework missionaries imbibed at home with that of their host environment, outlines the goals and strategies they formulated and implemented, looks at the results, and notes the missiological implications. The formula is applied to four successive periods. We begin with the pre-World War I missionaries of the late Ottoman Empire. We look at their faith in reason, their conviction in the cultural superiority of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, their attitude towards Islam, their idea of reaching the Muslim majority by reviving the Orthodox churches, and the evolution of their theology and missiology. World War I changed the landscape. The Empire's demise led to a struggle for Turkish and Arab national self-determination leading to the establishment of the Turkish Republic and various Arab entities, notably French and British mandates. Protestant missions almost disappeared in Turkey, while a small number of "veterans" kept the enterprise alive in the Arab world. While the Arabs struggled to liberate themselves from the Mandatory Powers, these veterans analyzed past failures, recognized the importance of reaching Muslims directly and began experimenting with more contextualized approaches. The post-World War II era saw the retreat of colonialism, the creation of Israel, a succession of wars with that country, and the formation of a Palestinian identity. Oil enabled the Arabian Peninsula to emerge as a major economic and political force. The missionary enterprise, on the other hand, virtually collapsed. Unlike their veteran predecessors, the pre-Boomer generation, with a few notable exceptions, was bereft of fresh ideas. During the 1970s the evangelical Baby Boomers launched a new enterprise. They tended not to perceive themselves as heirs of a heritage going back to the 1800s, though the people they "targeted" did. Their successors, the GenXers, products of post-modernism and inheritors of Boomer structures, face a region experiencing both increased political frustration and the re-emergence of Islam as a socio-political power. In closing we look at Church-centered New Testament spirituality as a foundational paradigm for further missions to the region. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

The Kyrgyz are a Mongolian, Turkic ethno-linguistic people group. The political and social changes of the post-soviet times have led to a great religious openness among the Kyrgyz. Within one decade the nunber of Kyrgyz Christians has grown from few dozens to over 3000. The intention of this work was to analyze the conversion process of the Kyrgyz converts to Christianity and to apply the results to further missiological activity. The religious background of the Kyrgyz, which is heavily influenced by Folk Islam, was presented in the first chapter of the paper. In the second chapter, interviews collected from Kyrgyz Christians were evaluated. The third chapter summarizes the most important findings of the work and makes them applicable for missionary work. The precise knowledge of the religious background of the Kyrgyz and intercultural communication that it is based upon it can essentially dismantle barriers for the acceptance of the gospel. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis looks at the development of Protestant and Evangelical encounter with Muslims from the earliest days of the Modern missions movement. Special attention is given to the dynamic equivalence model (DEM), which resulted in a new method for interpreting the Qur’an called the Christian Qur’anic hermeneutic (CQH). I begin with the early Protestant ministers among Muslims, such as Martyn and Muir. Pfander’s (1910) book, The balance of truth, embodies the view that the Qur’an teaches an irrevocable status of inspiration for the Old and New Testaments. The early and mid-twentieth century saw a movement away from usage of the Qur’an during Evangelical encounter with Muslims. Direct model advocates bypass the Qur’an and other religious questions for an immediate presentation of the gospel. The 1970s saw the development of the DEM, which produced significant changes in how Evangelicals encountered Muslims. Pioneers like Nida, Tabor, and Kraft implemented dynamic equivalence as a model in Evangelical ministry. Concurrently, Accad and Cragg laid groundwork for the CQH. The DEM creates obscurity in anthropology by promoting an evaluation of cultural forms as essentially neutral. This is extended to religious forms, even the Qur’an. Such a simple, asocial value for symbols is not sufficient to account for all of human life. Cultural forms, especially those intrinsically religious, are parts of a complex system. Meaning cannot be transferred or equivocated with integrity from one context to another without a corresponding re-evaluation of the entire system. Theological difficulties are also produced by the DEM and the CQH, and include the assigning a quasi-inspirational status to the Qur’an and a denial of unique inspirational status to the Christian Scriptures. If the gospel is communicated through the Qur’an, then it is difficult to deny some level of God-given status to it. Further, the Christian Scriptures are not unique as inspired literature. My proposal for how to use the Qur’an responsibly looks to Bavinck’s elenctics and is presented as Qur’anic pre-evangelism. Rather than communicating Biblical meaning through the Qur’an, Evangelicals can focus on areas of the Qur’an that coincide with a lack of assurance felt by Muslims in anthropology. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

The thesis looks at Protestant missions to the Ottoman Empire and the countries which emerged from it through Bosch's "Enlightenment missionary" (2003) and Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" (1996) paradigms. It argues that Muslim resistance to Christianity is rooted in innate Muslim intransigence and in specific historical events in which missionaries played important roles. The work utilizes a simple formula: it contrasts the socio-political and cultural framework missionaries imbibed at home with that of their host environment, outlines the goals and strategies they formulated and implemented, looks at the results, and notes the missiological implications. The formula is applied to four successive periods. We begin with the pre-World War I missionaries of the late Ottoman Empire. We look at their faith in reason, their conviction in the cultural superiority of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, their attitude towards Islam, their idea of reaching the Muslim majority by reviving the Orthodox churches, and the evolution of their theology and missiology. World War I changed the landscape. The Empire's demise led to a struggle for Turkish and Arab national self-determination leading to the establishment of the Turkish Republic and various Arab entities, notably French and British mandates. Protestant missions almost disappeared in Turkey, while a small number of "veterans" kept the enterprise alive in the Arab world. While the Arabs struggled to liberate themselves from the Mandatory Powers, these veterans analyzed past failures, recognized the importance of reaching Muslims directly and began experimenting with more contextualized approaches. The post-World War II era saw the retreat of colonialism, the creation of Israel, a succession of wars with that country, and the formation of a Palestinian identity. Oil enabled the Arabian Peninsula to emerge as a major economic and political force. The missionary enterprise, on the other hand, virtually collapsed. Unlike their veteran predecessors, the pre-Boomer generation, with a few notable exceptions, was bereft of fresh ideas. During the 1970s the evangelical Baby Boomers launched a new enterprise. They tended not to perceive themselves as heirs of a heritage going back to the 1800s, though the people they "targeted" did. Their successors, the GenXers, products of post-modernism and inheritors of Boomer structures, face a region experiencing both increased political frustration and the re-emergence of Islam as a socio-political power. In closing we look at Church-centered New Testament spirituality as a foundational paradigm for further missions to the region. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis looks at the development of Protestant and Evangelical encounter with Muslims from the earliest days of the Modern missions movement. Special attention is given to the dynamic equivalence model (DEM), which resulted in a new method for interpreting the Qur’an called the Christian Qur’anic hermeneutic (CQH). I begin with the early Protestant ministers among Muslims, such as Martyn and Muir. Pfander’s (1910) book, The balance of truth, embodies the view that the Qur’an teaches an irrevocable status of inspiration for the Old and New Testaments. The early and mid-twentieth century saw a movement away from usage of the Qur’an during Evangelical encounter with Muslims. Direct model advocates bypass the Qur’an and other religious questions for an immediate presentation of the gospel. The 1970s saw the development of the DEM, which produced significant changes in how Evangelicals encountered Muslims. Pioneers like Nida, Tabor, and Kraft implemented dynamic equivalence as a model in Evangelical ministry. Concurrently, Accad and Cragg laid groundwork for the CQH. The DEM creates obscurity in anthropology by promoting an evaluation of cultural forms as essentially neutral. This is extended to religious forms, even the Qur’an. Such a simple, asocial value for symbols is not sufficient to account for all of human life. Cultural forms, especially those intrinsically religious, are parts of a complex system. Meaning cannot be transferred or equivocated with integrity from one context to another without a corresponding re-evaluation of the entire system. Theological difficulties are also produced by the DEM and the CQH, and include the assigning a quasi-inspirational status to the Qur’an and a denial of unique inspirational status to the Christian Scriptures. If the gospel is communicated through the Qur’an, then it is difficult to deny some level of God-given status to it. Further, the Christian Scriptures are not unique as inspired literature. My proposal for how to use the Qur’an responsibly looks to Bavinck’s elenctics and is presented as Qur’anic pre-evangelism. Rather than communicating Biblical meaning through the Qur’an, Evangelicals can focus on areas of the Qur’an that coincide with a lack of assurance felt by Muslims in anthropology. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

The Kyrgyz are a Mongolian, Turkic ethno-linguistic people group. The political and social changes of the post-soviet times have led to a great religious openness among the Kyrgyz. Within one decade the nunber of Kyrgyz Christians has grown from few dozens to over 3000. The intention of this work was to analyze the conversion process of the Kyrgyz converts to Christianity and to apply the results to further missiological activity. The religious background of the Kyrgyz, which is heavily influenced by Folk Islam, was presented in the first chapter of the paper. In the second chapter, interviews collected from Kyrgyz Christians were evaluated. The third chapter summarizes the most important findings of the work and makes them applicable for missionary work. The precise knowledge of the religious background of the Kyrgyz and intercultural communication that it is based upon it can essentially dismantle barriers for the acceptance of the gospel. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)