January 14, 2021
By Nabil Habibi Dad comes home with a big box. The four of us children, two girls and two boys, stare with curiosity. Mom is grinning. Dad opens the box. It is a Christmas tree! In almost any other Christian house in the Middle East, and indeed many Muslim ones, […]
January 7, 2021
by Caleb Hutcherson Imagine with me for a moment the following scene from a Sunday morning church service… ——- As you enter the worship center, you see the whole room draped in the colors of the flag. A dazzling feast of patriotic sayings fill the hall as the faithful worshippers […]
December 23, 2020
The Arab Baptist Theological Seminary wishes you a wonderful Christmas! May the following reflections by members of our community bless you this season. Teresa Sfeir Communication and Editing Officer “On earth peace,” the angels told the shepherds. Were they heralding world peace with the advent of Christ? The past […]
December 16, 2020
We live at a time when religious diversity has become a fact of life in our globalized societies. Yet Christian engagement with Muslims remains complex, complicated by fear, misunderstanding and a history fraught with political and cultural tensions. With acts of religiously motivated violence filling our headlines and religious discourse […]
December 9, 2020
By Tim Brys A few years ago, I was left rather shaken when confronted with the fact that Christians are not the only ones to enjoy deeply meaningful religious experiences. Consider for example the following account that I read in William James’s classic work, The Varieties of Religious Experience. James […]
December 2, 2020
by Wissam Nasrallah I can still remember the day when my mother could not find Danish butter in Saudi supermarkets as a result of a boycott against Danish products by many Arab and Muslim countries after dozens of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad were published by the Danish newspaper […]
November 25, 2020
By Walid Zailaa Last Sunday, Lebanon commemorated Independence Day. A year has passed without much hope. The one-year-old revolution that did unite for the first time the dreams of the Lebanese people against the corrupted ruling elite is fading away and with it the hope of a true independent Lebanon […]
November 19, 2020
By Martin Accad and Tim Brys We previously wrote that Lebanese society is defined by sectarianism. This marriage of religion and Middle Eastern tribalism leads most Lebanese to think and live according to the dictates of their sectarian (tribal) leaders, whether they be Sunni, Maronite, Druze, etc. The 15 years […]