January 28, 2021

Church Post-Pandemic: Back to Normal?

By Elie Haddad The pandemic has been disruptive to our normal lives in so many ways. All of us around the world have taken measures to adapt at this time of disruption. We have changed the way we do things. This raises many questions. Is this change permanent? Do we […]
January 21, 2021

One Christ, One Body, but Many Opinions

By Rabih Hasbany I do not know if I should call it Facebook or The Present-Day Colosseum. In the first century, the Colosseum of Rome hosted organized fights for the spectators gathered at the arena. Today, Facebook has become an open arena, but the fights are of another kind. We […]
January 14, 2021

That They Might See Your Christmas Trees: A Post-Christmas Reflection on Arab Christianity and the Challenge of Presence

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

An Antidote to Christian Nationalism

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

A Christmas Message from the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary

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

Middle East Conversations 2020 Webinar Report- The Religious Other: A Biblical Understanding of Islam, the Qur’an and Muhammad

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

Talking Non-Christian Religious Experiences: Avoiding Compromise and Demonization for the Sake of the Good News and Social Peace

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

Free Speech in Contention: On Offense, Faith, and Democracy

                                                                                                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 […]