“Christ is the one and only savior of the world…There may well be traces of truth, beauty and goodness in many non-Christian belief systems. But we have no warrant for regarding these as…separate roads to salvation. The only way to know God in peace, love and joy is through the reconciling death of Jesus Christ the risen Lord…Apart from faith in Christ, all people face eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord.” These words are from The Kansas City Star, August 6, 2000, under the headline “Evangelists Take Uncompromising Stand” as the newspaper reported an Associated Press story on the concluding platform statement of a world conference of evangelical Protestants organized by Reverend Billy Graham.¹ In 1910, The World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, looked forward to the day when Shiva and Vishnu would have no more worshippers than Zeus or Apollo have today.² The optimism of the Edinburgh Conference was epitomized in the words of one of its organizers, John Mott, who coined the slogan: “The evangelization of the world in our own generation.”³ These two examples typify a traditional, conservative view of “Authentic Christian Mission in a Multifaith World.” It is not, however, the only view. For the next few minutes I want to tell you briefly about five models constructed originally as models for interreligious dialogue, but I believe they may also be helpful in exploring models for Christian mission. Each of the following options is alive and well within Christianity generally and the Community of Christ specifically.

An ecclesiocentric model is the most conservative. “Ecclesia,” Greek for “church,” places Christianity as a religion as the focus of Christian mission. Salvation is through Christian rites, Christian rituals and assent to Christian doctrine, often as understood by a particular “one true” Christian denomination. Pope Boniface VIII helped us understand when he said: “We are required by faith to believe that there is one holy catholic and apostolic church; outside it there is neither salvation nor remission of sins.”⁴ A meeting of evangelical theologians in 1970 in Frankfurt, Germany, accepted unanimously what is called the Frankfurt Declaration which states: “The adherents of the non-Christian religions and worldviews must let themselves be freed from their former ties and false hopes in order to be admitted by belief and baptism into the Body of Christ”⁵…in other words, the church. Neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth wrote that Christianity "alone has the commission and the authority to ... confront the world of religions as the one true religion, ... to invite and challenge it to abandon its ways and to start on the Christian way."⁶ In an ecclesiocentric model, truth about god is fully known in Jesus Christ, usually as denominationally articulated. Other religions, presumably Christian traditions other than one’s own but particularly non-Christian religions, are inauthentic human inventions which Christ, as true and only saviour, both negates and opposes. Because in this model others are in error, Christian mission is a one-way proclamation. I cannot speak for you, but the ecclesiocentric model of a “one-true-church” sounds an awfully lot like what I grew up with.

A second and more moderate model places Christ as the centre of Christian mission instead of Christianity. This is called Christocentrism. The model rejects the notion that outside the Christian church there is no salvation but maintains that salvation is nevertheless through Christ alone. The rightness or righteousness of non-Christian traditions is a reflection of the hidden presence and work of Christ evolving and leading the consciousness of non-Christian traditions toward fulfillment in Christ. This is likely the most prevalent model of Christian missionary efforts, including those of the Community of Christ. It’s articulated well in Pope John Paul II’s 1990 encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio (Mission of the Redeemer) which says: “The mission ad gentes [to the nations] has this objective: to found Christian communities and develop churches to their full maturity. This is a central and determining goal of missionary activity, so much so that the mission is not completed until it succeeds in building a new particular church which functions normally in its local setting.”⁷ As with the first model, because Christocentrism presents Jesus as true and only saviour, Christian mission is a one-way proclamation.

These first two models are the linchpins of traditional Christian mission. And some say not only traditional Christian mission but authentic Christian mission. Others question whether these models are still valid or if they ever were valid and whether proselytizing out of such centres amounts to little more than theological imperialism. Professor John Hick, of Claremont Graduate School in California, suggests that authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world must experience a “…radical transformation of our conception of the universe of faiths and the place of our own religion within it. It must involve a shift,” Hick says, “from the dogma that Christianity is at the center to the thought that [in a third modle] it is God who is at the center and that all the religions of mankind, including our own, serve and revolve around Him”⁸. Hick calls this third model theocentric or god-centred. Just as Copernicus realized that it is the sun, not the earth, that is at the centre of the universe, so also, says University of Victoria Professor Harold Coward, “we have to realize that the universe of faith centers upon God, and not upon Christianity or any other religion. [God] is the sun, the originative source of light and life whom all the religions reflect in their own different ways.”⁹ In the god-centred model, Christian mission may be a two-way proclamation that not only allows and affirms diverse personal commitments, one’s own included, but also seeks to learn from diverse commitments as well. Proselytizing across faith lines is unnecessary and perhaps even inappropriate. The model acknowledges that an individual’s truth about god is conditioned by the circumstances of birth and by historical and cultural particularities. Jesus continues as true saviour for Christians but is no longer the only saviour. This stunning shift in thought surely is the envisioned Copernican revolution.

Not so fast, said Canadian Islamicist Wilfred Cantwell Smith. We’ve had no revolution at all. What about religions who have no notion of god, who understand an ultimate in non-theistic ways…Buddhism, Jainism, some forms of Hinduism, many Unitarian Universalists, and others? The theocentric model merely replaces two exclusivist centres, namely Christianity and/or Jesus, with another, namely god. Smith suggests a fourth model that replaces the word “theos” or “god” with transcendent which embraces every tradition’s (including Christianity’s) limited, historical understanding of an ultimate. There…now we have a Copernican revolution to serve as the common centre for authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world. Except that, somehow I feel a drifting in the conversation away from Christian mission. Can we even still call such a model Christian mission? It’s a wonderful model for interreligious dialogue, which admittedly is more what Hick and Smith had in mind. But is there no model that guides interreligious dialogue in a multifaith world that also honours authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world? I think so.

Authentic Christian mission whether in a multifaith world or any other world is obliged to be the product of our best present thinking and not a repetition of what was our best past thinking and certainly not our worst past thinking. The religious landscape of our world is not the religious landscape of our grandparents. We are under no obligation to travel this new landscape with old maps. Hindu towers, Islamic minarets, Buddhist rooflines, Jewish synagogues and Sikh onion-domes alongside Christian spires mark the skylines of North American cities. The Christian mission that will successfully cross borders within that landscape is not our grandparents’ Christian mission. Perhaps in rethinking authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world a Copernican revolution truly does awaits in the realigning of theological and missiological planets.

It is my observation that a compelling motivation for mission in today’s multifaith world by many of today’s Christian/Community of Christ practitioners is not found in historical institutions or particularized conceptions of a divine. I suggest a compelling motivation is, as Buddhist monk Thubten Losel says, “our humanity and the desire for the elimination of suffering. None of us desire misery and all of us want happiness; and these,” Losel says, “are the very issues upon which the world’s religions focus.”¹⁰

In rethinking not only a model for interreligious dialogue as well as a model for authentic Christian mission, Paul Knitter, Emeritus Professor of Theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, uses the Greek word “soter” which means “to save, to set free, to liberate.” In this fifth and final model the “absolute” is not the Church or Christ or even God. Instead, the centre is peace and justice as articulated by Jesus’ quoting of Isaiah: “to bring good news to the poor…to proclaim release to the captives…to let the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 61.1, Luke 4.18). Dr. Knitter writes: “Our contemporary world is a world aware, as never before, so it seems, of oppression – oppression in an array of horrible forms. It is, in other words, a world painfully aware of the need for liberation, for breaking bonds, for preserving, restoring, fostering life. I am suggesting, therefore,” writes Knitter, “that liberation – what it is and how to achieve it – constitutes a new arena for the encounter of religions.”¹¹ I believe this is a valuable insight for rethinking authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world. Knitter’s model moves us from an other-worldly focus to a this-world focus.

It seems to me that shifting the business of the church from “salvation to a heavenly realm” to “salvation from present suffering” is a shift from ideology to action, is a shift from a message about an incarnation to a message incarnated, is a shift from “belief in Jesus” which requires intellectual assent to “believing Jesus” which requires risk and vulnerability¹² and constitutes the envisioned Copernican revolution in Christian mission that is truly authentic because it seeks first the kingdom, putting it in line with the proclamation of the one from whom Christianity takes its name. This does not conclude that baptisms are no longer important. This suggests a rethinking of why we want baptisms. Baptisms are important but not as the end of some church-growth means. More churches and more members remains valid. But church growth is not the end. Church growth is the means. The end is a more just world. If the goal of traditional missiology is baptism, then the goal of this rethought missiology is the healing of humanity and the earth.¹³ In the words of Dr. Knitter:

“In order to promote the kingdom, Christians must witness to Christ. All peoples, all religions, must know of him in order to grasp the full content of God’s presence in history. But in the new ecclesiology and in the new model for truth, one admits also that all peoples should know of Buddha, of Muhammad, of Krishna. This, too, is part of the goal and inspiration for missionary work: to be witnessed to, in order that Christians might deepen and expand their own grasp of God’s presence and purpose in the world. Through this mutual witnessing, this mutual growth, the work of realizing the kingdom moves on. In such an understanding of mission, conversion remains a valid, meaningful concern. But it is no longer the primary goal of missionary endeavors.”¹⁴

Our world is multifaith. It is not predominately Christian. Expectations that it will ever be predominately Christian are no longer convincing. Christianity’s monopoly on salvation is over. Former methods of proselytizing which have been exclusivist, arrogant and imperialistic are no longer acceptable. Non-Christian traditions must be recognized for what they are – fully franchised systems of salvation with practitioners as decent and devoted as any other, with scholars as intelligent and gifted as any other, with members as whole and holy as any other. Any model of authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world must acknowledge that. The five models summarized here (Church centred, Christ centred, God centered, Transcendent centred, Peace and Justice centred) can perhaps help us appreciate that there are many options in rethinking authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world. Each model has its assets. Each has its faults. The ever-evolving understanding of authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world is likely a blend of these and other yet-to-be-thought-of models.

The rethinking of authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world is already well underway. Rethinking is always exhilarating and agonizing, fun and frightening. Too fast for some. Too slow for others. I don’t know what a rethought authentic Christian mission will look like. I don’t know what a rethought authentic Christian mission may require us to then rethink about church, Jesus, God or other givens. I don’t even know the questions a rethought authentic Christian mission may ask…let alone the answers to those questions. However, I envision an authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world that can claim faith without claiming superiority and that goes beyond its own self interest. I expect rethinking our mission will require revisiting our message. Our authentic mission depends on what we decided is our authentic message. A message of a peaceable kingdom, a message of good news to the poor, of release to captives, of oppressed going free, a message of a social order in which we find people of one heart and one mind, dwelling in righteousness where there is no poor among them…that sounds like an good message for authentic Christian mission in a multifaith world. How could we want any other? But in a multifaith world I also envision an authentic Christian mission that can “learn-this-message-from” as well as “teach-this-message-to.”

1 “Evangelists take uncompromising stand,” Kansas City Star, 2000, August 6, p. A12.

2 Thomas M. Thangaraj, The Common Task: A Theology of Christian Mission, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1999, p. 20.

3 Peter C. Phan, “Ecclecisa in Asia: Challenges for Asian Christianity,” http://eapi.admu.edu.ph/eapr00/pcphan.htm, note 27.

4 “Unam Sanctam: Bull of Pope Boniface VIII promulgated November 18, 1302,” Papal Encyclicals on Line, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Bon08/B8unam.htm.

5 Peter Beyerhaus, “The Frankfurt Declaration of the Fundamental Crisis in Christian Mission,” http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:srm3OdczbyQJ:www.institut-diakrisis.de/fd.pdf++%22freed+from+their+former+ties+%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en, page 4, section VI, 1970.

6 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2 (§17 no. 3), T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1975, p. 357.

7 Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, “The Paths of Mission,” Chapter V, Section 48, 1990, http://www.catholicmission.org/redemptoris_missio_chapter_5.html

8 John Hick, God Has Many Names, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1982, p. 36.

9 Harold Coward, Pluralism in the World Religions, One World Press, Oxford, 2000, pp. 35-36, speaking of John Hick, “Whatever Path Men Choose Is Mine,” in Christianity and Other Religions, p. 182.

10 Thubten Losel in M. Darrol Bryant and Frank Flinn, Interreligious Dialogue: Voices From A New Frontier, “Buddhist/Christian Dialogue – A Prolegomena,” Paragon House, New York, 1989, pp. 194-196.

11 Paul F. Knitter et al., eds, “Interreligious Dialogue: What? Why? How?,” Death or Dialogue: From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue, SCM Press, Philadelphia, 1990, p. 27.

12 Stephen J. Patterson et al., eds, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,” The Historical Jesus Goes To Church, Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, 2004, p. 41.

13 Paul F. Knitter et al., eds, “Interreligious Dialogue: What? Why? How?,” Death or Dialogue: From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue, SCM Press, Philadelphia, 1990, p. 37

14 Paul Knitter, No Other Name, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1995 p. 222.