God of Many Understandings

Western Christianity's interaction with world religions used to be, for the most part, overseas. Today, ';religious others' often live next door. At a changing time when one public prayer spoken during the 2009 U.S. presidential inauguration festivities was addressed to ';O god of our many understandings,' the evangelical Christian church should do more than simply dismiss non-Christian religions as pagan without argument or comment. The Church needs a theology of religions that is Christ-honoring, biblically faithful, intellectually satisfying, compassionate, and that will encourage Spirit-powered mission. Oregon-based theology professor Todd L. Miles writes to that end in A God of Many Understandings?, attempting, as the scholar Veli-Matti Krkkinen puts it, ';to think theologically about what it means for Christians to live with people of other faiths and about the relationship of Christianity to other religions.