2022, Vol.15, No.1

Muslim-Christian Encounter 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.39

pISSN : 1976-8117 / eISSN : 2671-678X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/mce

Many missionaries struggle to effectively share the gospel with Muslims due to a lack of appropriate approaches. Among the numerous reasons for unsuccessful witness to Muslims, one significant roadblock is a lack of appropriate contextualization of the gospel message. This paper posits that in Ghana, where Muslims are predominantly influenced by African Traditional Religion, an understanding of folk Islam will open doors to effectively share the gospel. Christians can successfully engage folk Muslims with the gospel by presenting Jesus as an ancestor in the Ghanaian folk context, introducing the Holy Spirit, leaning on the power of oral Word proclamation, and presenting the truth with the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

As migration caused by various issues is on the rise, migrants of diverse ethnic backgrounds are also entering South Korea consistently as migrant workers, foreign students, expatriates, and refugees. In particular, Muslim refugees are characterized solely by their religion and have become targets of discrimination. European countries such as the United Kingdom, which have experienced these trends generations before South Korea has, always appear as exemplary case studies during discussions of such issues. In this article, the authors compare the characteristics of the introduction and settlement processes of Muslim communities into the UK and South Korea in an effort to identify aspects from our past to avoid repeating. By doing so, the authors propose that cooperative efforts between Koreans and migrants, and identifying the missional implications in them, are necessary for migrant Muslims to become a member of Korean society.

Karl Barth is one of the most influential Protestant theologians in the 20th century. He strongly emphasizes the difference between God’s revelation and human religiosity, defining religion as human disobedience to the self-revealing God. This radical idea has been inadequately used to justify Christians’ exclusivist attitude toward other religions. Resisting this rather simplified reading of Barth, this study aims to reinterpret the relationship between Christianity and Islam from the perspective of his tantalizing view of election, a doctrine celebrated by many Barth scholars as his most creative and crucial theological achievement. He charges Islam’s view of God in the sense that its abstract understanding of divine transcendence cannot fully explain God’s gracious self-decision to be Deus pro nobis (God for us). In addition, his radical claim that God’s eternal election and rejection take place in Jesus Christ makes room for re-thinking the place of Ishmael and his descendent within God’s providence.