Christian Faith in Relation to Other Faiths and to Religious Pluralism
The sites listed in this section vary greatly, so the brief description of each site will identify its primary purpose, character and usefulness.
The purpose of this site is to equip Christians to logically present and defend the Christian faith, and to aid non-Christians in their comparison of various religious claims. It aggressively challenges a wide range of religious movements and leaders (many of them "Christian"). It is an example of a large number of websites that assume a self-appointed role of defender of Christian faith. The site has an "About Us" section that identifies those who maintain the site and their theology.
This is the website of the American Society of Missiology, the ecumenical association for mission studies in North America. Its journal, Missiology, can be viewed here.
http://bgc.gospelcom.net/emis/emqpg.htm
This is the website of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly. It is a source for articles from an evangelical perspective and for web-links to mission organizations and resources.
www.bible.acu.edu/missions/Links
This is the home page of Abilene Christian University, Institute for Missions and Evangelism. On this page, under "researchers" there are a many ministry resources available, as well as links to websites of other faiths and other agencies.
At this homepage for Brite Divinity School, select "Faculty", and then select "Kenneth Cracknell". On his home page he has six annotated bibliographies for interfaith relations, mission and evangelism.
This is the website of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE), an international movement for the purpose of encouraging Christians and churches to pray, study, plan and work together for the evangelization of the world. On the top of the home page select the middle box, "Documents". The most helpful ones from the perspective of this Guide are "Lausanne Statements and Other Declarations" and the "Occasional Papers" that offer suggestions for evangelism of specific populations.
www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/
This is the World Christian Database that is the basis for the World Christian Encyclopedia. The database is housed at the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. It is the world’s most substantial single reference work for global Christianity. The site provides indexes, guides and methods for searching.
The site has some practical limitations. It offers full access for a limited time. It permits printing or exporting of no more than 50 lines at a time. It requires "cookies and pop-ups to be enabled", something that is unusual for research sites. (How this requirement is applied is unclear, since without enabling "cookies and pop-ups" it is possible to visit many parts of the site while being kept out of others.)
This is the website of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. For information about Christian faith and other faiths, go to "Links" at the bottom left of the home page. This opens to a variety of mission organizations and databases. View its journal, the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.
www.directory.google.com/Top/Society/Religion_and_Spirituality/Christianity/Missions/
This is one example of how the Google directories can be used to focus a search. Click on this link or to go to the Google website and follow a series of directories to get to this site. Even at this stage of the search there are several hundred possible websites offered, organized into nearly 30 categories, but it is far easier than looking through the hundreds of thousands of options that would appear on a normal Google search.
This is the website of the US Center for World Mission. There are many practical resources for global mission, including the "Perspectives" course that is taught throughout the world. Under the heading "Publications-Resources" go to "Links/Research" and find a variety of links such as other mission pages on the Internet, and mission research websites.
This is the website of Global Mapping International (GMI), an inter-denominational missionary research agency whose priority is serving evangelical mission ministry leaders in the developing world. There are training materials, mission research resources and a link to Mission Links www.mislinks.org, a superb web-based missions directory maintained by Scott Moreau of Wheaton College and Mike O’Rear of GMI.
www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&
This is a location on the website of the Network for Strategic Mission Knowledge Base. It provides over 11,000 articles about mission. Many of the complete articles are available online. Others are "premium content"; only summaries of these are available, and the full articles can be read by users who have paid an annual fee for access.
www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/interreligious/index-e.html
This is the link to the "Inter-religious Relations" site within the larger World Council of Churches website. It contains further links as well as full text articles, speeches and declarations. It is one of the premier Christian sites for these issues.
The World Council of Churches website has three other sites that are helpful for Christians interacting with people of other faiths. They are "Church and Ecumenical Organizations", "Churches in Evangelism and Mission" and "Religions of the World". All of these can be accessed from the WCC homepage www.wcc-coe.org by selecting "Ecumenical Links". The organizations and resources listed represent a very wide spectrum of the world Christian community; for example Athletes in Action, Billy Graham Center, Catholic Online, L’abri Fellowship, the American Bible Society and the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The WCC also publishes the International Review of Mission (IRM). Its focus is ecumenical missiology, but it also gives a voice to other perspectives, such as those from Pentecostal and Evangelical theologians.
This is a Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) website. Its purpose is to equip Christians to understand other world faiths and religious philosophies. Like many other CCC resources it is clear and simplified. The description of other religions in "tables" is done in such a way as to make them most vulnerable to Christian critique. While Christian faith is presented through quotes from the Bible, other faiths are summarized without any references to their authorities or Scriptures. There are links to published articles.