The NAE and "Top Theological Issues for Seminaries"

Today in my email inbox I received a copy of NAE Insight: The Newsletter of the National Association of Evangelicals (Winter 2014/15). It included a feature titled "Top Theological Issues for Seminaries" which can be read at this link. This feature is composed of statements by Evangelical seminary presidents who are members of NAE where they share their thoughts on the theological priorities for their students. Unfortunately, the issues of multi-faith engagement and peacemaking are not specifically mentioned as theological priorities. There are statements about addressing pluralism and "competing worldviews," but no mention of the need for seminary students to wrestle with the practical realities of a neighborhood theology of multi-faith engagement.

How do we encourage organizations like NAE, and Evangelical seminaries, to include multi-faith engagement and peacemaking as theological priorities in our post-9/11 age frequently characterized by religious friction in the public square and violence around the world?

Grant project Multi-Faith Matters Team Meets

Multi-Faith Matters Team
On Saturday, November 15, the Multi-Faith Matters team came to Salt Lake City from coast to coast. You can see our group in the picture above, from left to right, Pastor Jill Riley, Pastor Bob Roberts, Dr. David Sang Ehil-Han, Dr. Paul Louis Metzger, yours truly, and Pastor Phil Wyman. The group came together for the first meeting as part of a Collaborative Inquiry Team exploring Evangelicals and multi-faith engagement, made possible by a grant from The Louisville Institute.

This first meeting exceeded my expectations. While some of us knew each other previously, this diverse group of people quickly discovered they had wonderful chemistry, and they were very productive in their first meeting together.

After some discussion the decision was made to adopt "Multi-Faith Matters" as our group name, slogan, and Twitter hash tag. We also adopted the descriptive "subtitle" of "Learning to Love our Multi-Faith Neighbors." As team members blog and discuss things related to our project we will use "#MultifaithMatters" as a way of branding and uniting our diverse efforts until we create a website or other central place for hosting our stories and other information.

We will continue to work between meetings, and will get together again in April of next year in Texas.

We think exciting things are going to come out of this group and our project. To learn more see the press release we wrote after receiving the grant.

#MultifaithMatters