There’s no getting around it. We live in a culture that includes beliefs and practices from every major world religion, and a whole bunch of minor ones. And we need to know what our neighbors, co-workers, and sometimes even our family members believe. That’s why I wrote Faith to Faith: A Conversation About Christianity and World Religions. This isn’t your typical “us vs. them” book about Christianity and other beliefs. I wrote Faith to Faith to give my fellow Christians as accurate a picture as possible of the beliefs and practices of the various world religions, not because I want to prove them wrong, but because we need to know how to relate to them.

The folks at Conversantlife.com thought it would be helpful to know a little more about my new book. So over the next few weeks I will be responding to some questions about Faith to Faith and why I wrote it. Even though I’m the one answering the questions, this isn’t intended to be a one-way conversation. I’d love to hear your responses to my thoughts. Even more, if you have a question you’d like to ask, please post it in the comments section at the end of this post.

You refer to your new book, Faith to Faith, as a “fictionalized account” of a three-day interfaith conference you attended a few years ago. What were the circumstances that led to your involvement in this conference?

For ten years, I pastored a mid-city congregation in Phoenix called The Valley Cathedral. It was a large church that erupted into the life of the city in the 70s and 80s. By the early 90s, it was rocked by scandal and division. The demographic shifts around the little affluent island of Central Phoenix (where the church was located) became frightening to many. However, many began to come to the church from the margins of society. Most of our suburban congregants could not relate to either our area’s changing needs or to the changes we made to accommodate those needs. So I began to meet church leaders who were more involved socially in the lives of the poor.

Many of these new friends were further left on the political and theological spectrum than me or our church. I found myself in the curious place of agreeing with my liberal friends about the problems of our city and its people. However, I disagreed with them about the solutions and about the deepest roots of the common issues we faced. I certainly disagreed with them about spirituality. So while I was glad to be friends with people of other religions and was willing to cooperate with them to bring food, shelter and clothing to the poor, I could not worship in Native American ceremonies or participate in New Age convocations. This stance perplexed both “liberals” and “conservatives” in Phoenix.

My conservative friends were aghast that I would even participate in the interfaith conference at the Franciscan retreat center. One radio talk show host denounced me for being cozy with the Catholic bishop of Phoenix. Emails alleging all sorts of doctrinal and spiritual errors about my approach kept the atmosphere hot around me for several years. Naturally, my liberal friends assumed that I was crossing over, or, in their words, “maturing.”

I had not crossed over. I was an orthodox Evangelical Christian. I just wanted to “be at peace with all people in so much as lies within me,” as St. Paul puts it. So I wanted to learn what the Buddhists thought or why a professor of economics at ASU had become a follower of a Native shaman. I also wanted to know why the church, the love of my life, was so repugnant to so many spiritual seekers in our city.

The years of trying to pastor the people of central Phoenix while dodging fire from fellow believers did not turn me into an embittered liberal. They did make me willing to be “the Protestant presenter” at the interfaith conference. There comes a point in which your reputation is so shot that you no longer have the energy to defend it. That’s when you can finally just do what you think is the right thing to do. I knew that I was still an orthodox Christian and that I knew where the boundaries were between us and the other great world religions. Then I asked myself if the Lord would attend such a meeting. When I determined that he would, I went. Once I got there, I had to decide how I would represent my Lord, my faith and even my fellow believers who were upset with me. I wanted to be faithful to that responsibility.

That pretty well sums it up!

What was it about your experience at the interfaith conference that prompted you to write your book?

I was amazed to sense the deep hunger for God in that conference. I liked most of the presenters and could relate to their spiritual journey. I kept asking myself why, in view of their sincere respect for the Lord Jesus, were they not making their way to Him.

A Buddhist is very likely to honor Jesus and to be extremely respectful as we talk about his teachings and about his death and resurrection. A Muslim, despite the current spiritual war, is also inclined to profound sentiment about Jesus. Most of the world’s seekers respect our Lord. So why don’t they follow him? In many cases, it is because of us! We often speak and live in ways that becomes a stumbling block to the world’s seekers.

Meanwhile, we spend enormous amounts of money to relate to “seekers” who are almost always affluent consumers only marginally interested in spiritual things. It’s the wrong approach for our evangelism, our theology and our spirituality. We have been going the wrong way, like trying to run a combine on the beach while the fields are white and ready to harvest.

I wanted to share these feelings with fellow Christians. I wanted to tell them that New Agers are usually hungry for God. They are certainly no scarier than the secular folks we have been trying to reach, people who often have little concern about their souls.

Who is your intended audience for Faith to Faith? In other words, who should be reading this book?

My main audience is Christians. I want to awaken in them a concern for the peoples of the world who seek the Lord of Life but who do not encounter Him in our churches. I want to urge us to stop secularizing our worship in a mistaken attempt to reach unbelievers. I want us to rediscover awe and wonder in the presence of God – the otherworldly and mysterious otherness that woos the soul Godward and reminds us that we were made to live forever. That is what all people everywhere seek who are concerned about eternity, meaning, and about forming a relationship with their Creator.