The most important issue facing the church of Jesus Christ in Western civilization is how to respond to the fact of pluralism.

We live in a civilization that was once considered to be Christian. The primitive church understood itself as a distinctive, alternative community in the midst of a pluralistic world. In the fourth century Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire. After the collapse of that empire, the church provided the unity for Europe and other regions. Through the efforts of Charlemagne, the church gradually became the dominant force in the state and culture, reaching its position of greatest eminence during the Middle Ages. The Protestant Reformation resulted in the division of the West into regions dominated by the Roman Catholic and several Protestant churches.

Over the centuries, tolerance and secularization gradually displaced the church from the center of the culture. In America today Christianity is not given a privileged role in the state by the government or a privileged role in society by the mass media. We are now aware that we are one community, though divided among ourselves, in the midst of a plurality of religions, organizations and movements. We have come full circle in our relationship to civilization, back to a situation similar to that of the primitive church. How should we respond to this situation?

If pluralism was not a threat to the Christians of the first 300 years of church history, then why should it be a threat to us today? We shall have to re-image our view of the relationship of Christianity to civilization: we are free to claim our identity as a distinctive, alternative community in the midst of a pluralistic world. In this new situation the mission of the church changes. Evangelism, instruction in Christian doctrine and practice, and intentional initiation of new believers into the church become of utmost importance.

A sensitive issue facing the church in a pluralistic society is how the church should relate to other religions. The church needs to develop a theology that is both faithful to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and thoughtful about the way Christians fulfill our task of evangelism and the way the church as a body relates to the other religions in the public sphere.

The apostolic tradition provides a beginning for such a theory: we can affirm with the apostle Peter that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35) while sharing the good news that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit” and raised him from the dead to be the judge of all humanity (Acts 10:36-43).

A consensus exists among evangelical and ecumenical Christians that genuine dialogue is the appropriate approach in encounters between Christians and adherents of other religions. Most of the discussion today is about trying to define the purpose and process of such dialogue.