Call for submissions: Cruciformity in multifaith engagement

Call for Submissions

Cruciformity and Multifaith Engagement

For some time now theologians, missiologists and Christian scholars of religion have been working out what an encounter with the world’s religions should look like if it is to be understood as truly Christian. Various approaches have been put forward, including convicted civility, dialogical, pneumatological, as well as those rooted in hospitality and neighborliness. While all of these aspects of encounter are important, even essential, is there a broader framework of Christian theology in which they might be rooted?

In 2001 Michael J. Gorman published his book, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross. Through this volume, and two subsequent works, including Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (2009), and Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (2015), Gorman set forth an “accidental trilogy” that argues for the centrality of a cross-shaped spirituality on the part of Christian disciples (1 Cor 2:2; Phil. 2:5-8). Participation in cruciformity means that our lives become a living exegesis of the gospel. This body of work has become very influential among Christian scholars in New Testament studies, and recently resulted in the release of an anthology volume titled Cruciform Scripture: Cross, Participation, and Mission (2021) where scholars explored various facets of New Testament themes in light of Gorman’s scholarship.

But while cruciformity has been explored by way of various theological and missiological implications, it has not been applied by way of its import for a Christian encounter with the world’s religions. We believe that cruciform spirituality holds great promise for a theology, praxis, and ethics of multifaith engagement, a broad theological tent under which things like civility, hospitality and neighborliness fit as extensions of the cruciform way.

This call for submissions seeks authors conversant with Gorman’s work who will connect the dots to various facets of multifaith engagement. Potential book divisions and topics within them include:

Cruciform hermeneutics

• Interpretation and application of scripture (love, neighborliness, hospitality rather than boundary maintenance)

• Cruciform Jesus (unfortunately not redundant, but a reconsideration of Jesus in interactions with Gentiles and Samaritans as a contrast to evangelical portraits in apologetics)

• Interpretation of other religious cultures (on their own terms, lived religion and not just doctrine and comparative doctrinal templates

Cruciform virtues and ethics

• Love

• Humility

• Weakness and power (the latter through the former)

• Moral theology of relations with the other (lessons from Roger Williams?)

Cruciform multifaith facets

• From evangelistic “strategy” to attitude and way of life

• Cruciform gospel narrative in story-sharing

• Cruciform conversation: (dia-logos to dia-pathos: complimenting dialogue with an attempt to enter into the emotional terrain of “the other”)

• Neighborliness and hospitality

• Cruciform apologetics: from boundary police to agents of reconciliation balancing the rational and emotional intelligence

Cruciform multifaith engagement examples

• Mormonism

• Islam

• Paganism

• Buddhism

Possible topics are not limited to these volume divisions or subjects, and authors should feel free to submit an abstract of 200-300 words in keeping with the aims outlined above. This volume will be informed by scholarship, but will be written for a popular audience for maximum impact that includes the academy and the pews. Abstracts for consideration should be sent to the attention of John W. Morehead with a deadline for submissions of October 31, 2021. Once a collection of suitable abstracts are collected we will seek a publisher for the volume.

John W. Morehead is the Director of Multifaith Matters. He is the co-editor and contributing author for A Charitable Orthopathy: Christian Perspectives on Emotions in Multifaith Enagement, and Encountering New Religious Movements: A Holistic Evangelical Approach, as well as the editor of Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue. John has also provided expertise to the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization issue group on “The Church and the New Spiritualities.” He has been involved for many years in multifaith relationships and conversations.

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