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Mutual Treasure: Seeking Better Ways for Christians and Culture to Converse

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Mutual Treasure is a collection of ten essays by a public defender, a political scientist, a medical doctor, a filmmaker, a faculty minister at Harvard and MIT, and so forth. It consists of accounts of irenic conversations with skeptical elements of the host culture by a variety of Christians hoping to both befriend and better understand a sometimes skeptical and even hostile Other, and also some reflections on how such dialogue ought to be conducted. This is not a collection of efforts of partisan evangelicals to confront cults or sects. The book offers various models of "engagement" with the non-Christian and, at best, the most often indifferent and also increasingly dominant host culture. In one instance there is an appeal for empathetic engagements with Jewish and Muslim communities (see Marvin R. Wilson, "To Know and Be Known: Evangelicals and Interfaith Dialogue," pp. 125-43). The path recommended by each author in engaging the predominantly secular culture is nonconfrontational, except under extraordinary circumstances (see Stephen V. Monsma, "Called to Be Salt and Light: An Overview," p. 25). Each author in this collection recommends friendly, respectful dialogue--a "coming alongside" the Other in order to exert some redemptive influence on the larger culture (editors' preface, p. 16).

The editors of Mutual Treasure "are appalled at the confrontational nature of much public discourse," including those Christians who "often relish the battle." Instead of war, Heie and King seek "the better way" of "building relationships of mutual trust" with those with whom they disagree (p. 15). They label this a "dialogic model" (p. 16) and hope thereby to build friendships and have friendly conversations. Despite the shrill, aggressive, hostile, confrontational style of much evangelical engagement with those seen as the Other, doing the "dialogic" thing has become common. One of the best-known facilitators of such exchanges is Richard Mouw, who has provided the foreword to Mutual Treasure.

Mouw's theme is "cultural engagement," apparently an attempt by some conservative Protestants to "engage" the secular or religious culture. But too often such efforts resemble "a military unit engag[ing] an enemy force." In that case, "the call to engagement . . . comes across as a recruiting effort for cultural warriors" (p. 13). Recognizing the potential inadequacies in another model of engagement, the courtship model of loving commitment, Mouw settles on "friendship"--that is, "to make room in one's own consciousness for the other person's hopes and fears. To be a friend is to be committed to an ongoing dialogue, a process of genuine listening and empathetic responding" (pp. 13-14).

One problem that is not addressed in this volume, despite the tensions between the two editors (one of whom is an evangelical and the other an Anabaptist), is the internecine battleground within the evangelical movement itself, as well as in the larger arena of competing Christian faiths. Unfortunately, no effort is made to address the question of how best to seek an empathetic rapprochement in these cases.