![]() Guenther, International Bulletin of Missionary Research to our understanding of the history of evangelical attitudes toward Muslims and Islam."-Alan M. his book is a well-written and enlightening overview of the American Evangelical approach to Islam."-Akram Fouad Khater, Catholic Historical Review ![]() "The story that Kidd tells is compelling and enlightening in its nuanced depiction of conservative American Christian views on Islam and Muslims across three centuries. ![]() "Kidd's book ably captures the bombast and the predicament of American evangelicals as they attempted to reconcile the missionary imperative with a scrambled sense of eschatological geography."-Nicholas Guyatt, Journal of the Ecclesiastical History Pawlikowski, Journal of Ecumenical Studies It needs to find a high place on interreligious as well as public-policy bibliographies."-John T. It is noteworthy primarily for its chronological range and its coverage of American missionaries to the Muslim world."-Edward E. "This timely book about American Christian attitudes toward Islam and Muslims is a useful addition to the growing literature on Anglo-American engagements with Islam and Muslims since the colonial age. Kidd presents a vast amount of material in a clear, readable manner, and his book should be of interest to anyone trying to understand the extremely complex dynamic of contemporary Muslim-Christian relations."-Sandra Tonies Keating, Touchstone Although there is an endless array of studies on various aspects of the relationships between Muslims and Christians throughout the past 1,400 years, this is, to my knowledge, the first to examine American Evangelical attitudes toward Islam. "Thomas Kidd has done a great service with his publication of American Christians and Islam. "As Islam continues its slow be steady growth in America, evangelicals of whatever strip would be wise to consult American Christians and Islam, particularly as they continue to seek ways to approach Islam with sobriety and faithfulness."-Adam S. Assigned in a class on Middle Eastern or Islamic studies, this book would be guaranteed to stimulate lively debate."-Heather J. "A key strength of American Christians and Islam is that it surveys a spectrum of American Christian and evangelical thought vis-à-vis Muslims across three centuries, and does so in a manner that is very clear, so that even a reader new to the subject could appreciate it. beyond deeply embedded suspicions and into more hospitable encounters with Muslims at home and abroad."-Anne Blue Wills, Christian Century "Offers an informative tonic that might move Christians in the U.S. Otherwise, one fears what level of catastrophe may be required to discredit Dispensationalist craziness."-Fr. His closing appeals to reason, civility, and charitable discourse could provide a better setting, I believe, for a fruitful mission to Islam. "Kidd's is a sympathetic and well-informed voice of sanity and Christian equanimity in the midst of this turmoil. "This concise and well-organized study offers readers an excellent summary of American popular attitudes toward Islam from the eighteenth century onward."-Walter Russell Mead, Foreign Affairs Pointing to many evangelicals’ unwillingness to acknowledge Islam’s theological commonalities with Christianity and their continued portrayal of Islam as an “evil” and false religion, Kidd explains why Christians themselves are ironically to blame for the failure of evangelism in the Muslim world.Īmerican Christians and Islam is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the causes of the mounting tensions between Christians and Muslims today. Kidd exposes American Christians’ anxieties about an internal Islamic threat from groups like the Nation of Islam in the 1960s and America’s immigrant Muslim population today, and he demonstrates why Islam has become central to evangelical “end-times” narratives. ![]() He shows how accounts of “Mahometan” despotism and lurid stories of European enslavement by Barbary pirates fueled early evangelicals’ fears concerning Islam, and describes the growing conservatism of American missions to Muslim lands up through the post-World War II era. Tracing Islam’s role in the popular imagination of American Christians from the colonial period to today, Kidd demonstrates that Protestant evangelicals have viewed Islam as a global threat - while also actively seeking to convert Muslims to the Christian faith - since the nation’s founding. Yet as Thomas Kidd reveals in this sobering book, the conflicted views expressed by today’s evangelicals have deep roots in American history. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, many of America’s Christian evangelicals have denounced Islam as a “demonic” and inherently violent religion, provoking frustration among other Christian conservatives who wish to present a more appealing message to the world’s Muslims.
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