Building Bridges: From Asian Faiths to Jesus in the GospelsBruce Nicholls. Oxford: Regnum Books, 2019. $21.64 (Paperback), $18.56 (Kindle), X + 178 PP. ISBN 978-1-912343-95-9.

Book Review: Building Bridges: From Asian Faiths to Jesus in the Gospels

Bruce Nicholls, Oxford: Regnum Books, 2019. $21.64 (Paperback), $18.56 (Kindle), X + 178 PP. ISBN 978-1-912343-95-9.

Most of the Nicholls volume comprises four parts that describe and discuss Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and then Islam. Each part is formulated along the lines of “Building Bridges from the Hindu Faith [and so on] to Jesus in the Gospels.” The bulk of these chapters is descriptive but the author is also clear about the book’s overall intention: “This book is about God’s mission in contemporary south Asia, with a focus on our evangelistic task”; “My aim is to discuss the roadblocks to the Christian faith … and then to build bridges that enable the followers of these great religions to come to faith in Jesus Christ.” (ix) A brief ‘Introduction: Our Christian Mission’ (pp 1-9) also makes clear Nicholls’ evangelicalism and his intention to draw upon a range of contemporary and a past generation of south Asian evangelical scholars. The book concludes with a helpful six-page glossary covering important and recurring religious terms, a bibliography and an index.

The work’s strengths are immediately apparent to a reader. Its intention is positive: bridge-building and, where he can, Nicholls repeatedly draws attention to those anchor-points that help the construction. There are summaries of the traditions discussed: 52 pages on Hinduism, 10 pages on Sikhism, 42 pages on Buddhism, and 38 pages on Islam. Before these summaries are given, there is a stated aim to privilege the words “Hindus,” “Sikhs,” etc “rather than the more abstract terms – Hinduism, Sikhism …” etc. (2) – although this intention quickly proves difficult consistently to implement. Nonetheless, the summaries will prove helpful to most readers, as long as they keep in mind the mainly south Asian boundaries of the discussion. Several other commendable features are also apparent. Although Nicholls does not hide disappointing aspects of the religions discussed, he somewhat balances this with critiques of his own Christian faith: for example, the rationalistic and “largely confrontational and individualistic approach” of theological education in Asia (1), evangelical tendencies “to argue from the rational and individualist perspective of the Enlightenment” (115), and churches’ failures to welcome Muslim converts (144f). He repeatedly draws attention to the importance of both poetry and the visual and performing arts – “even if all these forms can become corrupted or made idolatrous” (4). Poetry, for example, “appeals to the imagination, conveys truths, motivates worship and inspires love and obedience to their god or prophet” (2). Moreover, in authentic Asian style, he makes telling use of anecdotes drawn from his and others’ encounters with followers of the religions discussed, especially Islam. In fact, it may well be these stories that will remain lodged in the hearts and minds of readers long after much of the historical and philosophical detail is forgotten. A further positive feature is his willingness to acknowledge that “Christians fail to recognize that the scriptures of these religions contain divine truths” (8) as well as errors. Dialogue with Muslims requires that “Christians must be willing and able to identify the truths in the Qur’an” (115). There is a brief affirmation of John 1:9a and its related Logos christology (14) although neither of these themes is able to be developed, despite their practical bridge-building potential. The contemporary evangelical writers and leaders in India (and some from elsewhere in Asia) that Nicholls also draws on are well-informed authors who would probably remain little-known without the summaries that he helpfully provides. He also draws attention to a number of earlier 19th and 20th century Indian theologians and leaders. Sadhu Sundar Singh is the most memorable of these (though the near-complete absence of Singh in the section on Sikhism is puzzling given that he seems to model so clearly a bridge to Sikhs). The chapter on Islam has some features that also suit the book’s bridge-building intention, including a section (142-50) that discusses trust, misunderstandings, family, a faith that is both reasonable and “appeals to the heart,” especially by means of the deployment of the parables of Jesus. Moreover, the discussion of Islam is greatly strengthened by a persuasive dependence on the experiences of the Lebanese convert Fouad Accad in his volume with the same title, Building Bridges. (Australian readers of Stimulus might also find help from the Melbourne/Tunisian writer Christine Mallouhi whose Waging Peace on Islam adds a woman’s voice to balance the negative tone of some of the other writings on Islam that Nicholls perhaps unwisely draws on.) To the questions “Was Muhammad a prophet?” and “Is the Qur’an the word of God?” Nicholls provides the unavoidably ambiguous answers “Yes and no” (116-20) – a decided improvement on the categorical “no” of more conservative evangelicals (and perhaps that potential readership is in mind with his avoidance of the related question “Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?”). Perhaps Islam’s constant temptations to legalism and fatalism – not unknown in Christianity, of course – should at least have been mentioned.

Alongside these commendable features, there are aspects that might puzzle or disappoint some Stimulus readers. Near the beginning of the volume the reader is told that there will be no exploration of the extent to which “the religions of Asia are fulfilled in the Christian religion” (2) but a few pages later there is a paragraph describing precisely such a fulfilment (6). The claim that “many well-known evangelical scholars” support his analysis of theories about the origins of religion (16 and elsewhere) is difficult to sustain, as is the introductory generalization that Asian faiths can be summed up simply as “the experiential religions” (3) over against the more rational religions of revelation. Moreover, there is a rather misleading tendency to describe each of the religions discussed as one entity; hence the major section headings: “Building Bridges from the H0indu Faith …”; “from the Sikh Faith …”; “ from the Buddhist Faith …”; “ from the Islamic Faith …” when there is a far greater diversity in each of the traditions than the definite article implies. The discussion of Islam suffers because of this. For example, the unqualified statement that, for Muslims, “evangelism (dawa) is essential to bring the whole world to accept the one ruler, the Caliph. … Jihad has come to mean the force to ensure Allah’s global rule” (8; cf 122-23 on “Contemporary Jihad Islam”) must be doubted when global surveys show that no more than seven percent of Muslims frame their faith and praxis in that way (and less than one percent of Muslims living in the global north). A statement that “violence became the inevitable consequence of [Muhammad’s] sexual behavior” (121) and a passing reference to Muhammad’s “sexual collapse” (131) surely need either careful explanation or deletion; the same for the unqualified assertion that “Islamist theology … demands the suppression of conscience” (126). The sheer diversity within Islam is much understated with no mention, for example, of the important divide between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims except for their “merciless killing of one another” (153; similarly: 123). Diversity is generally understated in all the chapters; this is no merely academic quibble because readers will soon discover, once they converse with “ordinary” Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, that their everyday faith and praxis is liable to diverge from the supposedly normative beliefs and practices that Nicholls faithfully outlines for us.

The bridge-building analogy of the title is, of course, a commendable alternative to the construction of barriers, unintentional or not. However, despite the intention of introducing adherents to the Gospels and Jesus, there are only brief passing references to the Gospels themselves. Although the intended readership of the book is unclear, Nicholls’ embrace of evangelical distinctives (and his chosen publisher) seems to suggest that fellow evangelicals are primarily in mind. Experience suggests that the single greatest motivation towards moving evangelicals towards constructive engagement with people of other faiths (and away from naivety, indifference, suspicion or hostility) is the example of Jesus towards the ‘outsiders’ – Gentiles and the equally-maligned Samaritans – that he met. In all four Gospels, Jesus engages these ‘aliens’ with non-condescending and non-naïve respect, asks questions and enters into intentional dialogue, shows kindness and help, and praises the faith, humility, love for others and persistence he finds among them, and alertly side-steps their grievances (even when he disapproves of aspects of their religious practice). He even uses them as examples of God’s mercy (the compassionate Samaritan) while drawing attention to himself. Explicit appeals to such passages not only persuade reticent or fearful evangelicals that engagement is approved by Jesus, they also offer an actual model for the bridge-building of the title; an appeal to this model would surely strengthen the book’s usefulness. Moreover, even in the book’s several rather short paragraphs that commend dialogue, the tone might seem to readers rather at odds with the prescriptively confident assertions about the central importance of rational (meaning propositional) content of the faith traditions discussed. This reviewer’s experience persuades him of the importance of actually asking adherents what they believe and do; the answers are often at odds with what this volume assumes is central to their faith. To make this point another way: Nicholls places considerable emphasis on what people believe; he seems certain that religion is, above all, an interior state of assent to certain truths (with behavioural and other consequences). Belief is, of course, one defining component of religion but what if that dimension has been over-played in most western-defined understandings of religion? What if Nicholls’s quest for bridges were to begin not with (a) religion framed in terms of the belief systems that he can easily fault (alongside his modest affirmations of them), but with (b) the central defining point of Christian faith: the person of Jesus? In other words, what would bridge-building look like if it started at the Jesus end of the looked-for bridge rather than with the religions? This would enable Nicholls to assess the religions in terms of what Jesus looked for and found in these “outsiders” that he met – faith, humility and mercy that he so greatly admired and respected (usually to the manifest discomfort of his disciples). Just asking!

So, how might Stimulus readers, especially in Australasia, react to this volume? The generally evangelical tone should not, in itself, dissuade others from reading it. This is for at least two reasons. Nicholls is someone who can and does draw upon several decades of actual lived experience in south Asia. Moreover, his evangelicalism echoes the Australasian, British and ‘Lausanne Covenant’ traditions (as opposed to the American species): a stance that reflects the better-informed warmth of a more generous orthodoxy – even if an increasing number of evangelicals have moved beyond the literalism that Nicholls reads into the language and intention of the opening chapters of Genesis (5f). The book’s coverage is of south Asian religious traditions. This means that pastors, educators and others will find only limited help for understanding much of the distinctively Chinese or Korean religious background of the Asian migrants they do actually meet in this part of the world (although his discussion of Buddhism will be of some help). And Hindu members of the Indian diaspora raise another issue for potential readers: the most confident (and assertive) of the Hindus who have arrived in Australasia are likely to be either defenders of the policies of the intensely chauvinistic BJP politics, or adherents of sectarian forms of Hinduism such as the ‘Hare Krishna’ movement – these latter two very briefly mentioned by Nicholls – or that other fairly recent species of Hinduism: “Swaminarayan” Hinduism whose schismatic form (under the acronym “BAPS”) is increasingly visible and vocal wherever Indian migrants are found. Some readers might gladly have swapped some of the rather tedious philosophical and historical detail provided for more help with understanding these activist movements that they are increasingly likely to encounter.

A second edition could easily fix a number of typos and other mistakes in the text and in the annoyingly incorrect index. And how about some occasional quotes from actual adherents so that we glimpse an insider view of why Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims believe and behave as they do: what the scholars of religion call an emic rather than an outsider’s etic perspective? And why not substitute an Asian bridge on the cover to replace the uninviting Western-looking bridge to nowhere? Nonetheless, reader will be stimulated and better informed by much within this book, not least by its presentation of authentically Asian voices that might not otherwise be easily heard.

Bob Robinsonis a Senior Research Fellow of Laidlaw College’s Christchurch branch.