Book Review: Islam Rising by Tim Orr

Tim Orr’s Islam Rising (Xulon Press) is a unique book. It is not a polemic against Islam; instead it attempts to formulate a positive approach to reaching Muslims in Christian colleges. In the introduction, Orr delineates his two goals: to identify four ideas Christian colleges must focus on to equip students to evangelize Muslims and to formulate a plan to achieve this goal.

In Chapter 1, Orr points out the exponential growth of Islam in the West, and a positive consequence of this is that instead of us having to go to a mission field, it is coming to us. Keeping this in mind, he identifies the role of the Christian university as being a place for students to develop spiritually, multiculturally, biblically, theologically, missiologically, and to develop as whole persons. He also states that the rest of the book will be divided into four sections, each dealing with an essential issue for successfully evangelizing among Muslims.

The first section focuses on spiritual vitality. In Chapter 2, he discusses what spiritual vitality is, defining it as the drive to serve others and engage in evangelism. A necessary precondition for this is gospel-centered living or living a life based solely on the gospel. This requires being trained in sound doctrine. Orr further examines three fundamental parts that gospel-centred and spiritually-vitalized Christians must have for evangelism; the heart, which helps to motivate evangelism; the head, which informs evangelism; and the feet, which defines the practice of evangelism. All three are required for successful evangelism. In Chapter 3, Orr describes a four-step method to produce spiritual vitality in Christian students. They include praying for gospel-renewal, planning for renewal, preaching for renewal, and understanding the project of gospel renewal. These, he says, are the stepping-stones to revivals in colleges.

The structure of these two chapters (which is typical of the rest of the book) is a spectacular approach to discussing evangelism. In the first, Orr lays out the theoretical aspects of the essentials of evangelism, before presenting the practical methods to apply this theory. In doing so, he covers both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’.

The next section focuses on cultural intelligence. In Chapter 4, Orr discusses why Christians must understand the culture of those he is attempting to evangelize and contextualize the gospel within the culture. He points out how Christ himself did this during the Incarnation and how He must be our role model in evangelism. An important thing he discusses is the need to cross sociocultural, generational, and religious barriers in order to reach out to Muslims. In Chapter 5, Orr talks about a plan of action to develop cultural intelligence (CQ). He speaks of changes that professors will need to make in their approach to teaching to get past our Western-centric focus. Orr also discusses implementing a method of developing CQ. It must be included in the mission of the college; the administrators of the school must possess CQ, which must then trickle down to the rest of the school’s population. Strategies to encourage CQ must be adopted, and colleges must be flexible enough to accommodate the needs of minority communities from other cultures.

This section was my favourite part of the book, because it addresses a key hole in our method of evangelism. We are so eager to share the gospel that we forget the need to understand the culture of our non-believer friends and contextualize the gospel in a manner that they can understand. If such an education to increase cultural intelligence is mandated in Christian colleges, it will help build a generation of Christians with empathy and compassion for the lost and a desire to expose them to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In the next section, Orr discusses evangelistic acumen. In Chapter 6, he states that understanding the Islamic belief system in contrast to Christianity is essential to developing evangelistic acumen. He explains the importance of knowing fundamental differences in doctrine between Islam and Christianity, and then sets out some of these differences, including the nature of God, the role of Christ (including his incarnation, death, and resurrection), the idea of salvation, and the reliability of the Bible. In Chapter 7, Orr discusses a specific plan of action required to develop evangelistic acumen. He advises using a phased approach, using different phases such as conducting small group sessions using various resources like DVD studies to build this acumen; a ‘3-credit hour class’ that equips students with the necessary tools such as Bible teaching, Islamic knowledge, spiritual development, and ministry, cultural, and leadership skills.

After cultural intelligence is developed, it is now important to train them in the true gospel of Christ and teach them to present it as unique, in comparison to what they believe to be true. The methods that Orr suggests are directed at building such an understanding of Christianity, a comparative understanding of Christianity rather than an isolated one. This is an undeniably useful step for anyone who wishes to engage in evangelism with people of any religious group.

In the next section, Orr addresses Islamophobia. In Chapter 8, he begins with clarificatory comments regarding Islamophobia, stressing that it must not be equated with criticism of Islam. Nonetheless, he asserts that there is an irrational fear towards Muslims among American Evangelicals. He further talks about how a true follower of the gospel will be naturally driven to engage in social justice. He also stresses the importance of using a moral framework to combat Islamophobia. He concludes by examining some sociological theories that explain Islamophobia. In Chapter 9, Orr discusses a solution to counter Islamophobia. He encourages the taking down of racial and cultural barriers that have been set up by our Western-centric culture and discusses ways in which this can be done.

Orr is right in stating that we often fail to love the Muslim simply because we disagree with their ideology, and yet without love, we cannot begin with the evangelism process. That form of Islamophobia is what I believe needs to be urgently combated, and this section on Islamophobia does a good job in explaining that.

The rest of the book is dedicated to the research that he conducted in two different Christian colleges on the four aspects of evangelism that were discussed in this book. I will not be discussing these in detail, but I will say that it produced some very interesting (and surprising) results. The most interesting statistic to me was that three in four students said that they experience no suspicion or fear whatsoever upon encountering a Muslim, while only three percent were overtly Islamophobic. This shows us that our students might be more prepared to engage in dialogue than we would expect. Orr closes the book with a short summary of the results of the survey.

To conclude, Tim Orr’s Islam Rising is a unique and well-written book. I will reiterate that this is not a polemic against Islam, and yet that is what makes it a great book. In an age where we will find many books speaking of why the Islamic view is wrong, Orr goes one step further, attempting to persuade Christians to not just lead Muslims out of Islam, but to lead them to the light of Christ. The result of his attempts is a fantastic scholarly book that reveals Orr’s sharpness as an academic and his warm heart as a pastor. Islam Rising is a book I wholeheartedly recommend to every man and woman who is interested in engaging with Islam.