Piety, Politics, and Power: Lutherans Encountering Islam in the Middle East. By David D. Grafton. Foreword by Mark Thomsen. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009. xiii+298 pp. $33.00 paper.

摘要

The repercussions of 9/11 and the declaration of a “War on Terror” awakened arnpredictable but commendable interest in the history of interfaith relationsrnbetween Christianity and Islam. Readers familiar with this growing literaturernwill recognize similarities between David D. Grafton’s book and ThomasrnKidd’s American Christians and Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityrnPress), also published in 2009 after Piety, Politics, and Power had gone tornpress. Both works take a long view, emphasizing the deep roots of religiousrnprejudice against Islam. Stereotypes founded in ignorance, in which the mainrningredient is often apocalyptic speculation, clash most pointedly for bothrnGrafton and Kidd with the efforts of missionaries to develop workable,rnhuman relationships with actual Muslims.