By my friend Jim Reiher This was hard to do! I have been studying Jesus and his teaching for many years…. And to reduce what we have on him to just 20 sayings… well… it is very subjective and a huge ask. It will be a countdown…. From the 20th to the 1st most important […]

Dave Andrews Christ himself is our example, and his spirit serves as the inspiration for the simple, practical, compassionate path he wants us to take, regardless of the difficulties we may encounter along the way. His expectation is not that we slavishly copy him, but that we voluntarily make the same kind of choices that he made, and that he encouraged […]

Dave Andrews The best way I know of developing and practicing a radical spirituality of compassion in today’s world is by following the way of Christ Now having said that, let me say very clearly, that for me, Christ is not synonymous with Christianity. They are not one and the same. In fact the way advocated by Christ is […]

Dave Andrews We need to begin with the realisation that our world is in trouble; and that religion, which was meant to make things better, has often made things worse. We do not suffer from the lack of religion, but from the lack of love. So if we are to have any hope of survival, we need to find […]

Mary’s Message For Christians And Muslims. Dave Andrews In the Qur’an it says ‘to Maryam the angels said: “Maryam, God gives you glad news of a Word from him” concerning her “son”, the “Masih – or Messiah – Isa” (3.45)’. And ‘Maryam said “Lord how shall I have a child, when no man has touched […]

The recent disturbing events in Paris are the latest in a global series of religiously motivated terrorist acts. In his new book The Jihad of Jesus – the Sacred Nonviolent Struggle for Justice, writer and community worker for TEAR Australia, Dave Andrews, warns of the dangers of ‘closed set religion’. He spoke to Roland Ashby […]

Dave Andrews on the Wheaton College great ‘same God’ debate. The suspension of Wheaton College professor, Larycia Hawkins has become international news. On December 17 2015 Ruth Graham reported in The Atlantic that ‘Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science at Wheaton College, was placed on administrative leave on Tuesday after suggesting that believers […]

Dave Andrews Meaningful interfaith engagement is principle-based engagement. Stephen Covey says, ‘These principles are a part of every major religion, as well as enduring social and ethical systems. They seem to exist in all human beings, regardless of conditioning and loyalty to them, even though they might be submerged by such conditions or numbed by […]

Dave Andrews We need to not only affirm ‘good things’, but also confront the ‘bad things’. In Christian-Muslim engagement either people do not confront the ‘bad things’ that need to be confronted, or people confront the ‘bad things’ that need to be confronted by criticizing all the ‘bad things’ about the other. The trouble is […]

Dave Andrews Many people want to improve relationships between Christians and Muslims. The most common way we try to do that I call the ‘problematic approach’. The ‘problematic approach’ focuses on the problems and tries to fix them. Which at first glance, makes sense; because if you want to improve a relationship you want to […]

Dave Andrews Meaningful interfaith engagement is a personal – but it is also relational. Change may start with us, but if it stops with us – it will stop altogether! We need to make changes – but others need to make changes too. Unless we all choose to relate to one another proactively we can never hope […]

Dave Andrews Meaningful interfaith engagement is a personal issue – it begins with us! Leo Tolstoy, the noted author of War and Peace, once lamented, ‘Everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself’. Unfortunately, for Leo Tolstoy’s family, for much of the time, that included Leo Tolstoy ‘himself’.[i] Fortunately for us, however, […]