Missiologists have predicted that by the year 2000, Africa will have become a Christian continent with more Christians living there than anywhere else on planet earth. Most of these, moreover, will be not merely adherents of the church, but evangelicals—products of a century of mission advance throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In the last decade two unanticipated events have occurred to mar this scenario. The first is the military intervention by Soviet and Cuban forces to support Communist regimes and their inevitable repression of religious freedom. The second factor disrupting the advance of missions is a resurgent Islam fueled by Muslim oil. The vast windfall of oil dollars brought with it a revival of Islamic religion, accompanied by a renewal of its missionary zeal. This year Muslims enter their fifteenth century (according to the Islamic calendar), and Islamic specialist Roland Miller traces for us the dramatic history of Islam through the revolutionary century just ended. A subsequent article will analyze the theology of Islam, its challenge to the gospel, and some fascinating breakthroughs in recent mission strategy.
Ever since psychology first appeared as an independent discipline in the academic curriculum, Christians have tended to view it with suspicion. Perhaps this suspicion was fanned by the old saw: “First psychology lost its soul, then it lost its mind.” Be that as it may, Gary Collins calls upon us to eschew foolish fears of psychology and to avail ourselves of its insights to help people in need.
Also in this issue, our staff presents a review article of a new biography of Billy Graham. Ordinarily, CHRISTIANITY TODAY would have ignored such a work; but the wide acceptance of this clever mix of fact and fiction not only spreads a false picture of Graham and his role in contemporary American history, but indirectly it also fosters a basic misunderstanding of evangelicalism as a whole and of the moral malaise of our times.
