Every afternoon four women walk down Gundersen Drive in front of our offices. Like thousands of others in Chicago’s western suburbs, they are going home from work. Unlike most of the area’s commuters, they wear chadors, dark garments that cover their upper bodies and half their faces. Home for them is a sprawling apartment complex heavily populated by Muslims and Hindus. All this is within a short walk from the offices of CTi, Tyndale House, Youth for Christ, the National Association of Evangelicals, Harold Shaw Publishers, Domain Communications, the Evangelical Alliance Mission, the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, Greater Europe Mission, and Chapel of the Air. In the heart of the evangelical mecca live many who pray toward Mecca!
Wisely, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has targeted that apartment complex for evangelism. But in neighboring communities there are many immigrant professionals who have blended into the surroundings. They are well educated and well paid—physicians, educators, accountants, research scientists. They are Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims.
Sociologists of religion tell us the most important issue for American Christians in the nineties will be coming to terms with our traditional teachings about the uniqueness of Christianity. Both our commitment to mission and our willingness to assert the lostness of “the heathen” will be sorely tested when they are no longer far away but have become our friends and our neighbors. To help us begin to test our personal commitment to our theology, we offer the articles beginning on page 16.
DAVID NEFF, Senior Associate Editor
