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After-Mission touches on on three questions.The first question is about self-perception and identity-formation strategies, and the various views that we have on the Protestants' relation to their Arab Muslim Middle Eastern context. The second question, about the theological dimension, asks what kind of a theological discourse do the Protestants need to develop, and how do they need to re-form their own theological heritage, in such a manner that will allow them to heal the historical enmity and suspicion towards them from the Eastern Orthodox Christian community in the region? Finally, the third question touches on the Protestants' future in the Arab Muslim Middle East by viewing this inquiry from a broader perspective that is related to all the Middle Eastern Christian communities' presence and role in the Muslim-majority context. The question of identity formation, and the managing of difference without trapping it in the mud of 'otherizing and self-otherizing', will also be tackled, so that the theological dimension is integrated with the broader, multifaceted contextual one.
About the author
Prof. Dr. Najib George Awad, (Prof. Dr. Phil; Dr. Theol. Habil) is Professor of Christian Theology and Eastern Christian Thought and the Director of the PhD Program in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, Connecticut USA. He had his first PhD from King's College University of London, UK (2007) and his second Dr. Theol. Habil. from the Philipp University of Marburg, Germany (2014). His monographs in English are
Orthodoxy in Arabic Terms: A Study of Theodore Abū Qurrah's Trinitarian and Christological Doctrines in an Islamic Context(De Gruyter, 2015); and
Umayyad Christianity: John of Damascus as a Contextual Example of Identity-Formation in Early Islam (Gorgias Press, 2018). Right now, he is working on a research project about Mu'tazilite kalām in the 3rd/9th century Abbasid era.
