IN THE OPENING SESSION of an interfaith youth core conference a few years ago, a Chicago pastor took the microphone and introduced himself. He spoke about how much he had gained from his Buddhist meditation practice, expressed disdain for Republicans in power, and proclaimed how excited he was to be in a friendly space with people of other faiths. Finally, he noted his frustration that a particular type of Christian was always absent from such gatherings, saying: “There are too many conservative evangelicals who claim the mantle of my faith, who believe that Jesus is the only way, that Christians have the exclusive truth, and who focus their energy on trying to bring others to their view rather than expanding their own spiritual horizons. I find that I have more in common with people like you than with people like them.”1
There was nodding around the room. It seemed that some of the people who had come to the gathering had heard this sort of thing before. The pastor passed the microphone off with a flush of pride in his face.
It arrived in the hands of a young man who had recently graduated from the University of Illinois, who was probably two decades the pastor’s junior, and who looked calmly at the pastor and said, “My name is Nicholas Price, and I think you are talking about me.” It could have been an ugly moment, except for how Nick handled it.
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I believe these attitudes get evangelicals wrong, especially given recent shifts within the community. Nick, the young man I spoke about at the beginning, is an interesting illustration of this. In a series of articles for Relevant Magazine, he’s been outlining an evangelical mode for both the Great Commission and the Great Cooperation. And he’s far from alone. Not only have progressive evangelicals like Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren been writing more directly about the imperative of interfaith cooperation, more mainline and moderately conservative evangelicals—Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, Bob Roberts—are also a part of what I’m calling the relational turn in evangelical thinking.