Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60051. Are Islam and Christianity compatible? The question is asked in several different senses, and a great deal of confusion comes from answering one sense while the questioner meant another. Sometimes it means whether Muslims and Christians can live peaceably as neighbours, which is a social question. Sometimes it means whether the two faiths…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60014. Buddhism and Christianity both begin by taking suffering seriously, which is more than most modern philosophies manage, and then they move in opposite directions. That shared starting point is why Buddhism appeals to thoughtful Westerners who have given up on church. It is also why the differences need stating clearly. A faith that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60013. Hinduism and Christianity are often placed side by side as two religions, and the comparison misleads before it begins. Hinduism is not a single religion with a founder, a creed and a date. It is a family of traditions that grew over three thousand years in the Indian subcontinent. That makes generalisation risky,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60012. Islam and Christianity share a great deal of vocabulary and disagree about almost everything that vocabulary refers to. Both speak of one God, of prophets, of revelation, of Jesus, of judgement, and the overlap makes the differences harder to see rather than easier. I want to describe what Muslims actually believe, accurately enough…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60011. Christians often assume that modern Judaism is simply the religion of the Old Testament carried forward, and that a Jewish neighbour today believes roughly what Moses believed with a longer beard. It is a natural assumption and it is not accurate. The faith practised in synagogues today took its present shape after the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60008. Asking what makes Christianity unique invites a certain kind of answer, the sort that lists our advantages and sounds rather pleased with itself. I want to avoid that, because the things that actually set the gospel apart are not achievements we can be smug about. Every one of them is something done to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60007. What about other religions is rarely a neutral enquiry. Behind it usually stands a colleague, a neighbour, a daughter in law, somebody sincere and kind who believes something else, and the real question is whether I am prepared to say that person is wrong. So let me answer it honestly and without the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60021. Scientology is one of the most recognised new religions in the world and one of the least understood, which is not an accident. Most people know the celebrities, the litigation and the shopfronts on the high street offering a free personality test, and very little else. What the organisation teaches at its higher…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60020. Mormonism presents itself as restored Christianity, and it does so with real confidence. Two young men in white shirts arrive at the door with Bibles under their arms, speak warmly about Jesus, ask about your family, and offer to pray. Nothing in that encounter tells you that you are meeting a different religion,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60017. The question of whether the Qur’an proves the Bible reaches me from two directions at once, and the people asking it want opposite things. Some Muslims say that the Qur’an confirms the Torah and the Gospel, and that a Christian ought therefore to accept the Qur’an as the final word in the same…