The modern imagination blanches at the thought of twelfth-century Crusaders singing “Jesu, Dulcis Memoria.” The saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, often credited with that hymn of devotion (in English, “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee”), helped plan and inspire the Second Crusade, which contributed to a legacy of brutality and terror in a land that had been occupied by Muslims for many centuries.

As the West ponders the religiously inspired terror of September 11, it is worth noting that the religious sensibilities of that former era endorsed violence in the supposed service of the reign of God. The very thought of Jesus, for Bernard, filled the breast with sweetness, but there seemed to be a gaping blind spot when it came to the suffering his warriors were likely to inflict on the Holy Land.

When religion countenances violence on behalf of mission, as in the medieval reading of Luke 14:23 (“Compel them to come in”) or in the modern Taliban movement, how should Christian mission respond? How should governments respond? In this issue J. Dudley Woodberry draws on long experience as a minister of the Gospel in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Near East to help us see into the mind of fundamentalist Islam, sometimes peaceable, sometimes militant. (Woodberry’s autobiographical “My Pilgrimage in Mission” also appears in this issue.)

Contributing Editor David A. Kerr offers a survey of fourteen centuries of Christian scholarship regarding Islam, along with a sidebar on the current conflict with militant Islam. Other offerings, including James A. Tebbe’s comparison of the striking differences in approach to Islam of Temple Gairdner, Kenneth Cragg, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, contribute to our understanding of the challenge of Islam for Christian mission.

Commenting on their annual statistical table on global mission, David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson point out the fact that the world of Islam is today’s fastest growing religious community.

Some years ago at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, in New Haven, Connecticut, where this journal is edited, we were told of a missionary couple in Afghanistan who were brutally murdered in their bed by enemies of the Gospel. As she bled to death, the wife wrote in letters of blood, “We love Afghanistan.” Jesus’ mission is not to coerce but to love. If blood is to be shed, let it be that of his servants, who follow him in life and death. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28).

Terrorism, Islam, and Mission: Reflections of a Guest in Muslim Lands
J. Dudley Woodberry

Christian Mission and Islamic Studies: Beyond Antithesis
David A. Kerr

Kenneth Cragg in Perspective: A Comparison with Temple Gairdner and Wilfred Cantwell Smith
James A. Tebbe

Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2002
David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson

My Pilgrimage in Mission
J. Dudley Woodberry 

The Legacy of William Shellabear
Robert Hunt

The Legacy of Isabella Lilias Trotter
by Lisa M. Sinclair

Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2001 for Mission Studies

In Coming Issues

Brazil: “Evangelized” Giant Committed to Liberating Evangelism
Sherron K. George

The Contribution of the “Jesus” Film to World Evangelization
Paul A. Eshleman

Pre-Revolution Russian Mission to Central Asia: A Contextualized Legacy 
David M. Johnstone

The Lesslie Newbigin/Konrad Raiser Dialogue on Mission
Michael Goheen

From Jerusalem to Oxford: Mission as Foundation of Ecumenical Social Thought
John Flett

“Blessed Reflex”: Mission as God’s Spiral for Renewal
Kenneth R. Ross

In our Series on the Legacy of Outstanding Missionary Figures of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, articles about

Norman Anderson
Thomas Barclay
Rowland V. Bingham
Hélène de Chappotin
Shoki Coe
François E. Daubanton
James Gilmour
Robert Reid Kalley
Hannah Kilham
George Leslie Mackay
Lesslie Newbigin
M. D. Opara
Constance E. Padwick
Peter Parker
Julius Richter
Elizabeth Russell
Johannes Schütte, S.V.D.
Bakht Singh
James Stephen
John V. Taylor
James M. Thoburn
M. M. Thomas
William Cameron Townsend
Johannes Verkuyl
William Vories