Can Christians Belong to More than One Religious Tradition?

By Tan Kang San

(This article originally published in The Whole Gospel, The Whole Church, The Whole World: A three year project of The Lausanne Theology Working Group, volume 3 [UK: Paternoster in collaboration with The World Evangelical Alliance Theological Commission, 2010], and reproduced at Lausanne website.)

I. Perspectives on Non-Christian Religions

This paper seeks to explore the notion of multi-religious belonging and evaluate whether it is theologically possible for a Christian to follow Christ while retaining some form of identification with one’s previous religion such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Chinese religions. Instead of a total rejection of past faiths, is it possible for a Christian, without falling into syncretism, to belong to more than one religious tradition?

Different but Equal: Male-female relationship in the Bible

By Roland Chia

(This article originally published in Eagles VantagePoint magazine, issue July-August 2010, and reproduced at VantagePoint website.)

In an article in the 1991 issue of Christianity Today entitled, “Let’s Stop Making Women Presbyters,” evangelical theologian and leader J. I. Packer wrote: “Presbyters are set apart for a role of authoritative pastoral leadership. But this role is for manly men rather than womanly women, according to the creation pattern that redemption restores.” This view, which subordinates the woman to the man, is underscored by the Reformed evangelical preacher John Piper in a book he edited with theologian Wayne Grudem entitled, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Piper writes: “At the heart of matured masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to man’s differing relationship.” The converse is also true: “at the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships.”

Being Real in a Contrarian and Acquisitive World

By Daniel Koh Kah Soon

(This article is originally a talk given at the Graduates’ Christian Fellowship Intersect Conference 2010 'Real World, Real Christian' on 19 March 2010 at the Singapore Bible College, reprinted in Graduates' Christian Fellowship Bulletins, issue July 2010, and reproduced at Graduates' Christian Fellowship website.)


This world which God has given us as a home has gone through a few “tsunamic upheavals” in recent years. I am not talking about the natural disasters, which have afflicted our region and brought about destructions to properties and deaths to thousands of people. The convulsions such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the more recent worldwide economic melt-down, were implosions waiting to happen, due to frantic attempts by some unscrupulous CEOs and their finance officers at creative accounting. Before the world’s financial institutions were pulled down by some once-a-upon-a-time “darlings” of Wall Street, there were already hints of impending wider corporate disasters when one-time business giants like Enron, Arthur Anderson and Global Crossings, were brought to their knees because of market manipulations and high levels of corporate greed and scandals.

Sowing Subversion in the Field of Relativism

By Mark L. Y. Chan

(This article originally published in the Christianity Today, issue February 2010, as part of Lausanne Movement's Global Conversation, and reproduced at Christianity Today website.)


Globalization and migration have brought religious pluralism—something that Asians have lived with for millennia—to the West. In this month's installment of the Global Conversation, Singaporean theologian Mark Chan mines his experience as an Asian believer to help Christians everywhere evangelize those who have been blinded by the fallacies of relativism.