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Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today

John G. Stackhouse, Jr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 5.5x8.25" hardbound, 280 pages.

This book was quoted from twice during Roger Keller's 2003 FAIR Conference presentation. It is a practical guide to sharing one's faith in a skeptical world and has application to Latter-day Saint dialogue with others, including Christians of different denominations.

Is it still possible, in an age of religious and cultural pluralism, to engage in Christian apologetics? How can one urge one's faith on others when such a gesture is typically regarded with suspicion, if not outright resentment?

In Humble Apologetics John G. Stackhouse brings his wide experience as a historian, philosopher, journalist, and theologian to these important questions and offers surprising--and reassuring--answers. Stackhouse begins by acknowledging the real impediments to Christian testimony in North America today and to other faiths in modern societies around the world. He shows how pluralism, postmodernism, skepticism about our ability to know the truth, and a host of other factors create a cultural milieu resistant to the Christian message. And he shows how the arrogance or dogmatism of apologists themselves can alienate rather than attract potential converts. Indeed, Stackhouse argues that the crucial experience of conversion cannot be compelled; all the apologist can do is lead another to the point where an actual encounter with Jesus can take place. "Our objective," Stackhouse writes, "is to offer whatever assistance we can to our neighbors toward their full maturity: toward full health in themselves and in their relationships, and especially toward God." In the last part of the book, he shows how an attitude of humility, instead of merely trying to win religious arguments, will help believers offer their neighbors the gift of Christ's love.

Drawing on the author's personal experience and written with an engaging directness and humility, Humble Apologetics provides sound guidance on how to share Christian faith in a postmodern world. "It [my book] will indeed trouble both those who see apologetics as outmoded in favour of just being nice in so-called interreligious dialogue, and those who still want apologetics to be a religious contest of all-or-nothing, 'kill or be killed.'" -- John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

Review Excerpts:

"Classic Christian apologetics involved a defense (apologia) of the faith, often in the face of questions generated by non-Christians. Generally, the practice of apologetics has gone out of fashion in an era of ecumenical dialogue and religious pluralism, leaving mostly fundamentalists to engage in the hard-nosed form of apologetics that is more a condemnation of other religions than a defense of Christianity." --Publishers Weekly

Stackhouse ... provides an overview of the difficulties of engaging in Christian apologetics in the postmodern, "post-Christian," pluralistic 21st century. His goal is to instruct Christians on how best to present their faith to others. He argues, for instance, that contemporary apologists do not have the luxury of the homogeneous, largely receptive audience available to C.S. Lewis when he wrote his classic Mere Christianity. Though a conservative evangelical, Stackhouse states that all he can do is to affirm that Christianity presents the best belief system of all the religious faiths with which he is familiar and to explain why this is true for him personally. He encourages apologists to tailor their message to their specific audience and to listen and empathize as much as to talk. He makes a lucid and thoughtful case that this humble approach, will be the only effective one for sharing one's faith with others in these times. Though literal evangelicals will bristle at the author's compromising approach, this book will have broad appeal and is recommended for public and undergraduate libraries. --Richard S. Watts, San Bernardino City Library, CA., Library Journal

"Humble, but clear and cogent too, John Stackhouse's vision of apologetics combines deep thinking with immense practical relevance." --Os Guinness, author of The Dust of Death

"Stackhouse mounts as cogent and eloquent a case for apologetics as I have ever read. It's cogent because of what he understands apologetics to be: not browbeating the other into intellectual submission but sincerely and lovingly commending Christianity to the other for his or her shalom. If that's apologetics, I'm all for it." --Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology, Yale Divinity School

"A lucid and thoughtful case that this humble approach, will be the only effective one for sharing one's faith with others...this book will have broad appeal." --Library Journal

John G. Stackhouse, Jr. is Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. His previous book, Can God Be Trusted?: Faith and the Challenge of Evil was named one of Christianity Today's books of the year.

Title: Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today

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