Winston Churchill observed, "It is never wise to commit suicide, especially if you live to regret it." Likewise to engage in conjectures and live to be found a fool is an experience to be avoided. But the eight contributors to this volume dare to address the question "What will Christianity be like in the year 2020?" This is risky speculation but not irrelevant.
The Christian faith finds itself forced to respond to a whole spectrum of negative issues that are not going to go away. How to respond to them is the nub of the matter. What is going to happen to Christianity as it engages a "New Age society with its free- flowing post-Christian pluralism"? How will the increasing power and influence of non-Christian faiths like Islam affect it? How are the internal change elements in Christian faith going to develop?
What will be the influence of feminism, liberalism, right-wing evangelicalism, ecumenism, charismatics, and the shifting balance in membership from the First to the Second and Third Worlds? Will they be radical, or in the end neutral? This book offers a variety of responses. What value we give them will depend upon where we are coming from as we engage them. This book is a stimulating one. It causes reflection. It moves one to ask the question: What is my answer to a 20/20 vision? Do I even have one?
