During the past few years several of us have been maintaining that the New Testament churches patterned their worship and organizational structures largely on the religious and cultural milieu in which they were placed. If that is indeed true, then it would seem to follow that the modern church needs also to study its cultural environment to determine the forms of her life. Phil Parshall is seeking to apply this principle to the particular context of an islamic society, for he has personal experience in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Parshall is aware that some critics will take severe exception to the whole question of contextualization. He therefore starts with a defence and carefully denies all possible attacks which might suggest that he allows syncretism. He then proceeds to apply his principles of contextualization in a Muslim situation and finally in Part 3 he gives a case study under the pseudonym of the nation of Bimbar.

This book not only raises the issues of contextualization, in general, but particularly the thorny question of homogeneous churches. The Church Growth movement has brought this issue into the limelight during the past decade or so, but the battle still rages. Are messianic synagogues, Muslim mosques, Christian temples or other such monocultural churches justifiable? If so, what about mono-class churches? Or mono-caste churches in India? Parshall rather assumes the rightness of culturally Islamic churches and his successful experience in practice adds weight to his thesis. The book ignores however the thorny problem of relations with the existing Hindu background churches in the country—is it right for a foreign missionary to by-pass the existing national churches?

As might be expected, this book is fundamentally pragmatic in approach and one would have liked a more careful study of the underlying biblical and theological questions. Nevertheless the thinking reader will quickly see the biblical questions regarding the relationship of the church to culture in worship and structures.

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