The Holy Spirit in other Religions?

I am just finishing up my Holy Spirit class here and it’s been so enlightening. A very cool thing that I came across during this class is the role that the Holy Spirit has in the midst of interfaith dialogue.

The great divide between other faiths generally begins with people not agreeing on who God really is. Then bringing Jesus into the mix will immediately bring an even deeper divide when dialoguing with people from other faiths. He can’t be a good prophet and at the same time a liar can He? What kind of godly prophets also lie about who they are? Jesus claimed to be the Son of the living God. It makes no sense to believe He was a good guy and not to believe the validity of what He said. Anyways, God and Jesus generally immediately create a gulf between Christians and people from other faiths.

So what if the Spirit of God became a starting point for our conversations instead? What might the Holy Spirit be doing in the midst of people who believe in other gods? Eventually conversations will turn towards Jesus and feathers may get ruffled, but why not begin with something other than division? Why not start out with something that most faiths can relate to in one way or another? Talking about the Holy Spirit is an access point into deeper dialog and deeper connection with people of other faiths. If people are open to the spiritual realm, (spirits, angels, demons, etc) then the Holy Spirit in that context can easily come into conversation as the Spirit that towers over all others. Conversing about the Spirit may be an inroad to interfaith dialogue, another angle God may want to use soften people’s hearts to eventually introduce them to Jesus Himself.

A theologian named Samartha, in urging Christians to move beyond discussions of “whether or not the Spirit is at work among people of other faiths” began to talk about “how to discern the presence and the work of the Spirit among those who live outside the visible boundary of the church (1990).” God is moving outside of our Christian circles; our job is to discern and to be wisely led by Holy Spirit as we engage others in their own faith arenas.