Responding to the global uproar over a series of controversial cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Denmark is reaching out to build bridges of understanding with its Muslim neighbors.

In their sermons pastors have taken up questions on freedom of speech and the relationship between Islam and Christianity. Members of the church have participated in the public debate on this issue by contributing letters and articles to the papers. The Danish Adventist church paper, Adventnyt, will produce a special feature on the cartoon controversy in its next edition. The Bible Correspondence School is conducting an advertising campaign for its course dealing with Christian and Muslim relations. And, special public meetings on Islam are scheduled in Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Norway. In a pastors’ meeting planned for the near future the officers and district pastors will meet for a thorough discussion of the situation.

The book Muslims among Christians in Denmark by Adventist missiologist and pioneer director of the Seventh-day Adventist Global Centre for Islamic Studies, Børge Schantz, Ph.D., has been revised to include a new chapter on the current situation. This chapter deals especially with the themes that are high on the agenda in media, governments and religious circles in both Western and Muslim worlds. The book suggests interesting ways to build genuine relationships between the native Christian and the Muslim immigrants wherever they meet.

Church administrators say they will send copies of the revised book on Islam as a gift to ministers, members of parliaments in both Denmark and the Faroe Islands, as well as mayors in Danish cities and towns.