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Alex Lee

Alexander
Lee

PhD Candidate, Intercultural Studies

[email protected]

Faculty Mentor

Amos Yong

About Alexander

Described by my spiritual director as a “border walker,” I am passionate about theologizing in the in-between spaces, which naturally draws me to comparative theology. After pastoring in Muslim-majority contexts for close to fifteen years, I have cultivated a deep commitment to fostering respectful Christian witness among Muslims and building bridges across diverse communities.

My dissertation explores a comparative theology of Anglican and Sunni ritual worship, focusing on the bodily modes of attention cultivated in each. Central to my research is “subjunctive guesting,” a method I am developing that blends careful discernment with authentic vulnerability, grounded in a theology of the Holy Spirit’s active work in the world.

I co-teach as adjunct faculty at Fuller Seminary and work as an Intercultural Leadership Consultant at the Tyndale Intercultural Ministries Centre (Toronto).

Born in Canada with roots in Hong Kong, I live near Toronto with my wife and two beautiful children.

Education

Fuller Theological Seminary

2021

Master of Divinity

Cornell University

2007

BA English Literature & Creative Writing

Research Interests

Missiology, Comparative Theology & Theology of Religions, Islamic Studies, Theology of Mission

Publications

“Moving Beyond a Missionary Model to Muslims? Considering J. Dudley Woodberry Today.” International Bulletin of Mission Research 48, no. 2 (April 1, 2024): 213–25.

This article situates J. Dudley Woodberry as an exemplar of scholarly evangelical engagement with Islam while suggesting some limitations of his approach for mission today. After a brief sketch of Woodberry’s earliest steps into scholarship, the article locates his contributions to Islamic Studies against the backdrop of developments in the field with specific attention paid to his engagement with lived Islam. It then interacts with responses to Woodberry’s work and reassesses its relevance for Christian mission among Muslims at present. Finally, this article constructively appropriates Woodberry’s ideas to suggest further steps in Christian-Muslim relations through the practice of comparative theology.

“The ‘New’ Comparative Theology as New Frontier in Interreligious Engagement and Christian Witness,” Journal of the Evangelical Missiological Society 5, no. 1 (March 6, 2025): 1–18.

This paper argues that the ‘new’ comparative theology is a mission practice at the frontiers of evangelical missiology that accords well with a ‘truth pursued’ approach to evangelism and mission. To make my case, I explore the need for comparative theology, considering the persistence of non-Christian religions; its history and distinguishing features, defined by a ‘bold humility’ toward religious Others; its function as a mission practice facilitating two-way contextualization; and its potential as a form of Christian witness, illustrated through an example of the ‘new’ comparative theology in the longstanding Christian-Muslim debate about the nature of divine revelation.
https://www.journal-ems.org/index.php/home/article/view/140

“‘Playing’ with Danger: The Rehabilitation of Spiritual Danger for Inter-Ritual Participation – An Evangelical Perspective,” Studies in World Christianity 31, no. 2 (July 2025): 171–91.

The realm of spirit(s) is often overlooked in the ‘new’ comparative theology (CT), defined as ‘the practice of rethinking aspects of one’s own faith tradition through the study of aspects of another faith tradition’ (Clooney 2007). However, a recent ritual turn in CT has encouraged a practice of inter-riting that invites practitioners to explore the rituals of other religions for the sake of generating comparative theological insight. Despite the promise that inter-riting offers to deepening practices of interfaith dialogue, hospitality, and Christian witness, some have noted that a fear of unfamiliar spiritual forces or ‘spiritual danger’ – and its close correlate, the phenomenon of negative reverence – can stall its practice, resulting in inter-ritual failure. While it is primarily non-evangelicals who name the need to reflect further upon these reasons for inter-ritual misfire, I argue that evangelical Christians are in fact well-positioned to access the biblical and theological resources required to negotiate these concerns constructively. After beginning with a description of spiritual danger and negative reverence, I turn to assess one method that US evangelicals have promulgated globally since the 1970s to address spiritual danger – the model of power encounter – before exploring alternative biblical and pneumatological resources that offer a more constructive approach to engaging unfamiliar spiritual forces. The aim of this paper is to rehabilitate the fear of spiritual danger and move it toward a more balanced and curious discernment of spirits, and to liberate negative reverence unto a kind that is more hopeful and cautiously ‘playful.’

Fuller Seminary hosts these profiles as a courtesy to our doctoral students. Their views are their own and do not necessary reflect the views of the seminary.