Too often religion seems to fuel more hatred than love, more conflict than collaboration. The authors of Getting to the Heart of Interfaitha rabbi, a pastor, and a sheikhhave developed a unique friendship that provides a rich understanding about the road to interfaith spirituality. These three "interfaith amigos," as they have called themselves on their Interfaith Talk Radio show, embody a revolutionary spirit of healing. As they share their stories of how their friendship grew, they speak openly about the difficult matters, and the need to do the inner spiritual work, in order to go beyond tolerance and intellectual understanding to a vital, inclusive spirituality. From their deep commitment and lived experience, they present ways we can work together to transcend the differences that have divided us historically.

The book offers many insights and encouragements for individuals and groups who want to tap into the promise of interfaith dialoguethat if we get to know each other, we will be able not only to open to the beauty and wisdom of each other's traditions, but also to find spiritual healing for our deeply wounded human family. The book includes suggestions for "where do we go from here" and additional readings, discussion questions and actions, and group-usage suggestions for lay people and clergy groups.

This work is not addressed only to scholars of Judaism or theologians, but also, and primarily, to all Jews and non-Jews who would like to share the thoughts and struggles of a person who loves Torah and Halakhah, who is committed to helping make room for and celebrate the religious and cultural diversity present in the modern world, and who believes that a commitment to Israel and to Jewish particularity must be organically connected to the rabbinic teaching, Beloved are all human beings created in the image of God. from the Introduction

With clarity, passion, and outstanding scholarship, David Hartman addresses the spiritual and theological questions that face all Jews and all people today. From the perspective of traditional Judaism, he helps us understand the varieties of twentieth-century Jewish practice and shows that commitment to both Jewish tradition and to pluralism can create bridges of understanding between people of different religious convictions.

Antisemitism has been on the rise in recent years, with violent attacks, increased verbal insults, and an acceptability in some circles of what would hitherto have been condemned as outrageous antisemitic discourse. Yet despite the dramatic increase in debate and discussion around antisemitism, many of us remain confused. In this urgent and timely book, Rabbi Julia Neuberger uses contemporary examples, along with historical context, to unpack what constitutes antisemitism, building a powerful argument for why it is so crucial that we come to a shared understanding now.

Christians and Muslims comprise the world's two largest religious communities. This book looks at the history of their relationship - part peaceful co-existence and part violent confrontation - from their first encounters in the medieval period up to the present. It emphasises the theological, cultural and political context in which perceptions and attitudes have developed and gives a depth of historical insight to the complex current Christian-Muslim interactions across the globe.

This third volume in the new series of supplements to the Journal of Semitic Studies is a survey of the historical and religious problems involved in the interconnection between the Sabians of the Qur'an, the Mandeans of southern Iraq, and the "Sabians" of Harran in northern Mesopotamia. It offers an important examination of traditional assertions by some that the Mandaeans and by others that the Harranians should be recognized as the "Sabians" of the Qur'an, the people granted protected status in Islamic law.

The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, Syriac Christians wrote the first and most extensive accounts of Islam, describing a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic. Through its critical introductions and new translations of this invaluable historical material, When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions between what eventually became the world's two largest religions, shedding new light on Islamic history and Christian-Muslim relations.

The Luminous Way to the East offers a comprehensive survey of the historical, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of the first stage of the Christian mission to China. It explores the complex and multifaceted process of the interaction with the different cultural and religious milieux that the Church of the East experienced in its diffusion throughout Central Asia and into China during the first millennium. Matteo Nicolini-Zani provides an overview of the Christian presence in China during the Tang dynasty (618-907) by reconstructing the composition and organization of Christian communities, the geographical location of Christian monasteries, and the related historical events attested by the sources. Through a new and richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian texts produced in Tang China, the volume provides a documented look at what was the earliest, and perhaps the most extraordinary, encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture and religions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). It shows how East Syriac Christianity in its eastward expansion along the Silk Road from Persia to China was open to the adoption of other languages and imagery and was able to enculturate the Christian teaching into new cultural and religious forms without losing its identity.

The relationship between Islam and feminism is complex. There are many Muslim scholars who fervently promote women's equality. At the same time, there is ambivalence regarding the general norms, terminology, and approaches of feminism and feminist theology. This ambivalence is in large part a product of various hegemonic, androcentric, and patriarchal discourses that seek to dictate legitimate and authoritative interpretations. These discourses not only fuel ambivalence, they also effectively obscure valuable possibilities related to interreligious feminist engagement. Divine Words, Female Voices is the follow-up to Jerusha Lamptey's 2014 book, Never Wholly Other, in which she introduced the idea of "Muslima" theology and applied it to the topic of religious diversity. In this new book, she extends her earlier arguments to contend that interreligious feminist engagement is both a theologically valid endeavor and a vital resource for Muslim women scholars. She introduces comparative feminist theology as a method for overcoming challenges associated with interreligious feminist engagement, reorients comparative discussions to focus on the two "Divine Words" (the Qur'an and Jesus) and feminist theology, and uses this reorientation to examine intersections, discontinuities, and insights related to diverse theological topics. This book is distinctive in its responsiveness to calls for new approaches in Islamic feminist theology, its use of the method of comparative theology, its focus on Muslim and Christian feminist theology in comparative analysis, and its constructive articulation of Muslima theological perspectives.

How can ecumenism succeed and under what preconditions? Silke Dangel examines these questions by considering the conflicts between identity and difference in contemporary interdenominational dialogue. She shows that successful ecumenism depends upon a dynamic notion of identity. The ecumenical process in turn updates and modifies the nature of denominational identity.

While the subject of Christian-Muslim or Muslim-Christian interaction is still not a traditional or systematic discipline, interest in the encounter of these two religions has grown considerably over the last decade. Historians, including historians of Islam and Christianity have always been interested in the civilizational meeting of the two religions, in conflict or in times of peace. This includes aspects of post-colonial studies, which incorporate cultural, literary and political writings which consider the intellectual and social ruptures in so much of the Islamic world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Theologians however have only recently begin to appreciate the amount of material which illustrates the extent to which Christians and Muslims wrote about one another's faith and spoke of each other in a variety of contexts in both polemical and eirenic terms. These resources serve to enrich the understanding of one's own faith and the changing historical relationship with the other. Today, Muslim-Christian is often understood as Islam/West where the Christianity and secularism are either conflated or Christianity subsumed within the larger cultural framework of the west. Either way, Islam is a foreign presence and its points of reference not easily assimilated in the narrative of a Judaeo-Christian West. Nevertheless this has created an interesting intellectual and scholarly dynamic in a wide range of disciplines. This includes ethics, politics, gender studies and the emergence of an `interfaith' literature which is increasingly used in scholarly as well as grass roots settings. The collection will comprise around sixty pre-published journal articles and some book chapters. Each volume will contain around 15 articles/chapters. The articles will be secondary sources analysing the works of individual Christian and Muslim scholars, so will not be extracts of primary material thought it is hoped that the majority will contain some primary material. Volume One will contain an Introduction to the whole collection. The volumes will provide a unique and rich reflection of Muslim-Christian encounter. This work will introduce the scholar and the student to the variety of approaches people of faith/no faith have taken to thinking about the two religions. The volumes will cover doctrine, interfaith practice as theory and lived realities and philosophical and literary themes and approaches.

Faith and Sword gives a concise history of what has arguably been the longest conflict in human history - a conflict that continues, in a new form, to this day. The overtly religious Christian-Muslim struggle lasted for nearly thirteen centuries, and for most of that period the Muslims were in the ascendant. The Christians eventually halted the tide of Arab conquest, but their counterstroke in the Crusades ended in failure and the Muslim threat was renewed by the Ottoman Turks. Only after 1600 did the Christians finally begin to gain the upper hand, with the fall of the Ottoman empire after the First World War seeming to mark the final victory of the Christians. Between 1918 and 1979, however, the Christian-Muslim conflict continued, but in a less obviously religious form. Christendom became the largely secularised West, and Muslim success in throwing off European colonialism owed more to secular nationalists than religious leaders. After the Iranian revolution of 1979 the picture changed again: religious fundamentalism revived on the Muslim side and the USA became its principal target.Today the USA has never been more militarily dominant, yet it is rendered insecure by a tiny minority of religious militants whose outlook is said to have been superseded by the march of history. Alan G. Jamieson provides a wide-ranging and detailed survey of this conflict through all its stages, and shows how the present situation has emerged. He ranges widely in time, from the original Arab conquests in the seventh century to the present conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. All areas of conflict are included, from Morocco to Indonesia, and from Russia to Somalia. This authoritative and readable study will appeal equally to scholars, students and the general reader, giving an accessible introduction to one of the most important conflicts of our time.

It is generally accepted that Jews and evangelical Christians have little in common. Yet special alliances developed between the two groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelicals viewed Jews as both the rightful heirs of Israel and as a group who failed to recognize their true savior. Consequently, they set out to influence the course of Jewish life by attempting to evangelize Jews and to facilitate their return to Palestine. Their double-edged perception caused unprecedented political, cultural, and theological meeting points that have revolutionized Christian-Jewish relationships. An Unusual Relationship explores the beliefs and political agendas that evangelicals have created in order to affect the future of the Jews. Additionally, it analyses Jewish opinions and reactions to those efforts, as well as those of other religious groups, such as Arab Christians. This volume offers a fascinating, comprehensive analysis of the roots, manifestations, and consequences of evangelical interest in the Jews, and the alternatives they provide to conventional historical Christian-Jewish interactions. It also provides a compelling understanding of Middle Eastern politics through a new lens.

This book explores how Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions of the Second Vatican Council, can influence inter-religious dialogue and understanding in the modern world. Although influential in religious, academic, and scholarly circles, it is relatively unknown outside these areas. The contributors remedy that deficit by highlighting the declaration's difficult historical and social context and the Church's evolving relationship with non-Christians. Contentious topics are examined such as the link between the Jewish people and the land and state of Israel, that questions the Catholic understanding of the relativity of national borders and identity, and the challenges posed to the Church's relationship with Islam by its prioritization of human rights and religious freedom for Christians and minorities in certain Muslim regimes. Given its scope, it is an ideal resource for graduate students and researchers in the fields of political science, international relations, religion, and minority studies.

This edited volume offers solutions on the challenges of religious pluralisation from a European perspective. It gives special attention to interreligious dialogue and interfaith relations as specific means of dealing with plurality. In particular, the contributors describe innovative scientific approaches and broad political and social scopes of action for addressing the diversity of beliefs, practices, and traditions. In total, more than 25 essays bring together interdisciplinary and international research perspectives. The papers cover a wide thematic range. They highlight how religious pluralisation effects such fields as theology, politics, civil society, education, and communication/media. The contributors not only illustrate academic debates about religious diversity but they also look at the political and social scope for dealing with such. Coverage spans numerous countries, and beliefs, from Buddhism to Judaism. This book features presentations from the Herrenhausen Conference on "Religious Pluralisation - A Challenge for Modern Societies," held in Hanover, Germany, October 2016. This insightful collection will benefit students and researchers with an interest in religion and laicism, interreligious dialogue, governance of religious diversity, and religion in the public sphere.

This book is the first to critically analyze Buddhist-Muslim relations in Theravada Buddhist majority states in South and Southeast Asia. Asia is home to the largest population of Buddhists and Muslims. In recent years, this interfaith communal living has incurred conflicts, such as the ethnic-religious conflicts in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Experts from around the world collaborate to provide a comprehensive look into religious pluralism and religious violence. The book is divided into two sections. The first section provides historical background to the three countries with the largest Buddhist-Muslim relations. The second section has chapters that focus on specific encounters between Buddhists and Muslims, which includes anti-Buddhist sentiments in Bangladesh, the role of gender in Muslim-Buddhist relations and the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya sentiments in Myanmar. By exploring historical fluctuations over time-paying particular attention to how state-formations condition Muslim-Buddhist entanglements-the book shows the processual and relational aspects of religious identity constructions and Buddhist-Muslim interactions in Theravada Buddhist majority states.

This enlightening edited collection shows how migration shapes the lives of faith communities - and vice versa - through diverse prisms including diaspora, generational change, cultural conflict, conceptions of 'ministry' and artistic response. The contributors comprise writers, poets and artists from the three largest Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and beyond. They show how issues of migration are addressed through a variety of different media such as theological debate and shared community action, poetry and art. As issues of migration are an important factor in so many political and social debates, faith communities are looking for guidance on how to deepen their theological understanding of migration. This book helps them to reflect on their own practices and experiences, learn from their own traditions and engage in dialogue with diverse communities. *All royalties from book sales will be donated to The Helen Bamber Foundation - a UK-based charity that supports people who have survived extreme physical, sexual and psychological violence.*

This book is an invitation to rethink our understanding of Turkish literature as a tale of two "others." The first part of the book examines the contributions of non-Muslim authors, the "others" of modern Turkey, to the development of Turkish literature during the late Ottoman and early republican period, focusing on the works of largely forgotten authors. The second part discusses Turkey as the "other" of the West and the way authors writing in Turkish challenged orientalist representations. Thus this book prepares the ground for a history of literature which uncouples language and religion and recreates the spaces of dialogue and exchange that have existed in late Ottoman Turkey between members of various ethno-religious communities.

Before they were both internationally renowned philosophers, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig were young German soldiers fighting in World War I corresponding by letter and forming the foundation of their deep intellectual friendship. Collected here, this correspondence provides an intimate portrait of their views on history, philosophy, rhetoric, and religion as well as on their writings and professors. Most centrally, Rosenstock-Huessy and Rosenzweig discuss, frankly but respectfully, the differences between Judaism and Chiristianity and the reasons they have chosen their respective faiths. This edition includes a new foreword by Paul Mendes-Flohr, a new preface by Harold Stahmer along with his original introduction, and essays by Dorothy Emmet and Alexander Altmann, who calls this correspondence "one of the most important religious documents of our age" and "the most perfect example of a human approach to the Jewish-Christian problem."

In a context of scandal and precipitous decline, the Christian church cannot afford to do what it has always done, argues Eugene R. Schlesinger. It must return to its roots and clarify to itself and the general public what its nature and purpose are. Sacrificing the Church provides this clarity by returning to the church’s foundation: Jesus Christ and his crucifixion. It presents a vision of the church in which every aspect of the church’s life flows from and expresses the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This sacrifice is the basis of every ecclesial experience. It is the form and content of the church’s life, a life which shares in the eternal Trinitarian life of God. By Christ’s sacrifice we are introduced into the divine life, and therefore we must participate in it. This plays out in three key areas of the church’s life: its worship of God (Mass), its mission to the world (mission), and its efforts toward the unity of all people, beginning with divided Christians (ecumenism).

In Shoah Through Muslim Eyes, the author discusses her journey with Judaism as a Muslim. Her book is based on the struggle with antisemitism within Muslim communities and her interviews with Shoah survivors. Rejecting polemical myths about the Holocaust and Jews, Afridi offers a new way of creating understanding between the two communities through the acceptance the enormity of the Shoah. Her journey is both personal and academic: the reader can find nuances of her belief in Islam, principles of justice, and the loneliness of such a journey. The chapters discuss the Holocaust and how it was in truth unprecedented, interviews with survivors, antisemitism and Islamophobia, camps in Arab lands, and Islam and memory. Afridi includes newly-uncovered Muslim-Arab narratives that enhance our understanding of the reach of the Holocaust into Muslim lands under the Vichy and Nazi governments.

Nature and Norm: Judaism, Christianity and the Theopolitical Problem is a book about the encounter between Jewish and Christian thought and the fact-value divide that invites the unsettling recognition of the dramatic acosmism that shadows and undermines a considerable number of modern and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought systems. By exposing the forced option presented to Jewish and Christian thinkers by the continued appropriation of the fact-value divide, Nature and Norm motivates Jewish and Christian thinkers to perform an immanent critique of the failure of their thought systems to advance rational theopolitical claims and exercise the authority and freedom to assert their claims as reasonable hypotheses that hold the potential for enacting effective change in our current historical moment.

This book explores the relationship between the distinctive Islamic beliefs (Ibadism) of Oman and how they define the experience of the church with regards to religious freedom. Oman is a nation with a long and glorious history of maritime trade, stretching from China and India to the East coast of Africa. From sultan to shopkeeper, farmer to craftsman, the citizens of Oman embrace a surprising diversity of cultural heritage ranging from Baluchi, Persian, Yemeni, and East African. Yet, there has hitherto been very little research about Christianity in this part of the world. Through the use of historical research, interviews and theological discourse, Andrew David Thompson analyzes and reveals the distinctive experience of the Church in Oman.

In the online world, people argue about anything and everything - religion is no exception. Stephen Pihlaja investigates how several prominent social media figures present views about religion in an environment where their positions are challenged. The analysis shows how conflict creates a space for users to share, explain, and develop their opinions and beliefs, by making appeals to both a core audience of like-minded viewers and a broader audience of viewers who are potentially interested in the claims, ambivalent, or openly hostile. The book argues that in the back-and-forth of these arguments, the positions that users take in response to the arguments of others have consequences for how religious talk develops, and potentially for how people understand and practice their beliefs in the twenty-first century. Based on original empirical research, it addresses long-debated questions in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis regarding the role of language in building solidarity, defining identity and establishing genres and registers of interaction.

In Germany at the turn of the century, Buddhism transformed from an obscure topic, of interest to only a few misfit scholars, into a cultural phenomenon. Many of the foremost authors of the period were profoundly influenced by this rapid rise of Buddhism-among them, some of the best-known names in the German-Jewish canon. Sebastian Musch excavates this neglected dimension of German-Jewish identity, drawing on philosophical treatises, novels, essays, diaries, and letters to trace the history of Jewish-Buddhist encounters up to the start of the Second World War. Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, Theodor Lessing, Jakob Wassermann, Walter Hasenclever, and Lion Feuchtwanger are featured alongside other, lesser known figures like Paul Cohen-Portheim and Walter Tausk. As Musch shows, when these thinkers wrote about Buddhism, they were also negotiating their own Jewishness.