The ways in which religious communities interact with one another is an increasing focus of scholarly research and teaching. Issues of interreligious engagement, inclusive of dialogue more specifically and relations more generally, attract widespread interest and concern. In a religiously pluralist world, how different communities get along with each other is not just an academic question; it is very much a focus of socio-political and wider community attention. The study of religions and religion in the 21st century world must necessarily take account of relations within and between religions, whether this is approached from a theological, historical, political, or any other disciplinary point of view. Understanding Interreligious Relations is a reference work of relevance to students and scholars as well as of interest to a wider informed public. It comprises two main parts. The first provides expositions and critical discussions of the ways in which 'the other' has been construed and addressed from within the major religious traditions. The second presents analyses and discussions of key issues and topics in which interreligious relations are an integral constituent. The editors have assembled an authoritative and scholarly work that discusses perspectives on the religious 'other' and interreligious relations that are typical of the major religious traditions; together with substantial original chapters from a cross-section of emerging and established scholars on main debates and issues in the wider field of interreligious relations.

Examining the law and public policy relating to religious liberty in Western liberal democracies, this book contains a detailed analysis of the history, rationale, scope, and limits of religious freedom from (but not restricted to) an evangelical Christian perspective. Focussing on United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and EU, it studies the interaction between law and religion at several different levels, looking at the key debates that have arisen. Divided into three parts, the book begins by contrasting the liberal and Christian rationales for and understandings of religious freedom. It then explores central thematic issues: the types of constitutional frameworks within which any right to religious exercise must operate; the varieties of paradigmatic relationships between organized religion and the state; the meaning of 'religion'; the limitations upon individual and institutional religious behaviour; and the domestic and international legal mechanisms that have evolved to address religious conduct. The final part explores key subject areas where current religious freedom controversies have arisen: employment; education; parental rights and childrearing; controls on pro-religious and anti-religious expression; medical treatment; and religious group (church) autonomy. This new edition is fully updated with the growing case law in the area, and features increased coverage of Islam and the flashpoint debates surrounding the accommodation of Muslim beliefs and practices in Anglophone nations.

Taking a critical approach to the concept of 'religious pluralism', this book examines the dynamics of religious co-existence in Asia as they are directly addressed by governments, or indirectly managed by groups and individuals. It looks at the quality of relations that emerge in encounters among people of different religious traditions or among people who hold different visions within the same tradition. Chapters focus in particular on the places of everyday religious diversity in Asian societies in order to explore how religious groups have confronted new situations of religious diversity. The book goes on to explore the conditions under which active religious pluralism emerges (or not) from material contexts of diversity.

An unexpected fusion of two major western religious traditions, Judaism and Christianity, has been developing in many parts of the world. Contemporary Christian movements are not only adopting Jewish symbols and aesthetics but also promoting Jewish practices, rituals, and lifestyles. Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus is the first in-depth ethnography to investigate this growing worldwide religious tendency in the global South. Focusing on an austere "Judaizing Evangelical" variant in Brazil, Carpenedo explores the surprising identification with Jews and Judaism by people with exclusively Charismatic Evangelical backgrounds. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and socio-cultural analysis, the book analyses the historical, religious, and subjective reasons behind this growing trend in Charismatic Evangelicalism. The emergence of groups that simultaneously embrace Orthodox Jewish rituals and lifestyles and preserve Charismatic Evangelical religious symbols and practices raises serious questions about what it means to be "Jewish" or "Christian" in today's religious landscape. This case study reveals how religious, ethnic, and cultural markers are being mobilized in unpredictable ways within the Charismatic Evangelical movement in much of the global South. The book also considers broader questions regarding contemporary women's attraction to gender-traditional religions. This comprehensive account of how former Charismatic Evangelicals in Brazil are gradually becoming austerely observant "Jews," while continuing to believe in Jesus, represents a significant contribution to the study of religious conversion, cultural change, and debates about religious hybridization processes.

How did Jews perceive the first Christians? By what means did they come to appreciate Christianity as a religion distinct from their own? In The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Professor Joshua Ezra Burns addresses those questions by describing the birth of Christianity as a function of the Jewish past. Surveying a range of ancient evidences, he examines how the authors of Judaism's earliest surviving memories of Christianity speak to the perspectives of rabbinic observers who were conditioned by the unique circumstances of their encounters with Christianity to recognize its adherents as fellow Jews. Only upon the decline of the Church's Jewish demographic were their successors compelled to see Christianity as something other than a variation of Jewish cultural expression. The evolution of thought in the classical Jewish literary record thus offers a dynamic account of Christianity's separation from Judaism counterbalancing the abrupt schism attested in contemporary Christian texts.

Many observers greeted the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) as the most important religious event in the twentieth century. Its implementation and impact are still being felt in the Catholic Church, the wider Christian world, and beyond. One sea change that Vatican II brought concerned Roman Catholic attitudes towards Judaism, Islam, and other religions. Gerald O'Collins breaks fresh ground by examining in detail five documents from the Council which embodied a new mind set about other religious faiths and mandated changes that quickly led to international and national dialogues between the Catholic Church and the followers of non-Christian religions. The book also includes chapters on the insights that prepared the way for the re-thinking expressed by Vatican II, and on the follow-up to the Council's teaching found in the work of Pope John Paul II and Jacques Dupuis. O'Collins ably illustrates how the Council made a startling advance in official Catholic teaching about followers of other living faiths. Carefully researched, the book is written in the clear, accessible style that readers of previous works by O'Collins will recognize.

In this study of Lord Shaftesbury - Victorian England's greatest humanitarian and most prominent Christian Zionist - Donald M. Lewis examines why British evangelicals became fascinated with the Jews and how they promoted a 'teaching of esteem' that countered a 'teaching of contempt'. Evangelicals militated for the restoration of Jews to Palestine by lobbying the British cabinet on foreign policy decisions. Professing their love for the Jews, they effectively reshaped the image of the Jew in conversionist literature, gave sacrificially to convert them to Christianity, and worked with German Pietists to create a joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric in Jerusalem, the center (in their minds) of world Jewry. Evangelical identity evolved during this process and had an impact on Jewish identity, transforming Jewish-Christian relations. It also changed the course of world history by creating a climate of opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which pledged British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In 1965 the Second Vatican Council declared that God loves the Jews. Before that, the Church had taught for centuries that Jews were cursed by God and, in the 1940s, mostly kept silent as Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. How did an institution whose wisdom is said to be unchanging undertake one of the most enormous, yet undiscussed, ideological swings in modern history? The radical shift of Vatican II grew out of a buried history, a theological struggle in Central Europe in the years just before the Holocaust, when a small group of Catholic converts (especially former Jew Johannes Oesterreicher and former Protestant Karl Thieme) fought to keep Nazi racism from entering their newfound church. Through decades of engagement, extending from debates in academic journals, to popular education, to lobbying in the corridors of the Vatican, this unlikely duo overcame the most problematic aspect of Catholic history. Their success came not through appeals to morality but rather from a rediscovery of neglected portions of scripture. From Enemy to Brother illuminates the baffling silence of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust, showing how the ancient teaching of deicide - according to which the Jews were condemned to suffer until they turned to Christ - constituted the Church's only language to talk about the Jews. As he explores the process of theological change, John Connelly moves from the speechless Vatican to those Catholics who endeavored to find a new language to speak to the Jews on the eve of, and in the shadow of, the Holocaust.

Relations between Christians and Jews over the past two thousand years have been characterised to a great extent by mutual distrust and by Christian discrimination and violence against Jews. In recent decades, however, a new spirit of dialogue has been emerging, beginning with an awakening among Christians of the Jewish origins of Christianity, and encouraging scholars of both traditions to work together. An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations sheds fresh light on this ongoing interfaith encounter, exploring key writings and themes in Jewish-Christian history, from the Jewish context of the New Testament to major events of modern times, including the rise of ecumenism, the horrors of the Holocaust, and the creation of the state of Israel. This accessible theological and historical study also touches on numerous related areas such as Jewish and interfaith studies, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, international relations and the political sciences.

What is between us and the Christians is a deep dark affair which will go for another hundred generations . . ." (Amos Oz, Judas) Among the great social shifts of the post-World War II era is the unlikely sea-change in Jewish Christian relations. We read each other's scriptures and openly discuss differences as well as similarities. Yet many such encounters have become rote and predictable. Powerful emotions stirred up by these conversations are often dismissed or ignored. Demonstrating how such emotions as shame, envy, and desire can inform these encounters, Holy Envy: Writing in the Jewish Christian Borderzone charts a new way of thinking about interreligious relations. Moreover, by focusing on modern and contemporary writers (novelists and poets) who traffic in the volatile space between Judaism and Christianity, the book calls attention to the creative implications of these intense encounters. While recognizing a long-overdue need to address a fundamentally Christian narrative underwriting twentieth century American verse, Holy Envy does more than represent Christianity as an aesthetically coercive force, or as an adversarial other. For the book also suggests how literature can excavate an alternative interreligious space, at once risky and generative. In bringing together recent accounts of Jewish Christian relations, affect theory, and poetics, Holy Envy offers new ways into difficult and urgent, conversations about interreligious encounters. Holy Envy is sure to engage readers who are interested in literature, religion, and, above all, interfaith dialogue.

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.

In 2005, the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the longest civil war in African history. Stein Erik Horjen argues that although this second civil war was not a religious one, religion still played an important role in the conflict. Ensuring freedom of religion was a high priority for the SPLM and for the Sudanese churches, which were instrumental in preparing the ground for the 2005 agreement in the same way they had been in facilitating the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement in 1972. Focusing on the pivotal role of the Sudanese churches through a grassroots peace process called People to People, Horjen examines the churches' work in ensuring the success of the peace talks between the SPLM and the government sealed by the 2005 Peace Agreement. Taking up the role as the voice of the voiceless, the Sudanese churches challenged and criticized the military and political leaders in regards to abuses of power. In Reconciliation in the Sudans, Horjen details the tremendous suffering of the people during recurrent conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan. Understanding the history will allow the reader contextual insight into the latest conflict that erupted in South Sudan in 2013. The failure of including mechanisms for reconciliation in the CPA can be considered a main reason for this latest war.

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.

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.

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.

Il profeta islamico Maometto diede avvio a un programma teologico in forma teocratica. Poiche il Corano, in molti modi, si rivolge ai cristiani e agli ebrei e li invita a fare dichiarazioni, una risposta propriamente teologica e legittima e necessaria. Tenendo conto delle attuali ricerche scientifiche sull'Islam, questo libro tratta le fonti del Corano, le fondamentali caratteristiche del suo rapporto con l'ebraismo e la sua percezione di Gesu. Cio conduce ad una valutazione realistica dell'Islam e ad impulsi per una rinnovata autocomprensione cristiana. Il quarto capitolo presenta le affermazioni largamente sconosciute del filosofo ebreo Franz Rosenzweig e del teologo Joseph Ratzinger/Benedetto XVI sull'Islam che sono un aiuto decisivo per l'orientamento al di la della sottomissione.

The subject of religious diversity is of growing significance, with its associated problems of religious pluralism and inter-faith dialogue. Moreover, since the European Enlightenment, religions have had to face new, existential challenges. Is there a future for religions? How will they have to change? Can they co-exist peacefully? In this book, Keith Ward brings new insights to these questions. Applying historical and philosophical approaches, he explores how we can establish truth among so many diverse religions. He explains how religions have evolved over time and how they are reacting to the challenges posed by new scientific and moral beliefs. A celebration of the diversity in the world's religions, Ward's timely book also deals with the possibility and necessity of religious tolerance and co-existence.

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.*

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).

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has promoted a Shi'a Islamic identity aimed at transcending ethnic and national boundaries. During the same period, Iran's Armenian community, once a prominent Christian minority in Tehran, has declined by more than eighty percent. Although the Armenian community is recognised by the constitution and granted specific privileges under Iranian law, they do not share equal rights with their Shi'i Muslim compatriots. Drawing upon interviews conducted with members of the Armenian community and using sources in both Persian and Armenian languages, this book questions whether the Islamic Republic has failed or succeeded in fostering a cohesive identity which enables non-Muslims to feel a sense of belonging in this Islamic Republic. As state identities are also often key in exacerbating ethnic conflict, this book probes into the potential cleavage points for future social conflict in Iran.

Seitdem John Hick durch seine pluralistische Position den Weg fur eine Annaherung der Religionen geschaffen hat, haben seine Werke viel Aufmerksamkeit von Anhangern und Kritikern erfahren. Dieses Werk setzt sich kritisch mit dem Lebenswerk Hicks auseinander, und vergleicht die Argumente fur seine Ansicht mit denen von Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Alvin Plantinga und Karl Rahner. Der Autor legt die Pramissen der vier Positionen offen, und macht deutlich, warum trotz aller berechtigten Kritik die pluralistische Position die plausibelste Antwort auf die Frage liefert, wieso es mehrere Religionen gibt, wenn laut dem NT (nur) Jesus Christus der Weg, die Wahrheit und das Leben ist.