In a world where religious pluralism is a necessity of modern life, diverse religions exist for the diverse people populating the earth. Theologically, how do people of different faiths find liberation in their separate gods simultaneously? Stephen Kaplan answers this question with his new book, Different Paths, Different Summits. He presents a model for religious pluralism that does not fall victim to the criticisms of pluralist models. Religious positions do not need to be transcended in order for varying faiths to be both honored and liberating simultaneously. Kaplan skillfully depicts three different realties, a theistic ultimate reality, a monistic ultimate reality, and a process non-dualism, along with their beliefs. His model allows for each to exit simultaneously, mutually interpenetrating and distinct.

Christians and Muslims together make up about 57% of the world's population today, and by the end of the century they will constitute about 66% of the world's population. More than any other single factor, the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren may depend on how well Christians learn to relate to Muslims - and Hindus, the next largest faith, not to mention Buddhists, Jews, people of indigenous faiths, and the nonreligious. We know how to have a strong Christian identity that is intolerant of or belligerent towards other faiths, and we know how to have a weak Christian identity that is tolerant and benevolent. But is there a third alternative? How do we discover, live, teach, and practise a Christian identity that is both strong and benevolent towards other faiths?In this provocative and inspiring book, author Brian McLaren tackles some of the hardest questions around the issue of interfaith relations, and shares a hopeful vision of the reconciliation that Jesus offers to our multi-faith world.

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.

Why should Christians engage in interfaith dialogue with Muslims? Does Islam have anything to offer Christians? What is Islamophobia, and what should we do about it? These are just some of the questions addressed in Finding Jesus among Muslims, an urgent new book from author Jordan Denari Duffner. Drawing from church teaching, the stories of saints and martyrs, and her extensive personal experiences living among Muslims in both the United States and the Middle East, Duffner explains why all Christians are called to participate in a "dialogue of life" with Muslims. Her intelligent and fresh approach makes Duffner a welcome voice on some of the most important social and religious questions of our day.

In the early twentieth century, The Eastern Buddhist journal pioneered the presentation of Buddhism to the west and encouraged the west's engagement in interpretation. This interactive process increased dramatically in the post-war period, when dialogue between Buddhist and Christian thought began to take off in earnest. These debates and dialogues brought in voices with a Zen orientation, influenced in part by the philosophical Buddhism of the Kyoto School. Also to be heard however were contributions from the Pure Land and the Shin Buddhist traditions, which also have a strong tradition in the city. The book brings together a wide range of authors who have significantly influenced subsequent Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the interaction between east and west.

Today the Islamic faith has exploded on the contemporary scene. On television and in newspapers Islam is depicted as playing a major role in world events. In this illuminating volume distinguished Muslim, Christian and Jewish writers explore the nature of the Islamic religion and its impact on a pluralistic society. In diverse ways they present a new and challenging vision of dialogue between the three monotheistic faiths in the modern world.

A powerful challenge to conventional Judeo-Christian theology, The First and Final Commandment combines the author's two books, MisGod'ed and God'ed, within one cover. The First and Final Commandment begins by defining the internal conflicts that fracture the metaphysical worlds of Judaism and Christianity from within, and indeed, which demand reappraisal of the Judeo-Christian scriptures themselves. Incorporating detailed analysis, this work continues on to document the scriptural evidences that suggest continuity in revelation from Judaism to Christianity and, in the end, to orthodox (Sunni) Islam. Provocative and thought-provoking, intelligent and inspiring, this book enters the melee of two thousand years of religious debate with clarity of vision, accuracy of detail, and common sense conclusions which boldly confront conventional Judeo-Christian conclusions.

A revisionist reading of early anti-Judaism, in which the author challenges the prevailing opinion and offers a richer picture than ever before of the Jews and Christians of antiquity.

'A very important contribution to the clarifying of the complexity of the relaionships between Jews, Christians, and pagans in Greco-Roman culture.' Rosemary Radford Ruether, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Leaving a religion is not merely a matter of losing or rejecting faith. For many, it involves dramatic changes of everyday routines and personal habits.
Davidman bases her analysis on in-depth conversations with forty ex-Hasidic individuals. From these conversations emerge accounts of the great fear, angst, and sense of danger that come of leaving a highly bounded enclave community. Many of those interviewed spoke of feeling marginal in their own communities; of strain in their homes due to death, divorce, or their parents' profound religious differences; experienced sexual, physical, or verbal abuse; or expressed an acute awareness of gender inequality, the dissimilar lives of their secular relatives, and forbidden television shows, movies, websites, and books.
Becoming Un-Orthodox draws much-needed attention to the vital role of the body and bodily behavior in religious practices. It is through physical rituals and routines that the members of a religion, particularly a highly conservative one, constantly create, perform, and reinforce the culture of the religion. Because of the many observances and daily rituals required by their faith, Hasidic defectors are an exemplary case study for exploring the centrality of the body in shaping, maintaining, and shedding religions.
This book provides both a moving narrative of the struggles of Hasidic defectors and a compelling call for greater collective understanding of the complex significance of the body in society.

A religious liberty lawyer and acclaimed author reveals the root of America's polarization inside the Muslim and evangelical Christian divide-and how it can be healed. Despite the dire consequences of America's cultural, political, and religious divisiveness, from increasing incivility to discrimination and outright violence, few have been able to get to the core cause of this conflict. Even fewer have offered measures for reconcilliation. Now, in The Politics of Vulnerability, Asma Uddin, American-Muslim public intellectual, religious-liberties attorney, and activist, provides a unique perspective on the complex political and social factors contributing to the Muslim-Christian divide. Unlike other analysts, Uddin asks what underlying drivers cause otherwise good people to do-or believe-bad things? Why do people who value faith support of measures that limit others, especially of Muslims', religious freedom and other rights?' Uddin humanizes a contentious relationship by fully embracing both sides as individuals driven by very human fears and anxieties. Many conservative Christians fear that the Left is dismantling traditional "Christian America" to replace it with an Islamized America, a conspiratorial theory that has given rise to an "evangelical persecution complex," a politicized vulnerability. Uddin reveals that Islamophobia and other aspects of the conservative Christian movement are interconnected. Where does hate come from and how can it be conquered? Only by addressing the underlying factors of this politics of vulnerability can we begin to heal the divide.

A major issue in nineteenth-century world politics, the question of Christianity's holiest shrines in Jerusalem is covered by a large body of literature. Most of this scholarship, however, concentrates on the period when the question of the Holy Sites has already evolved from a domestic Ottoman problem into an all-European issue. Much less is known about this problem in earlier times, when the Ottoman Empire was still a dominant power able to propose solutions free of foreign interference and outside pressures.
Based on official Ottoman records found in the registers of the kadi's court in Jerusalem as well as the Prime Ministry's Archives in Istanbul, the present study offers a thorough treatment of Ottoman policy with respect to the Holy Sites during the first two centuries of Ottoman rule in Jerusalem. It focuses on three principal issues: (a) The legal status of the Holy Sites under Ottoman rule; (b) The Ottoman state and the inter-church struggle over the Holy Sites; (c) The Holy Sites as a source of income to the Ottoman state.
The discussion of these issues sheds new light on one of the most obscure and controversial chapters in the history of Christianity under Islam in Jerusalem.

"Flawless . . . [Makdisi] reminds us of the critical declarations of secularism which existed in the history of the Middle East."-Robert Fisk, The Independent Today's headlines paint the Middle East as a collection of war-torn countries and extremist groups consumed by sectarian rage. Ussama Makdisi's Age of Coexistence reveals a hidden and hopeful story that counters this cliched portrayal. It shows how a region rich with ethnic and religious diversity created a modern culture of coexistence amid Ottoman reformation, European colonialism, and the emergence of nationalism. Moving from the nineteenth century to the present, this groundbreaking book explores, without denial or equivocation, the politics of pluralism during the Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman Arab world. Rather than judging the Arab world as a place of age-old sectarian animosities, Age of Coexistence describes the forging of a complex system of coexistence, what Makdisi calls the "ecumenical frame." He argues that new forms of antisectarian politics, and some of the most important examples of Muslim-Christian political collaboration, crystallized to make and define the modern Arab world. Despite massive challenges and setbacks, and despite the persistence of colonialism and authoritarianism, this framework for coexistence has endured for nearly a century. It is a reminder that religious diversity does not automatically lead to sectarianism. Instead, as Makdisi demonstrates, people of different faiths, but not necessarily of different political outlooks, have consistently tried to build modern societies that transcend religious and sectarian differences.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, many of America's Christian evangelicals have denounced Islam as a "demonic" and inherently violent religion, provoking frustration among other Christian conservatives who wish to present a more appealing message to the world's Muslims. Yet as Thomas Kidd reveals in this sobering book, the conflicted views expressed by today's evangelicals have deep roots in American history.

Tracing Islam's role in the popular imagination of American Christians from the colonial period to today, Kidd demonstrates that Protestant evangelicals have viewed Islam as a global threat--while also actively seeking to convert Muslims to the Christian faith--since the nation's founding. He shows how accounts of "Mahometan" despotism and lurid stories of European enslavement by Barbary pirates fueled early evangelicals' fears concerning Islam, and describes the growing conservatism of American missions to Muslim lands up through the post-World War II era. Kidd exposes American Christians' anxieties about an internal Islamic threat from groups like the Nation of Islam in the 1960s and America's immigrant Muslim population today, and he demonstrates why Islam has become central to evangelical "end-times" narratives. Pointing to many evangelicals' unwillingness to acknowledge Islam's theological commonalities with Christianity and their continued portrayal of Islam as an "evil" and false religion, Kidd explains why Christians themselves are ironically to blame for the failure of evangelism in the Muslim world.

"American Christians and Islam" is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the causes of the mounting tensions between Christians and Muslims today.

Are Islam and Christianity essentially the same? Should we seek to overcome divisions by seeing Muslims and Christians as part of one family of Abrahamic faith? Andy Bannister shares his journey from the multicultural streets of inner-city London to being a Christian with a PhD in Qur'anic Studies. Along the way, he came to understand that far from being the same, Islam and Christianity are profoundly different. Get to the heart of what the world's two largest religions say about life's biggest questions-and discover the uniqueness of Christianity's answer to the question of who God really is.

Since the Enlightenment, the churches have progressively suffered a severe loss of status because of their belief that revelation is realized only in Christianity. The suggestion that Christian revelation might be truer than other so-called revelations seems to be preposterous. This book argues that this insistence has often remained unnuanced and simplistic, with the consequence that not only unbelievers as well as believers of other religions, but even numerous Christians no longer agree with the primacy of a truth revealed in Jesus Christ. The book addresses the difficulties affecting the interpretation of belief, given modernity's concerns. The volume sets out a provisional synthesis on revelation and it makes available much expository and historical information. It correlates distinctions between pair members such as the natural and the supernatural, conceptualism and intellectualism, heart and reason, subjectivity and objectivity, limited perspective and universal viewpoint, permanence of doctrine and historicity, Christian and non-Christian claims regarding truth, revelation and divine speech, moderate and radical pluralism, Jesus absolutized and Jesus relativized. The thrust of the argument is towards an appropriation of what is best in ancient, medieval, and modern traditions on revelation. This book delineates, in an original way, a position on revelation that is at once traditional and relevant for today. It accepts many values brought to the fore by modernity and draws from exegetes, historians, philosophers, and theologians. Its inspiration comes principally from the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, and Bernard Lonergan.

The prophet Muhammad is thought to be one of the most influential figures in human history, but how should he be acknowledged by Christian culture? Bishop Kenneth Cragg attempts to give this question a direct answer.

It was once common consensus that there was no significant Jewish community in ancient and medieval Armenia. The discovery and excavation (1997-2002) of a Jewish cemetery of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries in southern Armenia substantially changed this picture. In this volume, Stone and Topchyan assemble evidence about the Jews of Armenia from earliest times to the fourteenth century. Based on research of the Greco-Roman period, the authors are able to draw new conclusions about the transfer of Jews-including the High Priest Hyrcanus-from the north of Palestine and other countries to Armenia by King Tigran the Great in the first century BCE. The fact that descendants of King Herod ruled in Armenia in Roman times and that some noble Armenian families may have had Jewish origin is discussed. The much-debated identification of the "Mountains of Ararat" of Noah's Ark fame as well as ancient biblical and other references to Ararat and the Caucasus are re-assessed, and new evidence is adduced that challenges the scientific consensus. The role of Jews during the Seljuk, Mongol, and later times is also presented, from surviving sources in Armenian, Arabic, Hebrew, and others. The volume also includes studies of medieval Jewish sources on Armenia and the Armenians and of communication between Armenia and the Holy Land. Documents from the Cairo Geniza, newly uncovered inscriptions, medieval itineraria, and diplomatica also throw light on Armenia in the context of the Turkic Khazar kingdom, which converted to Judaism in the latter part of the first century CE. It responds both to new archeological discoveries in Armenia and to the growing interest in the history of the region that extends north from the Euphrates and into the Caucasus.

Lavishly illustrated with over 100 color photographs, Places of Faith takes readers on a fascinating religious road trip. Christopher Scheitle and Roger Finke have crisscrossed America, visiting churches in small towns and rural areas, as well as the mega-churches, storefronts, synagogues, Islamic centers, Eastern temples, and other places of faith in major cities. Each stop on their tour provides an opportunity to introduce a particular current of American religion. Memphis serves as a window into the Black Church, a visit to Colorado Springs provides insight into evangelicalism, and a stop in Detroit sheds light on American Muslims. Readers visit Hare Krishnas in San Francisco, the Amish in central Pennsylvania, and a "cowboy church" in Amarillo, Texas. As the authors journey across the country, they retell unique religious histories and touch on local religious profiles and trends. They draw from conversations they had with pastors, imams, bishops, priests, and monks, along with ordinary believers of all kinds. Most of all, they tell the reader what they saw and heard, putting a human face on America's astounding religious diversity.

"A wonderful, rich, and fascinating book, and a great read. Biale explores the meanings of blood within Jewish and Christian cultures from the blood of the sacrifices of the book of Leviticus to the blood of the Eucharist to the blood of medieval blood libels and the place of blood in Nazi ideology. Biale shows that blood symbolism stands at the center of the divide between Judaism and Christianity. This book will be the point of departure for all future studies of the subject."--Shaye J.D. Cohen, Harvard University
"I know of no other work that, through numerous insights and useful distinctions, so alerts us to and comprehensively documents the ongoing constitutive role of Christian and anti-Semitic perceptions of Jewish existence and the interactions between them. Whereas much contemporary historiography has become so specialized that historians have surrendered the larger picture, David Biale's panoramic perspective reveals the great value and interest of this work."--Steven E. Aschheim, author of "Beyond the Border: The German-Jewish Legacy Abroad"

It is impossible to understand Palestine today without a careful reading of its distant and recent past. But until now there has been no single volume in English that tells the history of the events--from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-twentieth century--that shaped modern Palestine. The first book of its kind, "A History of Palestine" offers a richly detailed interpretation of this critical region's evolution.

Starting with the prebiblical and biblical roots of Palestine, noted historian Gudrun Kramer examines the meanings ascribed to the land in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Paying special attention to social and economic factors, she examines the gradual transformation of Palestine, following the history of the region through the Egyptian occupation of the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman reform era, and the British Mandate up to the founding of Israel in 1948. Focusing on the interactions of Arabs and Jews, "A History of Palestine" tells how these connections affected the cultural and political evolution of each community and Palestine as a whole."

In their third book together, Adam B. Seligman and Robert P. Weller address a seemingly simple question: What counts as the same? Given the myriad differences that divide one individual from another, why do we recognize anyone as somehow sharing a common fate with us? For that matter, how do we live in harmony with groups who may not share the sense of a common fate? Such relationships lie at the heart of the problems of pluralism that increasingly face so much of the world today. Note that "counting as" the same differs from "being" the same. Counting as the same is not an empirical question about how much or how little one person shares with another or one event shares with a previous event. Nothing is actually the same. That is why, as humans, we construct sameness all the time. In the process, of course, we also construct difference. Creating sameness and difference leaves us with the perennial problem of how to live with difference instead of seeing it as a threat. How Things Count as the Same suggests that there are multiple ways in which we can count things as the same, and that each of them fosters different kinds of group dynamics and different sets of benefits and risks for the creation of plural societies. While there might be many ways to understand how people construct sameness, three stand out as especially important and form the focus of the book's analysis: Memory, Mimesis, and Metaphor.

Much has been written on the relationship between violence and religious militancy, but there has been less research on constructive methods of confronting religious violence. This book represents an innovative attempt to integrate the study of religion with the study of conflict resolution. Marc Gopin offers an analysis of contemporary religious violence as a reaction to the pressures of modernity and the increasing economic integration of the world. He contends that religion is one of the most salient phenomena that will cause massive violence in the next century. He also argues, however, that religion can play a critical role in constructing a global community of shared moral commitments and vision - a community that can limit conflict to its nonviolent, constructive variety.

While a rational consciousness grasps many truths, Gananath Obeyesekere believes an even richer knowledge is possible through a bold confrontation with the stuff of visions and dreams. Spanning both Buddhist and European forms of visionary experience, he fearlessly pursues the symbolic, nonrational depths of such phenomena, reawakening the intuitive, creative impulses that power greater understanding. Throughout his career, Obeyesekere has combined psychoanalysis and anthropology to illuminate the relationship between personal symbolism and religious experience. In this book, he begins with Buddha's visionary trances wherein, over the course of four hours, he witnesses hundreds of thousands of his past births and eons of world evolution, renewal, and disappearance. He then connects this fracturing of empirical and visionary time to the realm of space, considering the experience of a female Christian penitent, who stares devotedly at a tiny crucifix only to see the space around it expand to mirror Christ's suffering. Obeyesekere follows the unconscious motivations underlying rapture, the fantastical consumption of Christ's body and blood, and body mutilation and levitation, bridging medieval Catholicism and the movements of early modern thought as reflected in William Blake's artistic visions and poetic dreams. He develops the term "dream-ego" through a discussion of visionary journeys, Carl Jung's and Sigmund Freud's scientific dreaming, and the cosmic and erotic dream-visions of New Age virtuosos, and he defines the parameters of a visionary mode of knowledge that provides a more elastic understanding of truth. A career-culminating work, this volume translates the epistemology of Hindu and Buddhist thinkers for western audiences while revitalizing western philosophical and scientific inquiry.