The essays collected here, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, explore the challenges associated with sharing wisdom-learning, teachings, messages for good living-between members of different faith traditions. In a globalized age, when food, music, and dress are shared freely, how should religions go about sharing their wisdom? The essays, representing six faith traditions (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist), explore what wisdom means in each of these traditions, why it should be shared-internally and externally-and how it should be shared. A primary concern is the form of appropriate sharing, so that the wisdom of the specific tradition maintains its integrity in the process of sharing. Authors reflect on specific wisdoms their tradition has or should share, as well as what it has to receive from other faiths. Special emphasis is placed on the themes of love and forgiveness and how these illustrate the principles of common sharing. Love and humility emerge as strong motivators for sharing wisdom and for doing so in a way that respects the tradition from which the wisdom comes as well as the recipient. This book offers a theory that can enrich ongoing encounters between members of faith traditions by suggesting a tradition-based practice of sharing the wisdom of traditions, while preserving the integrity of the teaching and respecting the identity of the one with whom wisdom is shared.

The time has come for nondualism. As a fundamentally unifying concept, nondualism may seem out of place in an age of rising nationalism and bitter deglobalization, but our current debates over tribalism and universalism all grant nondualism an informative relevance. Nondualism rejects both separation and identity, thereby encouraging unity-in-difference. Yet “nondualism” as a word occupies a large semantic field. Nondual theists advocate the unity of humankind and God, while nondual atheists advocate the inseparability of all persons, without reference to a divinity. Ecological nondualism asserts that we are in nature and nature is in us, while monistic nondualists assert that only God exists and all difference is illusion. Edited by Jon Paul Sydnor and Anthony Watson, and guided by scholars from different religions and specializations, Nondualism: An Interreligious Exploration explores the semantic field that nondualism occupies. The collection elicits the expansive potential of the concept, clarifies agreement and disagreement, and considers current applications. In every case, nondualism is universal in its relevance yet always distinctive in its contribution.

Exploring a new approach to interfaith/interreligious communication, the contributors to this collection seek to interact from the perspective of their own tradition or academic discipline with Ernest Becker's theory on the relationship between religion, culture and the human awareness of death and mortality. While much interfaith/interreligious dialogue focuses on beliefs and practices, thus delineating areas of disagreement as a starting point, these chapters foster interactive communication rooted in areas of the universal human experience. Thus by demonstration these authors argue for the integrity and efficacy of this approach for pursuing intercultural and interdisciplinary communication.

The essays collected here, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, address the subject of religious leadership. The subject is of broad relevance in the training of religious leaders and in the practice of religious leadership. It is also germane to religious thought as such, where reflections on religious leadership occupy an important place. What does it mean to be a religious leader in today's world? To what degree are the challenges that confront religious leadership the perennial challenges that have arrested the attention of the faithful and their leaders for generations, and to what degree do we encounter today challenges that are unique to our day and age? One dimension is surely unique and that is the very ability to explore these issues from an interreligious perspective and to consider challenges, opportunities and strategies across religious traditions. Some challenges confront leaders of all traditions, and therefore unite them. Studying the theme across six faith traditions-Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism-we recognize the common challenges to present day religious leadership. Chapters examine the nature of religious leadership in each tradition in relation to the goals of the tradition. They then present a typology of leadership in each of the traditions. These provide the background to a review of both systemic and contemporary challenges to religious leadership, and allow us to consider points of connection and intersection between the different faith traditions. This leads us to a reflection on religious leadership for the future, including the role of interfaith engagement in the profile of the ideal future religious leader.

This book explores the notion of interreligious friendship. Friendship is one of the outcomes as well as conditions for advancing interfaith relations. However, for friendship to advance, there must be legitimation from within and a theory of how interreligious relations can be justified from the resources of different faith traditions. The present volume explores these very issues, seeking to develop a robust theory of interreligious friendship, from the resources of each of the participating traditions. It also seeks to feature particular individual cases as models and precedents for such relations. In particular, the friendship of Gandhi and Charlie Andrews, his closest personal friend, emerges as the model for the project.

This book tackles the core problem of how painful historical memories between diverse religious communities continue to impact, even poison, present day relations. Its operative notion is that of healing of memory, a notion developed by John Paul II. The different papers explore how the painful memories of yesteryear can be healed in the framework of contemporary efforts. In so doing, they seek to address some of the root causes that continue to impact present day relations, but which rarely if ever get addressed in other contexts. Strategies from six different faith traditions are brought together in what is, in some ways, a cross-religious brainstorming session that seeks to identify the kinds of tools that would allow us to improve present day relations. At the end of the conceptual pole of this project is the notion of hope. If memory informs our past, hope sets the horizons for our future. How does the healing of memory open new horizons for the future? And what is the notion of hope in each of our traditions, so that it might be receptive to opening up to a common vision of good for all? Between memory and hope, the project seeks to offer a vision of healing and hope that can serve as a resource in contemporary interfaith relations.

Showing how spiritual care is practiced in a variety of different contexts such as healthcare, detention and higher education, as well as settings that may not have formal chaplaincy arrangements, this book offers an original and unique resource for Hindu chaplains to understand and practice spiritual care in a way that is authentic to their own tradition and that meets the needs of Hindus. It offers a Hindu perspective for all chaplains to inform their caregiving to Hindus. The book explores the theological and metaphysical roots of Hindu chaplaincy and puts forward the case for Hindu chaplaincy as a valuable spiritual practice. It covers the issues that arise in specific locations, such as college, healthcare, prison, military and the corporate sector. Chapters also examine Hindu pastoral care offered in other, 'non-chaplaincy' settings, such as LGBT centres, social justice work and environmental activism. Made up of some 30 essays by chaplains, scholars and other important voices in the field, Hindu Approaches to Spiritual Care provides spiritual caregivers with a comprehensive theoretical and practical approach to the relationship of Hinduism and chaplaincy.

In this book, Anantanand Rambachan offers a fresh and detailedperspective on Advaita Vedania, Hinduism's most influential and revered religious tradition. Rambachan, who is both a scholar and an Advaitin, attends closely to the Upanisads and authentic commentaries of Sankara to challenge the tradition and to reconsider central aspects of its current teachings. His reconstruction and reinterpretation of Advaita focuses in particular on the nature of