Making Friends Across the Boundaries of Religious Differences: Religions Building Peace for a New World Order discuses the meaning, reality, and dynamism of religion; explores different faiths, religious traditions currently influencing humanity today; and argues that interreligious dialogue is the way to go for the people of different religions to work together to enhance a culture of justice, human rights, democratic governance, nonviolence, and peace in the world today. While religion has been used to cause conflict, violence, and war, the book explains how in this time of globalization, faith and religion can be enhanced as resources for a new world order of justice and peace. The book further highlights interreligious dialogue as a methodology and way of life which brings about unity in diversity, advocacy for a world without terrorism, theological perspectives, women in interreligious dialogue, and how in Africa interreligious action is the soul of social-economic transformation, African Renaissance and Cosmopolitanism.

Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. The contributors draw from both communities of discourse in addressing questions of method and theory and global moral issuessuch as human rights, distributive justice, politics of war, international business, the environment, and genocidein a cross-cultural context. }Inspired by the 1993 Parliament of the Worlds Religions, this volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. Its design is premised on two important insights. First, interreligious dialogue offers to comparative religious ethics a new, more persuasive rationale, agenda of issues, and practical orientation. Second, comparative religious ethics offers to interreligious dialogue an arsenal of critical tools and methods which will enhance the sophistication of its practical work. In this way, both theory (a dominant concern and strength of comparative religious ethics) and praxis (a dominant concern and strength of interreligious moral dialogue) are joined together in mutual effort, each contributing to the benefit of the other.The volumes contributors share this vision of collaboration, drawing explicitly from both communities of discourse in a manner that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries to deal creatively and constructively with important methodological and global moral issue. Although theory and practice cannot easily be separated in such a collaborative project, for the purpose of clarity, the volume is divided into two main parts. The first specifically engages questions of method, theory, and the social role of the public intellectual; the second, on substantive moral themes and issues, many of which were raised at the 1993 Parliament. Taken together, the volumes essays articulate and illustrate new ways of approaching contemporary moral concerns cross-culturally yet with a rigor appropriate to our complex and pluralistic world.

Cardinal Ariinze shares in this book extremely timely and helpful for fostering greater interreligious understanding today, and for guiding religious persons in their common effort toward building peace and justice.

Interfaith initiatives are increasingly prevalent on college and university campuses around the country. In large part, this trend responds both to ongoing religious violence throughout the world and to increasing religious tension in the United States. As such, these interfaith initiatives often attempt to bolster interfaith collaboration and increase awareness of different religious cultures, identities, beliefs, and traditions. In this book, Edwards reviews the various goals and processes associated with the interfaith movement, and offers both warnings and suggestions for those who are interested in pursuing an approach to interfaith dialogue that is oriented toward social justice. In doing so, this book fills a critical gap in academic literature surrounding the impact of religious identity and interfaith relations on pedagogy, educational experiences, and campus climates. Through three descriptive case studies set in a large public university in the United States, Edwards explores the use of Intergroup Dialogue as a pedagogical model for interfaith dialogue. While the goal of this pedagogy is to increase student understanding of privilege, oppression, and social injustice pertaining to religious identity, the cases in this book demonstrate how and why social justice oriented interfaith dialogue can be easily derailed and, if so, may potentially have harmful implications for religious minorities. Accordingly, Edwards offers five necessary conditions for assuring that social justice oriented interfaith dialogue (which Intergroup Dialogue is intended to be) succeeds. By focusing on the unique perspectives of four particular student participants (all of whom have religious identities outside of the three dominant Abrahamic religions) Edwards also highlights the experiences of those from religious identity groups that are the most overlooked and under?represented in the discourse on interfaith dialogue.

One of the world's most important religious leaders puts forward a compelling manifesto for inter-religious dialogue that represents a profound step forward for organized religion.

Islam, Peace and Social Justice examines the ways in which Islamic cultures have dealt with issues of social justice historically and culturally. With unwavering objectivity, the author helps readers of any faith to gain a nuanced and accurate understanding of the challenges that we face in contemporary multifaith engagements. Dr van Gorder offers a comprehensive and sympathetic Christian insight into Islam. The contentious issues of social justice that are encountered in this broad, yet intricate, studyinclude the concept of Jihad, poverty, political oppression, human rights, genocide, racism, sexual injustice, homophobia, and environmental degradation. The challenges are real and the problems are vast; partnerships and solutions must be found - peopleof faith, Muslim, Jewish and Christian, must find ways to work together to address these shared challenges. This work exposes misrepresentations and stereotypes about Islamic views of social justice that abound in Europe and North America. The author encourages a deeper appreciation of how themes of social justice resound through Islamic texts and have been expressed both in the contemporary and historical life of various and diverse Islamic communities worldwide.