One of the biggest challenges for relations between religions is the view of the religious Other. The question touches the roots of our theological views. The Religious Other: Hostility, Hospitality, and the Hope of Human Flourishing explores the views of multiple religious traditions on how to regard otherness. How does one move from hostility to hospitality? How can hospitality be understood not simply as social hospitality but as theological hospitality, making room for the religious Other on theological grounds? What is our vision for the flourishing of the Other, while respecting his otherness? This volume is an exercise in constructive interreligious theology. By including Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic traditions, it approaches these challenges from multiple perspectives, highlighting commonalities in approach and ways in which one tradition might inspire another. Contributors: Vincent J. Cornell, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Richard P. Hayes, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Deepak Sarma, Stephen W. Sykes, Dharma Master Hsin Tao, Ashok Vohra

While opportunities to learn about the religious other need to be much more widely available, especially in countries experiencing religious conflict, considerable progress has been made in recent years. Particularly promising are the new programs being developed in Bulgaria, Bosnia, Serbia, and Indonesia. But to build on the progress already made, mechanisms must be developed to enable professors in this field to share their materials and approaches with others. The introduction of Internet-based resources may be one such solution.

Drawing upon the work of Muslim women interpreters of the Qur'an, feminist theology, and semantic analysis, Never Wholly Other offers a novel re-interpretation of the Qur'anic discourse on religious "otherness." Lamptey challenges notions of clear and static religious boundaries.

When reason fails to guide us in our everyday lives, we turn to faith, to religion; we close our minds; we reject austere reasoning. This rejection, which is a faith-based social and intellectual malignancy, has two unfortunate consequences: it blocks the way to knowledge that might enhance the quality of life and it opens the way to charlatans who exploit the faith of others. Examining two unquestionable malignancies of “the Christian Right” in present-day politics in the United States and the “secular religion” of Hitler’s National Socialism, as well as the third, more complex case of Gandhi, the author asserts that we need religion, but we also need to make sure it does no harm.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics. In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record them. This book is the product of that "thinking out loud" process. It is an absorbing record of two friends trying to explain to one another their views on the problems and events that determined their destinies. From reminiscences of their starry-eyed university days to reflections on the use of force to "save socialism" to contemplation of the end of the cold war, here is a far more candid picture of Gorbachev than we have ever seen before.

Tales of “saints”, whether told by their adherents or detractors, frequently featured the holy person’s dealings with members of other religions or cultures, or the stories themselves were appropriated by different religious or cultural groups. As such narratives moved from one social, cultural, religious or chronological milieu to another, the representation and meaning of the given holy person and the manner of his/her dealing with the religious other also often changed. As basic storylines remained recognizable, the transformations of specific details often provide important clues about shifts in attitudes over time and between communities. This volume provides a varied array of case studies of this process, ranging from early China to various Christian, Muslim and Jewish cultural contexts in the late antique, medieval and early modern periods.