Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)-Univ. Frankfurt (Main), 2009.

Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and adherents of other non-Western religions have become a significant presence in the United States in recent years. Yet many Americans continue to regard the United States as a Christian society. How are we adapting to the new diversity? Do we casually announce that we "respect" the faiths of non-Christians without understanding much about those faiths? Are we willing to do the hard work required to achieve genuine religious pluralism? Award-winning author Robert Wuthnow tackles these and other difficult questions surrounding religious diversity and does so with his characteristic rigor and style. America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity looks not only at how we have adapted to diversity in the past, but at the ways rank-and-file Americans, clergy, and other community leaders are responding today. Drawing from a new national survey and hundreds of in-depth qualitative interviews, this book is the first systematic effort to assess how well the nation is meeting the current challenges of religious and cultural diversity. The results, Wuthnow argues, are both encouraging and sobering--encouraging because most Americans do recognize the right of diverse groups to worship freely, but sobering because few Americans have bothered to learn much about religions other than their own or to engage in constructive interreligious dialogue. Wuthnow contends that responses to religious diversity are fundamentally deeper than polite discussions about civil liberties and tolerance would suggest. Rather, he writes, religious diversity strikes us at the very core of our personal and national theologies. Only by understanding this important dimension of our culture will we be able to move toward a more reflective approach to religious pluralism.

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 addresses issues central to today’s Catholic Church, focusing on the relationship between various religions in different contexts and regions across the world. The diverse array of contributors present an inclusively interfaith enterprise, investigating a wide range of encounters and perspectives. The essays include approaches from the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Bahá’í traditions, in a variety of geographic contexts. Contributors reflect on Muslims in the West, Christian-Buddhist social activism, and on Chinese, Indian, and Japanese religions. The volume also explores the experiences of communities that are often marginalized and overlooked such as the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia and the Karen tribal peoples of Thailand. Contributors examine the works of the Focolare, Gülen, and Risshō Kōsei-kai movements, and integrate the vision of Raimon Panikkar and Ken Wilber. Chapters incorporate discussions of dialogue documents such as Nostra Aetate and Dabru Emet, and methodologies such as Receptive Ecumenism, Comparative Theology, and Scriptural Reasoning. Among other goals, the book seeks to offer glimpses into interfaith dialogues across the world and examine what Christians can learn from other religions and global contexts.

Although its beginnings can be traced back to the late 19th century, the interfaith movement has only recently begun to attract mainstream attention, with governments, religious leaders and grassroots activists around the world increasingly turning to interfaith dialogue and collective action to address the challenges posed and explore the opportunities presented by religious diversity in a globalising world. This volume explores the history and development of the interfaith movement by engaging with new theoretical perspectives and a diverse range of case studies from around the world. The first book to bring together experts in the fields of religion, politics and social movement theory to offer an in-depth social analysis of the interfaith movement, it not only sheds new light on the movement itself, but challenges the longstanding academic division of labour that confines ‘religious’ and ‘social’ movements to separate spheres of inquiry.