The Church is the Sacrament of Communion with God and unity among all men (Cf. Vatican II doc. L.G. 1). Christ prayed for this unity amongst his adherents in accordance with the unity between him and God the Father (Cf. Jn. 17: 21). This unity will be a sign by which the outside world is to believe in him, hence calling on the Church to rise up to this demand. Efforts were made by the Church to respond to this demand, but it was at the Second Vatican Council that the search for unity became an imperative. With this Council, the Church acknowledged the possibility of Salvation for the members of other Christian traditions and people of other religions. The Church has done a lot to promote this unity, through the teachings of the Magisterium and the activities of the recent Popes. It is then important to study the situation of Nigeria, where this call of the Vatican II, has received scant response both in ecumenical and interreligious relations. Having done pastoral work in places with interdenominational and interreligious rivalry in Nigeria, I became concerned and worried. The present religious crises in Nigeria, has escalated to an issue of grave concern with the Boko Haram insurgency. My motivation is to demonstrate the teaching of the Church regarding interdenominational and interreligious dialogue within Nigeria. There has been no sustained effort to build bridges of religious unity in the country. This research will demonstrate the necessity of ecumenical dialogue as a prelude to interreligious dialogue in Nigeria. On the global level, the need for various religions to foster relationships has become an imperative. Two important bodies CAN and NIREC, will be studied in this book. The work aims at demonstrating the involvement of the Nigerian Christians and Muslims in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Essentially concerned with the Catholic view of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue & its application to the Nigerian situation. No in-depth study of the religions involved. It is rather the fact of their existence & the role dialogue will play with them to solve religious problems in Nigeria. Though ATR was considered in this work, but the issue of dialogue will only involve Nigerian Muslims & Christians. The research wishes to provoke further study on dialogue between ATR and any of the other two religions. Two issues involved: the reality & importance of the Catholic teachings on ecumenical & interreligious dialogue, and their application to the Nigerian situation. Key methods involved in this work are literary research and analysis, through theological, historical, critical, descriptive, analytical & expository approaches.

This book proposes that dialogue brings about transformation. Set within the context of Nigeria, Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke contends that this dialogue-induced transformation applies not only to individuals but also to groups, and not only to dialogue in general but also to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.

"A disciplinary map for understanding African Catholicism today by engaging some of the most pressing and pertinent issues, topics, and conversations in diverse fields of studies in African Catholicism"--

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.

Nigeria, a country under a military regime for several years, transitioned to a civilian regime in May 1999. Since this change, violent conflicts between Christians and Muslims have continued to erupt. They constitute one of the gravest dangers facing Nigeria, a country with a population of 189 million people. What have Nigerian religious leaders done about this situation, especially in educational circles? Have they received formal educational training to understand the causes of this violence and especially how to provide alternatives for more peaceful relations within Nigeria? Does the current educational system in Nigeria provide the main ingredients for the promotion of a culture of peace? The absence and neglect of interreligious peace education as part of a peace education core program and the lack of an interreligious curriculum for peace education in the training of religious leaders are the two problems contributing towards the lack of effectiveness of religious leaders in promoting less violent and more peaceful living. The solution to the problem is proposed in this book entitled Interreligious Curriculum for Peace Education in Nigeria. The book develops a one-year curriculum, building on Yoruba, Islamic & Christian conceptions of peace, and teaches how to create safe, caring, spiritual, peaceful and successful interfaith relationships between all Nigerian religious communities. In the long term, the book helps to educate religious leaders to contribute, in themselves and with the help of their respective religious communities, to reducing the growing religious violence in Nigeria.

In commemoration of Constantine’s grant of freedom of religion to Christians, this wide-ranging volume examines the ambiguous legacy of this emperor in relation to the present world, discussing the perennial challenges of relations between religions and governments. The authors examine the new global ecumenical movement inspired by Pentecostals, the role of religion in the Irish Easter rebellion against the British, and the relation between religious freedom and government in the United States. Other essays debate the relation of Islam to the violence in Nigeria, the place of the family in church-state relations in the Philippines, the role of confessional identity in the political struggles in the Balkans, and the construction of Slavophile identity in nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox political theology. The volume also investigates the contrast between written constitutions and actual practice in the relations between governments and religions in Australia, Indonesia, and Egypt. The case studies and surveys illuminate both specific contexts and also widespread currents in religion-state relations across the world.

Understanding Interreligious Relations is a multi-authored volume that explores the theme of the 'religious other' from the perspective of five major religions--Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam--and discusses a range of issues in which interreligious relations are central. These include conversion, the impact and nature of religious extremism, the contemporary development of inter-religious dialogue, the dynamics operating betweenmajority and minority religious groups, belonging to more than one religion or faith tradition, examples of cross-religious co-operation, religion in the public domain, and the task of peace-building, among others.In a religiously plural world, how different religious communities get along with one another is not just an academic question; it is very much a focus of socio-political and wider community attention. The challenge to understand interreligious relations is of critical importance in today's world.