As I read through various newspapers these last few weeks the news brought me this: Christian churches burned in India, with pastors and members terrorized by Hindu nationalists while the police did nothing. More threats by Arab and Iranian Muslims against Israel, with a backdrop of hatred for Jews stoked by Muslim leaders. Shi’ite and [...]

Yesterday I attended a meeting to discuss the study of interfaith and/or inter-eligious relations and dialogue. Very quickly the discussion turned to the problem of how these terms include and exclude. For example the word “faith” excluded people who are religious,but whose religion doesn’t typically see being religious in terms of faith. They say “interfaith” [...]

States should only enforce those social obligations that are shared by all members of a society and which can be justified on the basis of publicly and universally available facts. In my last blog I showed how the classical Muslim interpretation of the Qur’anic verse, “there is no compulsion in religion” is different from the [...]

The issue of pedagogy, how to teach what is being taught, must permeate every course in the semianry curriculum. Otherwise the pastoral ministry will continue to become the adjunct magisterium for an impotent and declining church. As seminaries and seminarians consider how to engage the real religious diversity of the Nones they face some pretty [...]

A gospel that offers non-Christians a bland religious mono-culture will be justifiably rejected as irrelevant. If we are serious about reaching the Nones with the gospel we will need to invite them into the center of our church life; bringing their world, their worldview, and their complex life experience. And changing ours. In a recent [...]

I just received an announcement for an upcoming event in Dallas. Here it is in part. “If you support tolerance, you should be part of this event. Period. It is isn’t about being Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Atheist, etc – it is about being unified under the concept that everyone has a right to exist, to [...]