Böcker i Interreligious Reflections-serien

Studying the historical ideals and contemporary challenges of religious leadership, across religious traditions, this volume offers the scholar of religion and the future religious leader a perspective from which to consider the meaning of religious leadership today.

In this book, scholars representing six faith traditions explore what wisdom means, why and how it should be shared, and what specific wisdoms their tradition should share with and receive from other faiths, with special emphasis on love and forgiveness.

The modern world threatens the foundations of the world's religions and the cohesive assurances of their societies. The Crisis of the Holy reflects on how all religions are changing under the common pressures of recent decades and, by identifying commonalities across traditions, suggests how religions might cope with these changes.

This book tackles the core problem of how painful historical memories between diverse religious communities continue to impact--even poison--present-day relations. Its operative notion is the healing of memory, developed by John Paul II. Chapters explore how painful memories of yesteryear can be healed and so address some of the root causes. Strategies from six different faith traditions are brought together in what is, in some ways, a cross-religious brainstorming session that identifies tools to improve present-day relations.At the other pole of the conceptual axis of this book is the notion of hope. If memory informs our past, hope sets the horizon for our future. How does the healing of memory open new horizons for the future? And what is the notion of hope in each of our traditions that could lead to a common vision of good?Between memory and hope, this book seeks to offer a vision of healing that can serve as a resource in contemporary interfaith relations.Contributors:Rahuldeep Singh Gill, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Maria Reis Habito, Flora A. Keshgegian, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Muhammad Suheyl Umar, and Michael von Bruck""A great and often-neglected human challenge is how to manage individual collective memories of wrongs suffered and committed. World religions face the challenge, too, as violence has marked their internal and external relations. This book, unique in many ways, contains rich resources drawn from diverse world religions for figuring out how to remember rightly and hope boldly in a violent world.""--Miroslav Volf, Yale University, author of The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent WorldALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN is founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem.

Friendship is an outcome of, as well as a condition for, advancing interfaith relations. However, for friendship to advance, there must be legitimation from within and a theory of how interreligious relations can be justified from the resources of different faith traditions. Friendship Across Religions explores these very issues, seeking to develop a robust theory of interreligious friendship from the resources of each of the participating traditions. It also features individual cases as models and precedents for such relations--in particular, the friendship of Gandhi and Charlie Andrews, his closest personal friend.Contributors:Balwant Singh Dhillon, Timothy J. Gianotti, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Maria Reis Habito, Ruben L. F. Habito, Ryan McAnnally-Linz, Stephen Butler Murray, Eleanor Nesbitt, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Johann M. Vento, and Miroslav Volf""The Elijah Institute has blessed us with an in-depth exploration of interreligious friendship from the perspective of several religious traditions. These essays are both erudite and edgy. They look deeply into religious traditions in the hope of laying down a foundation for the future of interreligious relations in a world that promises to become only more complicated. The authors search out the resources within the traditions that support interreligious friendships today and are fearless in pointing out the obstacles to such friendships also found in the traditions. This book is going to be a very valuable contribution to a global discussion.""--James Fredericks, Loyola Marymount UniversityALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN is founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem.

The essays collected here, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, explore the challenges associated with sharing wisdom--learning, teachings, messages for good living. How should religions go about sharing their wisdom? These chapters, representing six faith tradition (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist), explore what wisdom means in each of these traditions; why and how it should be shared, internally and externally; and the role of love and forgiveness in sharing. This book offers a theory that can enrich ongoing encounters between members of faith traditions by suggesting a tradition-based practice of sharing wisdom, while preserving the integrity of the teaching and respecting the identity of anyone with whom wisdom is shared.Contributors: Pal Ahluwalia, Timothy Gianotti, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Sallie B. King, Anantanand Rambachan, Meir Sendor, Miroslav Volf""Alon Goshen-Gottstein has assembled a collection of gem-like essays on the theme of ''sharing wisdom,'' with contributions from brilliant scholars on the nature of wisdom and whether it can be shared outside the traditions, in Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism, with a fine summary essay by the editor. The authors are critically sharp about the real differences among the traditions and work hard, as the result of working together, to address one another''s concerns. Love and forgiveness seem to be common conditions for sharing, though even these are interpreted in interestingly different ways. This volume is accessible to beginners and enlighteningly fresh for scholars."" --Robert Neville, Boston University, past president of the American Academy of Religion""How can religions engage with each other in a way that not only respects each other''s integrity but also draws on their depths and brings them into fruitful conversation? Sharing Wisdom is a remarkable response to that question. The distinguished authors together tackle a series of difficult questions posed to their traditions, and they succeed in opening up a wisdom of multiple depths that resonate with each other. Goshen-Gottstein has drawn the strands together with profound sensitivity and perceptiveness."" --David F. Ford, University of CambridgeALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN is founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem.

The chapters collected in this book, prepared by a think tank of the Elijah Interfaith Academy, address the subject of religious leadership. The subject is of broad relevance in the training of religious leaders and in the practice of religious leadership. As such, it is also germane to religious thought, where reflections on religious leadership occupy an important place. What does it mean to be a religious leader in today''s world? To what degree are the challenges that confront religious leadership today the same perennial challenges that have arrested the attention of the faithful and their leaders for generations, and to what degree do we encounter challenges today that are unique to our day and age? One dimension is surely unique, and that is the very ability to explore these issues from an interreligious perspective and to consider challenges, opportunities, and strategies across religious traditions. Studying the theme across six faith traditions--Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Buddhism--The Future of Religious Leadership: World Religions in Conversation recognizes the common challenges to present-day religious leadership. Contributors: Awet Andemicael, Timothy J. Gianotti, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Anantanand Rambachan, Maria Reis Habito, Meir Sendor, Balwant Singh Dhillon, Miroslav Volf""Few things could be more important in the twenty-first century than religious leadership that takes seriously the challenge of making space for faiths other than the leaders'' own. That is what Alon Goshen-Gottstein and his fellow contributors have created in this important and impressive book. It deserves to be widely read and to become the start of a major conversation on the challenges facing the world''s great religions in their relationships to one another and to the challenges of our time."" --Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks""In exploring the meaning of leadership in world religions and how it is exercised, the contributors to this volume open the door to a mutual exchange of experience and insight that makes way for shared wisdom, which transcends yet honors religious difference. In the polarized world in which we live, where religion is often portrayed as a source of division, a resource such as this is timely and urgently needed."" --Frank Griswold, former presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal ChurchALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN is founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem.

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""Religion has been and continues to be a factor that breeds conflict leading to violence among human beings. Can religion also provide human beings with a capacity to work creatively together toward a more humane, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable world? This book offers critical and constructive essays by scholars of five major religious traditions that examine the seeds of hostility toward religious Others and seek to highlight those elements that ground attitudes of hospitality and loving kindness toward Others in a way that would lead to harmonious coexistence and cooperation in our world today.""--Ruben L. F. Habito, Southern Methodist University""Alon Goshen-Gottstein has put together a beautiful and useful volume. The essays here offer an appreciative view into the rooms of different religious traditions and illuminate the corridors that connect them. Highly recommended for anyone seeking the theological resources to be an interfaith leader."" --Eboo Patel, Interfaith Youth CoreALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN is founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem.

All the world's religions are experiencing rapid change due to a confluence of social and economic global forces. Factors such as the pervasive intrusion of globalizing political and economic developments, polarized and morally equivalent presentations seen in the media, and the sense of surety demanded in and promised by a culture dominated by science are some of the factors that have placed extreme pressure on all religious traditions. This has stimulated unprecedented responses by religious groups, ranging from fundamentalism to the syncretistic search for meaning. As religion takes on new forms, the balance between individual and community is disrupted and reconfigured. Religions often lose the capacity to recall their ultimate purpose or lead their adherents toward it. This is the situation we call ""the crisis of the holy."" It is a confluence of threats, challenges, and opportunities for all religions. This volume explores the contours of pressures, changes, and transformations and reflects on how all our religions are changing. By identifying commonalities across religions as they respond to these pressures, The Crisis of the Holy recommends ways religious traditions might cope with these changes and how they might join forces in doing so. Contributors:Vincent J. Cornell, Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Sidney H. Griffith, Maria Reis Habito, B. Barry Levy, Deepak Sarma, Michael von Bruck""The Crisis of the Holy makes an important and original contribution to a field that has been well researched and written about--the impact of modernity on religion. By adopting a double perspective--that of an external, observation-based one and an internal, reflective, and theologically oriented one--the collection breaks new ground concerning the possibility of new creative and meaningful forms of religion emerging out of the modern 'crisis of the holy.'"" --Shlomo Fischer, Hebrew University of JerusalemALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN is founder and director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute. A noted scholar of Jewish studies, he has held academic posts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and has served as director of the Center for the Study of Rabbinic Thought, Beit Morasha College, Jerusalem.

Over forty premier world religious and scholars, of all major faith traditions, were asked the following:-Who is a figure who inspires your interfaith work?-How does this figure inspire you, and what lessons, applications, and concrete expressions has this inspiration taken in your life?The result is a stunning overview of the interfaith movement, its history, role models and heroes. Historical presentation complements the personal and experiential voice of the authors, making this not only a work for interfaith education but also a resource for spiritual inspiration.