The Dialogue Comes of Age: Christian Encounters with Other Traditions

How Christians can authentically engage other religious traditions. Today many of us Christians live in intimate relations with persons who belong to other religious communities. Many of these people draw forth our respect. Sadly some Christians think that they are betraying or watering down their own faith when they feel admiration for other forms of faith. This book argues quite the contrary. Faithfulness to Christ leads us to such admiration. The question for us is how Christians are called to rethink our faith in light of the challenges posed to us by other traditions.ùJohn B. Cobb Jr.. Increasingly world religious traditions present not just an intellectual or apologetic challenge to Christians but a daily encounter a source of religious practices and even live religious options. How are Christians to relate to these traditions and the neighbors and friends who live by them? This lively and engaging book is a great resource for faithful wrestling with the new realities. Led by theologian John B. Cobb Jr. and historian Ward M. McAfee experts in the Progressive Christians Uniting group have distilled the historical and existential import of both Abrahamic and other traditionùJudaism Islam Buddhism and Native American religionùand stressed their distinctiveness and the richness they can afford Christian self-understanding. At once a practical and a theological resource the volume also includes study materials.. John B. Cobb Jr. is Ingraham Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology and Avery Professor Emeritus at the Claremont Graduate School. He is the winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion and is the author of numerous works including Christ in a Pluralistic Age and For the Common Good and editor of Christian Faith and Religious Diversity (Fortress Press 2002).. Ward M. McAfee taught for a generation at California State University at San Bernardino and is author of several books including A Slaveholding Republic (2002) and A History of the Worlds Greatest Religions (1983).