Interreligious Dialogue (Oneworld Short Guides)

by Martin Forward

From the point at which one faith first became aware of an other, there has been inter-religious dialogue: a dialogue that can lead to a positive and rewarding exchange of ide as between different... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1851682759
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.6" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Good Start for dialogers

As the Executive Director of Aurora University's Wackerlin Center for Faith and Action and the Helena Wackerlin Professor of Religious Studies, Martin Forward is not a new visitor in the arena of inter-religious dialog. He has spent many years as an ordained Methodist minister in India and has traveled around the world to meet people from different religious backgrounds. Some of his books, Muhammad: A Short Biography, Oxford: Oneworld (1997); Jesus: A Short Biography, Oxford: Oneworld (1998); and Religion: A Beginner's Guide, Oxford: Oneworld (2001), show that he has a deep concern for the study of religion. However, genius does not always come in a perfect package. After elaborating on the theoretical reasons that dialog is desirable and quoting popular pluralist theologians such as John Hick and prophetic scholars like Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Martin Forward takes globalization of the new millennium as the starting point of dialog. He seems unaware of the imbalance in discourse between highly modernized Westerners and other believers in the under developing countries. This point is very significant, because it will direct what sort of understanding can be accomplished. One must be aware that the dialog between a Methodist and a Hindu in India, for example, is not only a dialog between two different religious believers, but may also become an encounter between the highly educated and the less educated, between the rich and the poor, or between the liberal and the fundamentalist. It also may be true that the Methodist may have a body of knowledge about Hinduism, while on the contrary, the Hindu may have no knowledge of Christianity, specifically the Methodist church. All these complexities require us to deepen and sharpen our understanding of the reality of where we live and of with whom we interact. Not only do we carry information about other believers based on our own perspective, but we also share and let others talk to their own experience and perspective. Failure to do this may cause dialog to be impractical, and the will to build understanding among faith communities will become an illusion. One example of how dialog may become impractical because of the lack of understanding others' perspective is the problem of the role of women in society. In this book, Forward explains how religions treat women and explores some ideas from contemporary feminists. As an ordained Methodist minister, it is astonishing that Forward is more interested in commenting on how Jewish and Muslim traditions treat women, rather than on his own tradition about the same issue. In his lecture of the Islamic role of women, he puts himself at the center of the discussion among Muslims by quoting feminist Muslims like Fatima Mernissi and Indian intellectual Ameer Ali. From his explanation of women, it is obvious what agenda he is promoting and what he wants to accomplish. Far from being balanced in his position of exploring the controversial issue of women in Islam, Forwa