Religious pluralism is an attitude or policy regarding the diversity of religious belief systems co-existing in society. It can indicate one or more of the following:
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels.
Ingrid Mattson is a Canadian activist and scholar. A professor of Islamic studies, she is currently the London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Mattson is a former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and was described as "Perhaps the most noticed figure among American Muslim women" in a 2010 New York Times article.
John Harwood Hick was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.
John Boswell Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. He is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Cobb is the author of more than fifty books. In 2014, Cobb was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Exclusivism is the practice of being exclusive, a mentality characterized by the disregard for opinions and ideas which are different from one's own, or the practice of organizing entities into groups by excluding those entities which possess certain traits.
Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr. is an American theologian who served as the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, until his retirement in October 2009. Cox's research and teaching focus on theological developments in world Christianity, including liberation theology and the role of Christianity in Latin America.
Kenneth R. Cracknell was a British theologian who specialised in interfaith dialogue and the Christian theology of religions.
Gavin D'Costa is the Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol. His academic career at Bristol began in 1993. D'Costa was appointed a visiting professor of Inter-religious Dialogue at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Rome.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith was a Canadian Islamicist, comparative religion scholar, and Presbyterian minister. He was the founder of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Quebec and later the director of Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions. The Harvard University Gazette said he was one of the field's most influential figures of the past century. In his 1962 work The Meaning and End of Religion he notably questioned the modern sectarian concept of religion.
The theology of religions is the branch of theology and religious studies that attempts to theologically evaluate the phenomena of religions. Three important schools within Christian theology of religions are pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism, which describe the relation of other religious traditions to Christianity and attempt to answer questions about the nature of God and salvation.
Religion in the United States is remarkable in its high adherence level compared to other developed countries. The First Amendment to the country's Constitution prevents the government from having any authority in religion, and guarantees the free exercise of religion. Many faiths have flourished in the United States, including imports spanning the country's multicultural heritage as well as those founded within the country, and have led the United States to become the most religiously diverse country in the world.
Christian privilege is a social advantage bestowed upon Christians in any historically Christian society. This arises out of the presumption that Christian belief is a social norm, that leads to the marginalization of the nonreligious and members of other religions through institutional religious discrimination or religious persecution. Christian privilege can also lead to the neglect of outsiders' cultural heritage and religious practices.
The Book of Lights is a 1981 novel by Chaim Potok about a young rabbi and student of Kabbalah whose service as a United States military chaplain in Korea and Japan after the Korean War challenges his thinking about the meaning of faith in a world of "light" from many sources.
The Circle of Reason (TCOR) is a Twin Cities, Minnesota-based international society of theists, atheists, conservatives, and liberals who espouse the social philosophy of pluralistic rationalism.
Dorothy Eck was an American politician in the state of Montana. She served in the Montana Senate from 1980 to 2000. Eck was also active in feminist movements including the League of Women Voters and served as a delegate to the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention.
Cécile Laborde is a professor of political theory at the University of Oxford. Since 2017, she has held the Nuffield Chair of Political Theory and in 2013 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research focusses on republicanism, liberalism and religion, theories of law and the state, and global justice. Her most recent book, Liberalism's Religion, was published by Harvard University Press in 2017.
Patricia (Trish) Madigan is an Australian religious sister, a member and leader of the Dominican Sisters of Eastern Australia and the Solomon Islands and Executive Director of the Dominican Centre for Interfaith Ministry Education and Research (CIMER). Madigan is known nationally and internationally as "a leader in ecumenical and interfaith relations in the Catholic Church in Australia".
Anna Halafoff is an Australian sociologist who is Associate Professor in Sociology at Deakin University and the current president of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion.
Interreligious studies, sometimes called interfaith studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that researches and teaches about interfaith dialogue and encounters between religions. It often involves religious scholars in interfaith activism. This concept has injected itself as not entirely interfaith dialogue; which is more often religious than academic in nature. The field emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as a result of the collective efforts of theologians and interfaith practitioners, during a period of interfaith activism, especially in the North America.
