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:
Beacon Press is an American left-wing non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is known for publishing authors such as James Baldwin, Mary Oliver, Martin Luther King Jr., and Viktor Frankl, as well as The Pentagon Papers.
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.
Interfaith marriage, sometimes called interreligious marriage or "mixed marriage", is marriage between spouses professing different religions. Although interfaith marriages are often established as civil marriages, in some instances they may be established as a religious marriage. This depends on religious doctrine of each of the two parties' religions; some prohibit interfaith marriage, and among others there are varying degrees of permissibility.
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.
Diana L. Eck is a scholar of religious studies who is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University, as well as a former faculty dean of Lowell House and the Director of The Pluralism Project at Harvard. Among other works, she is the author of Banaras, City of Light, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India, Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras, A New Religious America: How a Christian Country Became the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation, and "India: A Sacred Geography." At Harvard, she is in the Department of South Asian Studies, the Committee on the Study of Religion, and is also a member of the Faculty of Divinity. She has been the chair for the Committee on the Study of Religion. She also served on the Humanities jury for the Infosys Prize in 2019.
Overbelief is a philosophical term for a belief adopted that requires more evidence than one presently has. It is also described as a kind of metaphysical belief ascribed with the status of speculative view that exceeds available evidence or evidencing reason. Generally, acts of overbelief are justified on emotional need or faith, and a need to make sense of spiritual experience, rather than on empirical evidence. This idea originates from the works of William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience and refers to the conceptual framework that individuals have.
Stone Soup Cooperative is a housing cooperative created in Chicago, Illinois in 1997. A collective of activists working and living in Chicago began renting a former convent with the goal of creating an intentional community for "Joy and Justice." The cooperative was founded on the principle of the stone soup fable, which resonated with the original 10-12 founders. The story is a lesson in cooperation in which a town comes together to turn a pot of boiling water with a stone in it into a hearty soup that can be shared amongst all its inhabitants by each adding one ingredient.
Zaid Shakir is an American Muslim scholar and co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California. He teaches courses on Arabic, law, history, and Islamic spirituality.
David Frank Ford is an Anglican public theologian. He was the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, beginning in 1991. He is now an Emeritus Regius Professor of Divinity. His research interests include political theology, ecumenical theology, Christian theologians and theologies, theology and poetry, the shaping of universities and of the field of theology and religious studies within universities, hermeneutics, and interfaith theology and relations. He is the founding director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme and a co-founder of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning.
John A. Buehrens is an American Unitarian Universalist minister and author.
The Abrahamic religions are a group of religions, most notably Judaism, Christianity and Islam, centered on the worship of the God of Abraham. Abraham, a Hebrew patriarch, is extensively mentioned in the religious scriptures of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and also the Quran.
Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) is a term that was first introduced in the 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by the sociologist Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton. The term is used to describe what they consider to be the common beliefs among U.S. youths. The book is the result of the research project the National Study of Youth and Religion.
Interfaith marriages are recognized between Muslims and Non-Muslim "People of the Book". According to the traditional interpretation of Islamic law (sharīʿa), a Muslim man is allowed to marry a Christian or Jewish woman but this ruling doesn't apply to women who belong to other Non-Muslim religious groups, whereas a Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a Non-Muslim man of any Non-Muslim religious group.
Elijah Interfaith Institute is a nonprofit, international, UNESCO-sponsored interfaith organization founded by Alon Goshen-Gottstein in 1997. The organization is headquartered in Jerusalem, with offices and representatives in different countries,
Interfaith America is a Chicago-based non-profit founded in 2002 by Eboo Patel. The organization’s stated mission is to make interfaith cooperation a social norm. Today it operates with approximately 30 full-time staff and a $4-million budget. It has worked on five continents and with over 200 college campuses domestically.
The Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY) is a secular educational non-profit organization founded in 1997 by the Very Reverend James Parks Morton. ICNY programs work to connect religious leaders and their communities with civil organizations and each other.
The Common Ground between Islam and Buddhism project is an interfaith initiative originated by the Dalai Lama and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan. These two were joined by a panel of select scholars, and the project was officially launched on May 12, 2010, in Bloomington, Indiana, US. The project is based on the book Common Ground between Islam and Buddhism, by Reza Shah-Kazemi, who together with Ingrid Mattson and Eboo Patel was part of the scholars’ panel convened for the Bloomington event.
The InterFaith Leadership Council of Metropolitan Detroit is a faith-based civic organization founded in 2010 by members of a Detroit-based interfaith group known then as the Interfaith Partners. Its headquarters are in Oak Park, Michigan.
Craig Michael Considine is an American author, scholar, and a faculty member of the Department of Sociology at Rice University. Considine has written six books for the field of Islamic studies, and is recognized as an authority in interfaith dialogue and Christian-Muslim relations. In 2020, he gained distinction as a professor when he received the Sarah A. Burnett Teaching Prize in the Social Sciences from Rice University. Considine also has experience in filmmaking, having served as the Film Director of Ambassador Akbar Ahmed’s documentary film Journey into America. He is a Roman Catholic.
