The Book Club meets on February 23rd at 10 AM to discuss “My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation” by Jennifer Howe Peace. This groundbreaking volume gathers an array of inspiring and penetrating stories about the interreligious encounters of outstanding community leaders, scholars, public intellectuals, and activist from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. With wisdom, wit, courage, and humility, these writers from a range of religious backgrounds share their personal experience of border-crossing, and the lessons learned from their interreligious adventures. We live in the most religiously diverse society in the history of humankind. Every day, people of different religious beliefs and practices encounter one another in a myriad of settings. How has this new situation of religious diversity impacted the way we understand the religious other, ourselves, and God? Can we learn to live together with mutual respect, working together for the creation of a more compassionate and just world?
From the Introduction:
“We live in one of the most religiously diverse nations in the history of humankind. Every day, across the country, people of different religious beliefs and practices encounter one another in supermarkets, hospitals, schools, chat rooms, and family gatherings. How has this new situation of religious diversity affected the way we understand the religious “other” and ourselves? Will it lead us to overcome the long history of religious intolerance, bigotry, and violence that has plagued humanity for centuries? Can we learn to live together with mutual respect, acknowledging commonalities and differences, working together to create a more just and compassionate world?
The book includes more than fifty personal narratives set in various times and places, involving religious interactions of a dizzying variety. Some of the authors are well-known public figures in American life, some are scholars, clergy, and others you may not know by name, who quietly go about their work helping to transform relationships across religious lines for the sake of a more peaceful planet. In many cases, the stories they share shed light on their personal histories, core beliefs, and the motivations that animate their interfaith work.”
Please join us!