Religious Pluralism and Interreligious Theology

Overview

"A scintillating examination of the reality of religious pluralism in the world's faiths coupled with nuanced analysis of how the future of theology is interreligious theology developed through interreligious dialogue.... Schmidt-Leukel has raised the bar for the next generation of theologians who should strive to be literate in more than two religions." --Peter Admirand, in Reviews in Religion and Theology,

"This book is the most significant contribution to date to have emerged out of debates in theology of religions and comparative theology over the last couple of decades." --Alan Race, in Insight

"Provides an extensive record of the great advances made by interreligious scholarship over the past decades (the list of works referred to by the author is 30 pages long). To the work that has already been done, Schmidt-Leukel adds his own penetrating scholarship and brilliant insights to argue, clearly and convincingly, that increased knowledge of and respect for other religious traditions can enrich and even purify one's understanding of and commitment to one s own religious tradition. --William Skudlarek, in Dilatato Corde

Interreligious dialogue has encouraged many theologians in all major religious traditions to consider whether other religions may offer a different but nevertheless genuine and valid path of salvation or liberation. Perry Schmidt- Leukel, in this extended version of his 2015 Gifford Lectures, argues that this position often called "religious pluralism must be developed within particular insights supplied by each of the major traditions.

Although severe barriers to religious pluralism exist within each tradition, he shows nevertheless that possibilities for a pluralist understanding exist in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religions. Interreligious theology, he argues, carries the promise of being the theology of the future.

Perry Schmidt-Leukel is Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology, University of Manchester, and Director of the Institute for Religious Studies and Interfaith Theology. He has published a dozen books in German and English, most recently, Transformation by Integration: How Inter-faith Encounter Changes Christianity (Hymns Ancient & Modern, 2009) and God Beyond Boundaries (Waxmann Verlag, 2017). This book combines his 2015 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow and lectures delivered in 2014 at Zhejiang University in China.