My Neighbor's Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation

This book was chosen by the leader of our nascent book club in IPSC as our first selection. I was so impressed that I chose to write this little review and feature the book among Interfaith Advocate’s recommendations. Many times while reading this book I was reminded of Eboo Patel’s exceptionally useful book Interfaith Leadership: A Primer. Looking back on our blog posts and the books reviewed in the fellow travelers section I was surprised to discover that I had not reviewed that book. I’ll soon make amends for that, though for now I wanted to emphasize Patel’s argument that the bridge building takes place in interfaith work happens most effectively in our one on one interactions with other human beings who among all other factors happen to have a different faith orientation that we do.

Generally we use abstraction to move from the particular to the universal and that can be a powerful technique particularly in realms such as mathematics and science, in the case of interfaith understanding I’m a firm believer that the best way to arrive at a universal understanding is through a whole bunch of particular examples. In fact I do not believe there is such a thing as a typical Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc. the best thing one can do to understand the human dimension of Islam for example is to have relationships with individual Muslims. This book demonstrates time and again through wide range of stories how religious differences often become minimal factors in our relations with others and certainly the time-honored tradition of breaking bread with someone or the more practical act of working together on some project will allow us to make the human connections that both minimize the differences in our faith orientation and simultaneously may well demonstrate how we live the central tenets of our faith. The following material comes from the publisher’s website. Clicking on the image of the book cover will take you to the Amazon page where you can peruse the book and purchase if you would like.

“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?
My Neighbor's Faith gathers an array of inspiring and penetrating stories about the interreligious encounters of outstanding community leaders, scholars, public intellectuals, and activists. With wisdom, wit, courage, and humility, these writers--from a range of religious backgrounds--share their personal experience of "border-crossing," and the unforgettable lessons learned from their interreligious encounters.”

Contributors include: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, Phyllis Berman; Mary Boys, Rita Nakashima-Brock, Miguel De La Torre, Irving Greenberg; Ruben Habito, Paul Knitter, Bill J. Leonard, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Brian McLaren, Ji Hyang Padma, Eboo Patel, Judith Plaskow, Paul Raushenbush, Anantand Rambachan, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Jim Wallis, and many more.

Jennifer Howe Peace is assistant professor of interfaith studies at Andover Newton Theological School and co-director of CIRCLE: The Center for Inter-Religious and Communal Leadership Education (a joint venture of Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School).

Rabbi Or Rose is Associate Dean at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College and co-director of CIRCLE.
Gregory Mobley is professor of Christian Bible at Andover Newton Theological School and co-founder of CIRCLE. He is an ordained American Baptist minister.

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