Modest Claims: Dialogues and Essays on Tolerance and Tradition

by Adam B. Seligman

Modest Claims , which features essays by Seligman and dialogues between scholars representing the three monotheistic faiths, provides the beginnings of a very different set of arguments on tolerance and tradition. In so doing it seeks to uncover the sources of toleration and pluralism that exist within the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Most contemporary approaches leave these sources largely unexplored and often marginalize them in current public debates and social agendas. Seligman and his dialogue partners seek to engage traditional understandings to uncover internal components that make dialogue between different religions and cultures possible. Espousing the idea of translation as a metaphor for the tolerant act, Modest Claims takes difference seriously as an aspect of existence that can be neither trivialized nor ignored. It explores and develops specifically religious arguments for tolerance and acceptance of others, as well as new strategies for understanding difference that are not rooted in individualist worldviews.

216 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

About the author

Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion at Boston University and Research Associate at the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs there. He has lived and taught at universities in the United States, in Israel and in Hungary where he was Fulbright Fellow. He lived close to twenty years in Israel where he was a member of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom in the early 1970’s. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages. He is director of CEDAR – Communities Engaging with Difference and Religion (www.CEDARnetwork.org) which leads seminars every year on contested aspects of religion and the public square in different parts of the world. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.