Interreligious Learning: Dialogue, Spirituality and the Christian Imagination

by Michael Barnes

Taking the theme of learning as central to the responsible practice of interfaith dialogue, Michael Barnes discusses a Christian spirituality which builds on virtues of hospitality and the welcoming of other traditions, whilst maintaining the importance of difference and particularity in the search for meaning. Each chapter explores how faith grows as a person crosses a threshold into another religious world and learns sensitivity to echoes of the known in the unknown. Encounters with the religious other, refracted through texts, conversations, artefacts and places, are used to illustrate the ancient Patristic theme of 'seeds of the Word'. Cumulatively they show that faith which learns how to engage imaginatively with another religious world constantly returns to the 'home' tradition, reinvigorated in its appreciation of the other. This book contributes to current comparative theology studies, using a theological approach to interreligious studies complementary to one based on the experience of interpersonal relations.

Genres: Spirituality

306 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

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Michael Barnes S.J., Professor of Interreligious Relations, University of Roehampton

Michael Barnes is a British Jesuit priest who taught for more than thirty years at Heythrop College in the University of London, during which time he was Director of Westminster Interfaith (a diocesan agency for inter-faith relations) and also ran the De Nobili Centre for Dialogue in Southall, West London. He is the author of several books and many articles on various aspects of interreligious relations. He now teaches at the University of Roehampton and is a Research Associate at the School of Advanced Study in the University of London.