The Theologies and Practices of Religious Pluralism project convenes a team of international scholars to provide original insights on the transformations that globalization has forced upon all religions, challenging their theology and practices, reshaping their status in public spaces and affecting international relations and daily life.
The experience of religious and cultural pluralism at the local, national and global levels is challenging all religious traditions in their exclusivist “truth claims”, having to respond and come to terms with “the truth of the other.” Our interdisciplinary approach will examine pivotal issues within and across religious traditions, starting within the three major monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In a second phase it will expand to encompass other faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism. The objective of our research is to analyze:
—> How religious traditions respond to the increasing social and religious diversity.
—> What is the place occupied by religious differences within each faith and the rank of truth that each religion acknowledges to the others.
—> The extent of engagement in missionary activities, dialogue, tolerance, inclusion, as well as the tendencies toward the exclusion or rejection of Otherness.
—> The novel global condition whereby each religion claims to be unique and different, while at the same time defending its valid universal message for all of humanity, in a peculiar entanglement of universal particularisms and particular universalisms.
This initiative is jointly promoted and realized under the responsibility of Reset DOC (Italy) and Reset Dialogues (US). This research program and related results were made possible by the support of the NOMIS Foundation.
It is also supported by several partners: the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University (US), the University of Birmingham (UK), the Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna and Palermo (Italy), and the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies (Israel).
