For religions within a growing pluralistic world of the 21st century, it has become critically important to the future that persons encounter and come to know people of different backgrounds, become familiar with their world views as well as their hopes and struggles, and enter into mutual relationships with them, as neighbors, as seekers of a just social order, as brothers and sisters in a mutually built society. In ENCOUNTERING OTHER FAITHS, Maria Hornung provides a needed examination of the imperative of interreligious dialogue within the world--and within the United States. This text supports the development of skills in the practice of interreligious discourse, and gives practical counsel on how to encourage interreligious dialogue in its nascent stages. The author uses a creative interdisciplinary approach to create and illustrate a process model that supports interested people in becoming acquainted with interreligious dialogue. The challenge, of course, is to cross over into other worlds of thinking and association, sometimes at a fair distance from our comfort zones. At the same time, even among religiously committed people, consciousness of religious pluralism is not high. Yet the urgency of creating and engaging forums for dialogue at the grassroots level is great. The widely acknowledged difficulty is where and how to begin. This, the first book of its kind, will serve as an indispensable tool for those mandated to the work of animating this vitally important interreligious dialogue in its beginning stages. +
