Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue

Series Editors Gerard Mannion Department of Theology Georgetown University Washington, DC, USA

Mark D. Chapman Ripon College University of Oxford Oxford, UK Building on the important work of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network to promote ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue, the Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue series publishes scholarship on interreligious encounters and dialogue in relation to the past, present, and future. It gathers together a richly diverse array of voices in monographs and edited collections that speak to the challenges, aspirations, and elements of interreligious conversation. Through its publications, the series allows for the exploration of new ways, means, and methods of advancing the wider ecumenical cause with renewed energy for the twenty-first century.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14561 Harold Kasimow • Alan Race Editors Francis and Interreligious Dialogue

Religious Thinkers Engage with Recent Papal Initiatives Editors Harold Kasimow Alan Race Grinnell College World Congress of Faiths Grinnell, IA, USA London, UK

Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue ISBN 978-3-319-96094-4 ISBN 978-3-319-96095-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96095-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018951603

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover design by Friedhelm Steinen-Broo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This book is dedicated to our friends and colleagues across the world committed to interreligious dialogue and collaboration for a better future and in particular to those involved with the interreligious and intercultural organizations committed to inquiry and learning across boundaries—the World Congress of Faiths (London), Common Ground (Deerfield, Illinois), and the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Foreword: Who Is Jorge Bergoglio?

I have been very kindly invited by Harold Kasimow and Alan Race to write a Foreword to a collection of chapters contributed to this book by mem- bers of major world religious traditions regarding their responses to and his views on interreligious dialogue. In writing this Foreword, my first idea was to summarize the different chapters in some way, empha- sizing what I understood to be the core of each of them and concluding with my own perspective on the theme. This would have been a purely intellectual approach. Then the memory of a particular moment suddenly came to my mind. During one of our meetings in his office in the archdiocesan building in , I said to my friend Jorge Bergoglio, “I am con- sidering the idea of writing a book about .” I asked for his partnership on the project. He was not enthusiastic about the idea. One month later he called me and said, “Let us write a book of dialogues, you and I, about the burning themes that matter to ordinary people.” This was the begin- ning of the book of dialogues that we wrote together, . We began speaking about God, the devil, and atheists and contin- ued with , death, globalization, politics and power, money, poverty, the Holocaust, socialism, Peronism, and so on. He encouraged me to assume a prophetic attitude, to express deep concepts through sim- ple words and phrases, to put aside all intellectual sophistications, and to speak to everyone. Therefore, I have decided in this Foreword to describe some moments that I have shared with him and my feelings about them. I do this to transmit who this person, my friend, is. We address each other in our ­correspondence

vii viii FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? as “my dear brother,” not as a mere formality, but in order to express the deep feeling we have for each other. The chapters of this book analyze with great wisdom different aspects of the preaching and religious leadership of Pope Francis. This Foreword tries to describe some intimate aspects of the person, the core of his preaching and leadership. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope—the 266th after Peter—on 13 March 2013. I watched the direct television broadcast in my house in Buenos Aires when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran proclaimed that my friend was the new head of the , which includes 1.3 billion peo- ple. During the previous three years, we had worked together on the prep- aration of the book of dialogues I mentioned earlier. We presented it at the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminary on 1 December 2010 and went on to record 31 television programs in which we continued dialoguing about pressing themes of our time. During those years, we used to meet two or more times each month in very creative dialogical encounters. The dia- logues were spontaneous, which posed a special challenge for the record- ing of the programs. Despite that, it was very seldom that we were asked to modify something we had recorded. At the end of each session we decided upon the topics to discuss at the next meeting, and after the mod- erator, Marcelo Figueroa’s introduction, we expressed our ideas through an extemporaneous back-and-forth. Each meeting was a great spiritual experience for us. During our conversations, so as not to speak on top of my friend’s words, and to respond to them promptly with my own ideas, I used to look with great attention into his face as he spoke. Years later, when Cardinal Tauran announced the identity of the new pope, my friend’s face appeared in my mind’s eye a few seconds before he actually came into view on the television screen. After the first wave of emotion passed, the next sensation I had took the form of a question: How is our friendship going to continue? How are we going to be able to work together with an ocean separating us? On the Buenos Aires afternoon of 18 March 2013, the eve of the day when Francis would be inaugurated in the Vatican as pope, I received a call on my cell phone. To my “Hello,” I heard in reply a very familiar voice, “Hello,” says Bergoglio, “they’ve caught me here and are not letting me back.” The purpose of the call was to speak with his friend after the revo- lutionary event that transformed his life and to let me know very clearly that, in a new way, we were going to continue to be in contact. We spoke about several subjects and when the conversation came to its end he told me, “Write down the email address which I am spelling to you now, so we can continue to be in touch.” FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? ix

Thus, began a new time in our friendship. We had begun to get to know each other in the Cathedral of Buenos Aires, to which—by invitation of the President of —I repre- sented the Jewish community at the special mass in honor of the national Independence Day. At first, Bergoglio was one of the auxiliary bishops under Cardinal . Afterward, he became his coadjutor bishop and finally he succeeded him as archbishop of the city in 1998. When I heard Bergoglio’s homilies on those occasions, they reminded me of the style of criticism used by the prophets which has resonances with Jesus’s preaching as well. In front of the president of the nation and his cabinet and many other governmental authorities, he championed the rights of the poor and of all the abandoned people in Argentinean society. I used to tell him that his way of speaking seemed to be very much inspired by the prophets. Through frequent football jokes, Bergoglio narrowed the gap that I felt was between us. He is older than me by 14 years (I was then in my late 40s and he in his early 60s), and he was the archbishop of one of the most important Catholic cities in the world. I was then the Rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, an important position but very far from the political, religious, and social influence that he carried then. Years after he used to insist that we had been standing on the same level. I never asked him why he sought me out. I guess he was sympathetic to the articles I wrote in La Nación—the newspaper he used to read daily— about the importance of interreligious dialogue or condemnation of terror- ist acts and movements in the world or demanding the judicial prosecution of the attackers of the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. And then we began walking side by side together. I invited him twice to give a message to my congregation during the service of Selihot; he invited me to deliver a lesson to the seminarians in the Facultad de Teología of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. I wrote a book about different aspects of religiosity and the existential expe- rience of faith in the twentieth century. I asked him to write the Foreword of the book. And he did. In the presentation ceremony for the book, I said that it must be the first time in history that an archbishop provided a Foreword to a book written by a . When (together with Francesca Ambrogetti) finished writing the authorized biography of then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, he asked whom to invite to write the Foreword; his immediate answer was Rabbi Abraham Skorka. When Rubin asked me whether I would agree to x FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? write the Foreword, I felt much emotion. An authorized biography is not a simple text but a special document that summarizes many particular aspects of the life story of a person. His choosing me to write introductory words to this special text had great impact on me. I asked myself why he did this. An archbishop, a cardinal, chose a Jew, a rabbi, to write the pro- logue of his biography! Years after, I suddenly asked him: Why did you choose me to write the introduction of El Jesuita?1 His instant answer was, “It came from out of my heart.” The history of the Argentinean Catholic Church has had both shadows and lights concerning the Jews. During the 1930s and 1940s in the twen- tieth century, there were priests who sympathized with the anti-Semitic ideas propagated by the dictatorial European movements. Decades later, when the Argentinean Church organized a special ceremony in the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina to celebrate the 50th anniver- sary of the opening sessions of the Second Vatican Council, one of its key moments was the bestowment of an honorary Ph.D. for my contributions to the culture of Buenos Aires. Bergoglio was then the grand chancellor of the university and, undoubtedly, he was the promoter of the idea, although he denied it in a private conversation with me. Thousands gathered in the university auditorium and many others viewed the ceremony on the giant screen that was installed in a large adja- cent room. Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the , was specially invited to speak about the historical importance of the Council. The bestowing of the honorary degree was one of the high points of the event, signifying the transformation in Catholic attitudes toward Jews that the Second Vatican Council brought about. Bergoglio had worked hard to achieve this turning point in Argentinean Catholic Church history. The message of the Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate was thereby emphasized and enhanced. When we stood one in front of the other without microphones between us, and holding the honorary medal fastened with a ribbon bearing the col- ors of the Argentinean flag in his hands, before putting it around my neck, he said to me, “You can’t imagine how long I have dreamt of this moment.” When the ceremony finished, a Catholic professor of the university, the former National Secretary of Cults, said to me, “This would have been impossible to realize ten years ago.” A member of my congregation, born in Germany, approached me and said, “I saw how the Nazis took my teachers to the concentration camps and from there they never came back. During my whole life [he was then 90], I looked for some kind of answer for that pain. This evening I got a little one.” FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO? xi

One day as we sat in his little office in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio and I spoke about leadership and the multiple conflicts in many places around the world. We discussed the attitudes that a real leader has to have in order to implant in people the values of peace, justice, and spirituality. When he was elected pope, I knew that a great opportunity was beginning for the Church to renew itself and to give a special message, not only for its own worshippers but for the whole of humankind. My first wish was to accompany him in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to share with him the moment in which he would pray in front of the Kotel (Western Wall), and to embrace each other there in order to visually declare that 2000 years of conflict and hate are beginning to come to an end. We did this with our mutual friend, the Muslim leader Omar Abboud, extending the message to all the Abrahamic religions which consider that place holy and especially important. To impart a message of peace was our obsession and constant prayer in the Holy Land. I was part of the official Vatican delegation that accompanied Pope Francis on this trip. The late Israeli president, Shimon Peres, worked very hard to enable it to occur. Peres was one of the first world leaders to be received by Francis in the Vatican, and a special, true, deep, and sincere relationship bound them after that initial meeting. Since Peres knew about our friendship, he contacted me and expressed to me his profound desire to receive the pope during his presidency. They recognized in each other partners who shared the same dream. Before the journey, I published several articles about the meaning and importance of Zionism in the Vatican newspaper L´Osservatore Romano. La Civiltà Cattolica published a long interview with me in which there were many questions about the meaning of Zionism and its spiritual importance for the Jewish people2; undoubtedly it was Francis’s initiative that made that occur. He was the first pope to visit the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. He also visited the Palestinian refugee camp of Dheisheh, where he exhorted to abandon the past and to build a future of peace and brotherhood. During his pilgrimage, he balanced in a very careful way the rights of the Palestinians and the Israelis and expressed his personal support for the two-state solution. Peace in the Holy Land continues to be a special chal- lenge and subject in our lives. When we worked together on our book, he decided that our encoun- ters should take place in his office in the archdiocesan building and in my synagogue. He used to take the subway whenever we met in my synagogue. xii FOREWORD: WHO IS JORGE BERGOGLIO?

His habits are of great humility and great sensitivity toward suffering people. Very close to his room in Domus Santa Marta in the Vatican, he hosted a German priest who was recovering from a broken hip. The poor, the displaced of any society, the forced emigrants, and the exploited are his constant concern. There is an inner dimension to his being, a mystical dimension, of which I saw several signs. His books and deal with human behavioral problems: poverty, ecology, slavery, and so on, and his pronouncements are direct and very clear. Rarely does he adopt an intellectual attitude using cerebral sophistications, because he has an internal world which is far from a purely intellectual formalism, a mystical world which can only be expressed in the very special language of simple words, silences, and many gestures. When I used to be asked, in the first months of his papacy, what is Bergoglio’s way of thinking and acting, I used to answer that his model in life and priesthood is Jesus, as described in the synoptic Gospels. There are many convergences between the synoptic Gospels and the books of the prophets, from the generation of Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Micah onward. This is one of the religious elements that immediately fostered deep dia- logue between us. On certain occasions, I gave him several books by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great prophetical master of the twentieth century, and Heschel’s name frequently came up in our conversations. During the night, when all around me is silence and the voice of con- science can be heard clearly, I sometimes hear the voice of my friend say- ing, “Pray for me.” And as I begin praying, I feel that he is doing the same for all of us.

St. Joseph’s University Rabbi Abraham Skorka Philadelphia, PA, USA

Notes 1. Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin, Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio: His Life in His Own Words (: Penguin Group, 2014). 2. Omar Abboud, Abraham Skorka, and Antonio Spadoro, “Nessuna religione e un’isola. Converzsazione con Abraham Skorka” in Oltre il muro: Dialogo tra un musulmano, un rabbino e un Cristiano, Italian ed. (New York City: Rizzoli, 2014), 63–141. Acknowledgments

This book is the product of a 20-year friendship between an Anglican priest-theologian from the UK, author of the classic work Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (1983, enlarged 1993), and a Polish-born Jewish academic from the USA, a Holocaust survivor, and author of Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity (2015), his most recent book. We wish to express our deepest gratitude to the religious leaders and eminent scholars from different parts of the world who have contributed to this book. We are particularly honored that Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a great friend of Pope Francis and one of the most distinguished in Argentina, agreed to write the Foreword to this book. His personal testi- mony is a perfect window on the spiritual humanity which informs all of the pope’s writings. We also express our most heartfelt thanks to Father Leo Lefebure, Matteo Ricci Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, for writing the final assessment, for encouraging us from the very start, and for introducing us to Gerard Mannion, who also saw the unique nature of this book and led us to working with Palgrave Macmillan. A further word of gratitude goes to Palgrave Macmillan for publishing this book and a special thanks to Phil Getz and Amy Invernizzi for their guid- ance through the processes of preparation and submission of the final manuscript.

xiii xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Harold Kasimow’s Special Acknowledgments Abraham Joshua Heschel often spoke of the centrality of gratitude as a basic response to the wonder of human life. In this spirit, I would like to express my own deepest thanks to my co-editor Alan Race, a creative pioneer in interreligious dialogue and theology of religions. Alan has modeled the critical necessity of being open to other traditions while remaining loyal to his own. His friendship over the years has been very precious to me. I also want to express my profound gratitude to my dear friend Angela Winburn, who is always a great joy to work with and was involved in every aspect of this book from the very beginning. I am very grateful for her patience and good humor. I am also indebted to Russell Tabbert for read- ing and providing feedback on a majority of the chapters. Very important to me also has been the friendship and tremendous support over the years of William Burrows, Zev Garber, Leonya Ivanov, John Keenan, Linda Keenan, Kenneth Kramer, Beverly Lanzetta, John Merkle, and Stanislaw Obirek. I am thankful to George A. Drake, former president of Grinnell College, for his interest in my work and his ongoing encouragement. I also want to thank my family for their love. Most of all, I am deeply grateful to Professors Bernard Phillips, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Byron Sherwin, who truly touched my life and changed my world. May their memory be blessed.

Alan Race’s Special Acknowledgments When I first met Harold Kasimow, I knew instantly that I had met a kin- dred spirit, a person of integrity and openness to others and the world. We met at the Parliament of the World’s Religions at Cape Town, South Africa, in 1999, and it is this which informs our part enlisting of the Parliament in the Dedication of the book. We have remained friends on the interfaith journey ever since and I am deeply grateful for his insights and wisdom. Echoing Harold’s gratitude both to those who have contrib- uted to this book’s contents and to those who have helped it come to birth, I also add my own gratitude for the loving support of my wife, Sonya, who has been a constant encouragement throughout the whole process and whose commitment to the acceptance of religious pluralism has long been second nature to her. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv

Retrospective Acknowledgment We would like to express grateful thanks to Pope John XXIII, the Good Pope, who ushered in the Second Vatican Council (11 October 1962) which gave new life to the interfaith movement that treasures and cele- brates religious diversity and thereby prepared the way for this book whose subject places himself firmly in the tradition of that groundbreaking Council. Contents

1 Introduction 1 Harold Kasimow and Alan Race

Part I In His Own Words 5

2 In His Own Words 7 Pope Francis

Part II Seven Traditions Respond 83

3 “The Church Also Is Enriched When She Receives the Values of ”: Shared Faith Responses to Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue 85 Edward Kessler

4 On Donkey Drivers, Interreligious Dialogue, and Shared Tasks: A Jewish Response to Pope Francis on Interreligious Relations and Collaboration 101 Debbie Young-Somers

5 Is Pope Francis an Anonymous Feminist? 113 Helene Egnell

xvii xviii CONTENTS

6 Is the Pope Catholic? A Question of Identity in Pope Francis’s Practical Theology of Interreligious Dialogue 129 Stephen B. Roberts

7 Pope Francis’s Compassion 145 Amineh A. Hoti

8 Pope Francis, Islam, and Dialogue 169 Ataullah Siddiqui

9 Cautious Hope: Hindu Reflections on Pope Francis 183 Jeffery D. Long

10 Do We Have a Religious Need for Each Other? Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue 199 Anantanand Rambachan

11 A Sikh in Dialogue with 219 Dharam Singh

12 Let’s Get Off Our Cell Phones and Hear a Sikh Maxim from Pope Francis 235 Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh

13 Toward Dialogue with Pope Francis: A Japanese Buddhist Perspective 259 Dennis Hirota

14 What Do We Share? A Secular-Humanist Response 279 Shoshana Ronen CONTENTS xix

Part III Reflection and Final Assessment 301

15 Be Friends and Help the World: The Contributions of Pope Francis to Interreligious and Secular Relations 303 Leo D. Lefebure

Selected Bibliography 329

Index 337 About the Editors

Harold Kasimow is George Drake Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Grinnell College, Iowa, USA, where for more than three decades he taught courses on Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism as well as on interreligious dialogue and relations. He is the author and co-editor of six books including Divine-Human Encounter: A Study of Abraham Joshua

xxi xxii About the Editors

Heschel (1979); No Religion Is an Island: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Interreligious Dialogue (1991); John Paul II and Interreligious Dialogue (1999); Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha (2003); The Search Will Make You Free: A Jewish Dialogue with World Religions (2006); and Interfaith Activism: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Religious Diversity (2015). His articles and reviews have appeared in lead- ing scholarly journals in China, England, India, Japan, the USA, and Poland, the land of his birth. His essays have been published in ten edited books. He has also given scores of public lectures throughout North America and Europe as well as in , Japan, and South Africa. He is a Holocaust survivor and immigrated to the USA in 1949. Alan Race is a retired Anglican priest and currently the chair of the World Congress of Faiths Executive Committee and editor of its celebrated jour- nal Interreligious Insight. He is recognized worldwide for his seminal ideas in the Christian theology of religions and in interfaith understanding and relations and has been involved in promoting and co-­ operation at many levels. He has worked with interfaith dialogue groups and has taught theology related to religious pluralism and interfaith work for many years. He is the author of the classic text in Christian theology of religions, Christians and Religious Pluralism (1983, enlarged 1993), as well as Interfaith Encounter (2001) and Making Sense of Religious Pluralism (2013), reprinted as Thinking About Religious Pluralism (2015) in the USA. He has contributed to numerous collections of essays, most recently to a Jewish-Christian dialogue, Deep Calls to Deep (2017). He co-­edited the SCM Press textbook, Christian Approaches to Other Faiths (2008), and a volume of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in dialogue, Beyond the Dysfunctional Family (2012). Notes on Contributors

Helene Egnell is a priest in the Church of Sweden (Lutheran). She serves as bishop’s adviser at the Centre for Interfaith Dialogue in the diocese of Stockholm. She has a Master of Philosophy degree from the Irish School of Ecumenics and holds a Ph.D. from Uppsala University with the disser- tation Other Voices: A Study of Christian Feminist Approaches to Religious Plurality East and West (2006). Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 17 December 1936 and is the 266th pope and sovereign of the Vatican City State. He is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first from outside of Europe since the eighth-century Syrian Gregory III. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969 and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina’s provincial superior of the (Jesuits). He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. A papal conclave elected him on 13 March 2013. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. Noted for his pastoral style and personal warmth, Pope Francis has emphasized the mercy of God, concern for the poor, care of the planet, commitment to interfaith dialogue, and hope for the world. His most sig- nificant pronouncements includeEvangelii Gaudium (2013) on faith and evangelization; Laudato Si’ (2015) on environmental sustainability; (2016) on love within the family; and (2018), dealing with “the call to holiness in today’s world.” Pope Francis is critical of economic systems which benefit only the rich and self-serving politics

xxiii xxiv Notes on Contributors which refuse to embrace asylum seekers and those fleeing persecution. His commitment to interfaith dialogue is for the sake of mutual learning and collaboration for the common good of all peoples and the planet. Dennis Hirota is Professor Emeritus of Shin Buddhist Studies at Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan. He was head translator of The Collected Works of Shinran (1997) and has written several books on Japanese Buddhist thought, including Wind in the Pines: Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path (1995), No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997), Shinran: shukyo gengo no kakumeisha (1998), and Asura’s Harp: Engagement with Language as Buddhist Path (2006). He is completing a book on Shinran’s thought, in light of Martin Heidegger. Amineh A. Hoti is the executive director of Markaz-e-Ilm, the Center for Dialogue and Action in Urdu Islamabad, working toward introducing peacebuilding in society. She co-founded the Center for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations (with Dr. Ed Kessler) in Cambridge, UK. She also founded the Society for Dialogue and Action at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. She obtained her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge. She was a distinguished fellow of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. She has promoted peace education in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the USA and has been a speaker at the White House, Georgetown University, and in Doha, Qatar. She is associate producer and script consultant for the film Journey into Europe and was female lead researcher for the project from 2013 to 2016. She has written a number of books on promoting peace education and deeper understanding between people of different faiths, genders, and ethnicities, including Sorrow and Joy among Muslim Women (2006). She was chosen as the “Torchbearer” for Peacebuilding by Hello! Pakistan magazine in Pakistan’s Hot 100 (December 2016). She is now working on Religions of Pakistan, bringing religions together for peace. Edward Kessler is founding and executive director of the Cambridge Center for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations. In 1998, he founded the Woolf Institute, which is devoted to the study of relations between religion and society (especially Jews, Christians, and Muslims) and is rec- ognized around the world for the excellence of its research, teaching, and public education programs. He has written or edited 12 books including the acclaimed Bound by the : Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac (2004). In 2011, he was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to interfaith relations. Notes on Contributors xxv

Leo D. Lefebure is Matteo Ricci Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, USA. His books include Toward a Contemporary Wisdom Christology (1988), The Buddha and the Christ (1993), Life Transformed: Meditations on the Christian Scriptures in Light of Buddhist Perspectives (1993), Revelation, the Religions, and Violence (Pax Christi Book Award, 2000), The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada (Frederick J. Streng Book of the Year Award, Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2011), and True and Holy: Christian Scripture and Other Religions (Catholic Press Association First Place Book Award for Academic Studies of Scripture, 2015). He is a trustee of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions. Jeffery D. Long is Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College, USA, where he has taught since receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2000). He is the author of A Vision for Hinduism (2007), Jainism: An Introduction (2007), and Historical Dictionary of Hinduism (2011), as well as the forthcoming Indian Philosophy: An Introduction, Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds, and Arise! Awake! Swami Vivekananda Speaks to the Twenty-First Century. Long is also the editor of the series Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical. He has spoken at many venues in the USA, India, and Europe. Anantanand Rambachan is Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, Minnesota, USA, and Forum Humanum Gastprofessor for the Academy for World Religions, University of Hamburg, Germany. His books include Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Śaṅkara (1991); The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas (1994); The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (2006); and A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two Is Not One (2015). Stephen B. Roberts is a Christian theologian who researches in the area of theology in the public sphere. His Ph.D. thesis, Religion and Dialogue: Textuality, Rationality and the Re-imagining of the Public Sphere (2011), used the interreligious practice of scriptural reasoning to articulate a dialogi- cal conception of the public sphere as a space hospitable to religious forms of reasoning. His current research explores a variety of ways in which theol- ogy is performed in the pluralistic public sphere, such as in the texts of popular culture and the life and worship of faith communities. Having pre- viously worked as a university chaplain, he has an ongoing interest in the distinctive role of chaplains in relation to public theology, his own theologi- cal research trajectory arising directly out of that context and practice. xxvi Notes on Contributors

Shoshana Ronen is a professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and chair of the Hebrew Studies Department. She is the author of In Pursuit of the Void: Journeys to Poland in Contemporary Israeli Literature (2001), Nietzsche and Wittgenstein: In Search of Secular Salvation (2002), and Polin—A Land of Forests and Rivers: Images of Poland and Poles in Contemporary Hebrew Literature in Israel (2007). Her most recent book is A Prophet of Consolation on the Threshold of Destruction: Yehoshua Ozjasz Thon, an Intellectual Portrait (2015). Ataullah Siddiqui is a British academic and reader in Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Relations at Markfield Institute of Higher Education, UK, and course director for the Certificate in Muslim Chaplaincy. He served as director of the Markfield Institute from 2001 to 2008. He is an honorary visiting fellow in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, and a visiting fellow at York St. John University. He has written extensively on Christian-Muslim relations and interfaith issues including Christian-­ Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century (1997) and Islam and Other Faiths (1998), a collection of Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi’s articles. He co-edited Christians and Muslims in the Commonwealth: A Dynamic Role in the Future (2001) and British Secularism and Religion (2011). He is also the author of Islam at Universities in England: Meeting the Needs and Investing in the Future (2007). Dharam Singh retired from Punjabi University, Patiala, India, as Professor of Sikh Studies and editor-in-chief of The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. He is working as visiting professor in the Centre on Studies in Sri Guru Granth Sahib at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, finalizing his English ren- dering, with detailed annotations, of the Vars of Bhai Gurdas, the first exegete of the Sikh scripture. Among the books to his credit are Sikh Theology of Liberation (1991), Sikhism: Norm and Form (1998), Dynamics of the Social Thought of Guru Gobind Singh (1999), The Khalsa (1999), Guru Granth Sahib: Guru-Eternal for the Sikhs (2004), Guru Arjan Dev (2006), Sikhism and Religious Pluralism (2009), and Understanding Sikhism (2012). He has edited a number of books and has also written the English rendering of the famous exegetical work, Darpan Sri Guru Granth Sahib (forthcoming). Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh is Crawford Professor of Religious Studies at Colby College at Waterville, Maine, USA, and co-chair of the Sikh stud- ies section of the American Academy of Religion. Her interests focus on poetics and feminist issues and she has written extensively in the field of Notes on Contributors xxvii

Sikhism. Her books include The Guru Granth Sahib: Its Physics and Metaphysics (1981), The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent (1993), The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus (2001), and The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity (2005). She has lectured widely in North America, England, France, India, and Singapore, and her views have been aired on television and radio in the USA, Canada, Bangladesh, Australia, Ireland, and India. Rabbi Abraham Skorka is an Argentine rabbi, a biophysicist, and Professor of Biblical and at the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer at Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he has also served as the rector for nearly 20 years. He is an Honorary Professor of Hebrew Letters at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and was recently appointed university professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He and Pope Francis are close friends and they co-authored On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century (published in English in 2013). Debbie Young-Somers is the community educator at Movement for Reform Judaism and a reform rabbi ordained in 2009 at Leo Baeck College, UK. She teaches “Dialogue and Encounter” to student rabbis, as well as trainee clergy at The Queen’s Foundation, for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham. She holds a first-class degree in reli- gious studies from Lancaster University and is a Buber Fellow of Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. Young-Somers has been active both professionally and as a volunteer in the interfaith world since her teenage years. Her first rabbinic post was at West London Synagogue where she coordinated interfaith activities and the Jewish preparation program, as well as developed an interfaith program for teen- agers. She has written in magazines, journals, and books, most recently in Deep Calls to Deep (2017). She is a regular contributor to Radio 2’s Pause for Thought, In Spirit on BBC London and to the national Jewish press. She is currently studying the craft of storytelling.