Church Or Dissent A Dialogue

Foucault, Christianity and Interfaith Dialogue develops a new model for interfaith dialogue using the work of the French historian of ideas, Michel Foucault. The author argues that it is the injustice done to the 'Other' by Roman Catholic, Protestant and other centred and unitary models of religious pluralism that allows the introduction of Foucault's de-centring of transcendence and human reason as an alternative model for understanding religious diversity and the role it ought to play, in the constitution of the self and the making of society. This Foucaultian approach provides a new direction for interfaith dialogue in the modern world and leads to an ethical rather than a nihilistic position while fostering a non-unitary theology of religious pluralism and an open-textured process of self-transformation. The author's original and imaginative application and expansion of Foucault's concept of the 'More' from The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) makes important and original contributions to academic work on Foucault and contemporary theology.

Dialogue was a pivotal genre for the spread of Enlightenment ideas. Focusing on non-canonical British writers Wallbank examines the evolution of dialogue as a genre during the Romantic period.