Not Without My Neighbour

Meeting people of other faiths is an everyday experience not only for minority Christian communities in Asia and the Middle East but increasingly for Christians elsewhere. Yet although interfaith dialogue has established itself as a key concern for the churches and the ecumenical movement, it continues to raise spiritual, social, political, practical and theological concerns in many quarters. The insights in this book draw on the author's wide range of personal experiences -- as a child, student and Methodist pastor in Sri Lanka; as a participant in the controversial discussion of interfaith dialogue at the World Council of Churches' fifth assembly (Nairobi 1975); as a student of Hinduism; and especially as a longtime staff member and director of the WCC's dialogue programme. Weaving together accounts from daily life, ecumenical texts and discussions, and theological reflection, this book offers a clear and challenging introduction to key issues that arise again and again when Christians and churches enter into conversation with their neighbours of other faiths -- among them interfaith prayer, interfaith marriage, religion and conflict, and dialogue and mission.

Interfaith marriage is a sensitive and crucial issue for churches in Indonesia and for the religiously plural Indonesian society. This study first deals with the development of civil law, specifically from Marriage Law No. 1/1974. The stances of the churches in Indonesia are wide ranging and include the history of church teaching, biblical interpretation, and church regulations. This contextual church polity study presents a new effort to formulate both a theology of marriage and a family theology, specifically a theology of interfaith marriage, and to formulate a relevant and contextual church order.

As societies across the globe rethink and often discard the institutions of marriage and religion, interfaith marriages continue to grow in number. These unions, usually committed to seeing past the traditional sectarian labels, often struggle when the traditional sources of support for marital life--faith community, family support--are not available. Still, the determination of interfaith couples to negotiate and cross boundaries gives hope to a fractured world. Bonni-Belle Pickard draws from her personal and professional experience to suggest ways of addressing the challenges of interfaith couples and their families.

Reading Karl Barth provides a cluster of major themes and signposts by which to orient one’s reading of Barth’s theology. It assists readers in (a) recognizing and understanding what Barth is doing theologically and why and how he is doing it; and (b) assessing the extent to which Barth’s theology is or is not a fruitful resource for their own context, as individuals and communities of faith. The distinctive value of the book’s approach lies in its demonstration of the ways in which Barth’s theology—in both his own time and in ours—“cuts both ways,” to the theological left and right. This involves identifying various theological logics that constitute the diverse and conflictual landscape of shared Christian identity and faith—both in Barth’s time and in our own—enabling readers to recognize not only where and why Barth is located in that landscape, but also where and why they themselves are located, together with their respective faith communities. This makes the book of particular interest to individuals and communities of faith who feel themselves homeless in today’s polemical polarization between theological conservatives and theological progressives, especially those who are hungry for the possibility of a progressive socio-political vision of the gospel rooted in relatively traditional confessions of Christian faith.