The Importance of Religious Dialogue - Essay Example

Beverslius’ Sourcebook of the World's Religions: An Interfaith Guide to Religion and Spirituality, is a text that evaluates the search to engage in good dialogue between religions.  Beverslius’ Sourcebook of the World's Religions: An Interfaith Guide to Religion and Spirituality, is a text that evaluates the search to engage in good dialogue between religions.  It is clear that a community is centered on the commitment to individual faiths and ideologies; however there is a social need to build relationships by expressing mutual human care and searching for mutual human understanding.

  Therefore, through the practicality of mutual concerns for political, social and ecological situations, there is a strong need for dialogue in order to live together and strive for mutual goals. Similarly, there is a form of dialogue that is designed to break down barriers of prejudice, distrust and hatred in the religious world.  As stated in Netland’s Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism & the Question of Truth, “No religious tradition can claim to be free of religious prejudice or bigotry.

”   I strongly believe that this statement is accurate, as the history of religions provides ample evidence of mutual “suspicion, hatred and ill will between religious traditions.”    There are two basic and important forms of dialogue that must take place in order to create this utopia that I firmly believe may be achieved.   The first form is based on understanding and appreciation with others that can contribute to a more accurate understanding of followers of other religions.

Yet, there is also a kind of dialogue that has its objective in the "mutual comprehension of conflicting truth claims." 7 I find that there is an importance here to commit oneself to a more clear and accurate understanding of the basic beliefs of the other party and of course, clarification is essential in any similarities and differences between beliefs. I find my beliefs to coincide with Julius Lipner, who states: "the purpose of dialogue today seems to me best fulfilled when participants redefine the limits and areas of facticity in their traditional truth claims: on the one hand, clearing away as lucidly as possible the tangled undergrowth of hitherto sacrosanct and