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Interreligious dialogue has encouraged many theologians in all major religious traditions to consider whether other religions may offer a different but nevertheless genuine and valid path of salvation or liberation. Perry Schmidt- Leukel, in this extended version of his 2015 Gifford Lectures, argues that this position—often called “religious pluralism”—must be developed within particular insights supplied by each of the major traditions.
Although severe barriers to religious pluralism exist within each tradition, he shows nevertheless that possibilities for a pluralist understanding exist in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religions. Interreligious theology, he argues, carries the promise of being the theology of the future.
Perry Schmidt-Leukel is Professor of Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology, University of Münster, and Director of the Institute for Religious Studies and Interfaith Theology. He has published a dozen books in German and English, most recently, Transformation by Integration: How Inter-faith Encounter Changes Christianity. This book combines his 2015 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow and lectures delivered in 2014 at Zhejiang University in China.
