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Summary
Summary
Gustav Niebuhr - grandson of renowned religious thinker Reinhold Niebuhr, and grandnephew of renowned ethicist Helmut Reinhold Niebuhr - a former New York Times Religion reporter takes the reader on a hopeful journey through America's religious heartland, shining a light on the multitude of congregations that are reaching across theological boundaries not with tolerance, but with respect.
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Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Niebuhr, the former religion reporter for the New York Times, is now a professor at Syracuse University. This makes his book immensely valuable: he has the careful scholarship of an academic, but the communication expertise of a journalist skilled at getting to the personal heart of a story. Not long after 9/11, Niebuhr set out to find and tell the largely untold stories of those who are involved in interreligious dialogue: why do they do it? what do they gain from it? what do they risk? True dialogue, as the title claims, means moving "beyond tolerance," approaching other religious traditions with a desire to learn and, perhaps more important, to make friends. Niebuhr tells memorable stories of people reaching across religious lines, from a group of Cape Cod Congregationalists who gave a Jewish community a historic building, some land and some money to create a synagogue to the energetic individuals who founded Louisville's famous Festival of Faiths. Niebuhr beautifully honors the commitment and care shown by those working on the front lines of interreligious understanding. (Aug. 4) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Niebuhr (Religion/Syracuse Univ.) briefly explores interfaith relations in the United States and finds the glass half full. Grandson of Christ and Culture author H. Richard Niebuhr and great-nephew of famed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the author covered religion for the New York Times for several years and is well acquainted with his subject. In post-9/11 America it is easy to find examples of religious tension and even violence, Niebuhr acknowledges. However, he argues that an undercurrent of interfaith cooperation is growing, while largely unnoticed. This trend, he demonstrates, is nothing new. Pointing to such early examples as George Washington's letter to Touro Synagogue in 1790, the author explains that the need to survive has caused Americans of varying religious traditions to tolerate each other, though certainly better at some times than at others. For today, Niebuhr argues, society must find a way to move beyond "tolerance," which implies a certain degree of inequality and unwilling coexistence. Instead, he argues on behalf of dialogue, an exercise that "provide[s] the glue that nourishes social relationships." Though dialogue in which ideas and points of view are shared is a good thing, the author is particularly enthusiastic about dialogue that leads to concrete action. He points to Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Core as an example of an organization that brings people of different religions together to interact and take part in social action. He also describes the Festival of Faiths in Louisville, Ky., an event that invites people to experience the arts, culture and lifestyles of a world of religions. However, the city's Southern Baptist seminary does not participate in the festival, and Niebuhr's discussion with the seminary's president about the reasons for its absence makes it clear that not everyone is ready for interfaith dialogue. A worthwhile call to action for those determined to reach out to other religions. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
RELIGIOUS tolerance is a necessary but overrated virtue. Its practice comes easiest to the religiously indifferent and to the condescending: "You know this is a Protestant country," President Franklin D. Roosevelt reminded two non-Protestant members of his administration, "and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance." What lies beyond tolerance? Respect and recognition - not just for individuals but also, as Gustav Niebuhr argues, for the faiths to which they are committed. Formerly a religion reporter for The New York Times and now an associate professor of religion and the media at Syracuse University, Niebuhr here gathers tales of interfaith dialogue and good will; he estimates they are representative of the practices of thousands of American believers. He claims these efforts are "largely untold." If that is so, it's only because such dialogues are no longer news. American Protestants, Catholics and Jews have been talking interfaithfully for more than 50 years. What's different, what gives Niebuhr's book, "Beyond Tolerance," its few bursts of energy, is the addition of Muslims to the conversation. Indeed, my guess is his search for interfaith understanding could not have found a publisher before 9/11. Since then, inviting Muslims to talk has become an act of mutual protection as much as one of respect for all parties to the conversation. One of the better anecdotes Niebuhr relates involves an Episcopal priest in New Jersey who encountered the local police chief right after the twin towers fell and urged him to send officers to protect a nearby mosque. Another revolves around a synagogue on Long Island whose rabbi, in the early '90s, searched out the nearest Muslim congregation and initiated a series of exchanges on their respective faiths and religious practices. One chapter is devoted mainly to the Festival of Faiths in Louisville, Ky., which promotes visits to various houses of worship and sponsors lectures on world religions. In between such stories - and often, regrettably, in the middle of their telling - Niebuhr makes reference to such stalwarts of religious reconciliation as Thomas Merton, Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama. He also reprises key moments in this country's history of religious freedom. There are, in other words, legal and cultural precedents for the local welcome wagons of interfaith hospitality he describes. Even so, Niebuhr often fails to provide necessary information about the different religions and organizations he discusses. Surely we ought to learn more about Muhammad than what this single sentence supplies: "Islam has Five Pillars, starting with the shahada, the declaration that there is only one God and that Muhammad, a seventh-century Arabian trader, was his final prophet." Niebuhr devotes several pages to the second Parliament of the World's Religions, held in Chicago in 1993. He mentions rituals and workshops but ignores the one document the assembly discussed in common, the Declaration of a Global Ethic, which proposed a set of principles and values that all religions could support. Niebuhr is apparently not interested in the textual traditions of world religions, and he sometimes misinterprets the scriptures he cites. The central teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita, for example, is not "selfless ... duty," which sounds like Protestant noblesse oblige, but the more demanding Hindu practice (yoga) of disinterested action, which requires renunciation of the fruits of any deed. My main quarrel is with Niebuhr's emphasis on process over substance. The point of interfaith dialogue is to learn something. As any veteran of these conversations can attest, you never really understand your own religion until you develop a deep and sympathetic understanding of at least one other. But Niebuhr hardly ever tells us what insights participants have gained from listening to one another, not even how their attitudes might have changed as a result. We don't hear about these things, the reader has to assume, because Niebuhr does not consider them important. "The world's major religions," he writes, "are essentially neutral systems in the way they affect human temperaments." To the contrary: religion, for those who take it seriously, has enormous power to shape not only who we are and how we relate to others but also which virtues we privilege, which course of action in any situation we find right and worthy. Compassion, to cite one common interfaith topic, has a very different meaning for Buddhists than it does for Christians. Were differences like this not important, the interfaithful would have nothing much to discuss, nothing to learn from one another. Niebuhr sees interfaith dialogue as a way to overcome the "absolutism" of fundamentalists in all religions. And yet, these are precisely the believers who refuse to engage in conversation with religious others. Conversely, the problem with a lot of local interfaith encounters is that they rarely get beyond the show-and-tell stage to grapple with rival truth claims. Niebuhr regards interfaith understanding as a "civic discipline," much like, honesty in paying taxes. But most Americans would have to travel a long way to find a Sikh or Zoroastrian or Native American to talk to. Muslims are a different matter. We must engage them here because across the world they sit on a lot of oil, because we have troops on Muslim soil and because, next to Christianity, Islam is the world's largest religion. It is not for nothing that Niebuhr begins and ends his search with 9/11. Kenneth L. Woodward is a contributing editor at Newsweek and the author of "The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam."
Library Journal Review
Hard times make hard religions. In this post-9/11 era, we witness an America drawing lines between the religious "us" and the religious "them" and are inundated with news reports of increased bigotry and intolerance. But there is hope, Niebuhr (religion, Syracuse Univ.), a former religion reporter for the New York Times, here writes. In this wide-ranging account of his personal journey through the religious landscape of America, Niebuhr compellingly argues that hard times can also be fertile ground for people of faith to increase their tolerance for others espousing contradictory/conflicting religious beliefs as well as to go "beyond tolerance"--i.e., to transcend these differences and, together with people of other faiths, embrace the major themes advocated by all religions: compassion, love, justice, and freedom. Niebuhr brings his reporter's eye for detail to this work, which he populates with people and organizations who strive to find religious meaning in our diverse lives. This is no dry, academic exposition. Written for a general audience, it is also valuable for scholars wishing to see an America many might have thought was calcifying into an insular continent, worshipping hard gods or God. Recommended for public and theological libraries.--Glenn Masuchika, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., University Park (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Preface | p. ix |
Introduction: On Doubt and Conversion | p. xv |
1 Under the Pillar of Smoke | p. 1 |
2 Beyond Toleration | p. 36 |
3 An Idea Revived for the Battlefield | p. 60 |
4 Hospitality | p. 85 |
5 An Era of Conversation | p. 123 |
6 Gatekeepers | p. 160 |
Conclusion: Words over Bullets | p. 184 |
Acknowledgments | p. 197 |
Notes | p. 198 |
Bibliography | p. 208 |
Index | p. 213 |