Being Open, Being Faithful

In some ways the frontier of global Christianity lies not in repairing its past divisions so much as bravely facing its future in a world of many other faiths and conflicting convictions. Douglas Pratt’s work is a brief history, astute analysis, and trustworthy guide for Christian encounter in this pluralistic environment.



A central argument of this perceptive work is that interreligious dialogue has moved so far as to fundamentally change the attitudes and openness of world religious traditions to each other, promising a future more open and less hostile than one might otherwise think. Pratt presents and reflects on the recent history of interreligious encounter and dialogue, and he traces the manifold difficulties involved, especially as they are experienced

in Roman Catholic and WCC engagements with other faiths. But Pratt does much more: along with the history of such encounters,

Pratt examines the issue of Christian discipleship in the context of interfaith engagement, the operative models, the thorny issue of core theological commitments, and what, in Pratt’s view, might be the shape of Christian identity in light of such encounters.



Douglas Pratt is Honorary professor at the University of Auckland and has been an Adjunct professor (theology and interreligious relations' focus) at the Theological Faculty of the University of Bern since 2011. Before his retirement in 2018 he was Professor of Religion at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. His research centres on Christianity, Islam, and Christian-Muslim relations. Author of many studies in the area, he has also been a visiting professor in Birmingham, Oxford, Heidelberg, Rome, Washington, D.C. (Georgetown), and the International Islamic University, Malaysia.