FACULTY LEADER
Chester Gillis
RELATED PUBLICATIONS
RELATED EVENTS
RECENT MEDIA
CENTER NEWS
February 8, 2012Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum Signs Religious Freedom Pledge Drafted by RFP Director Tom Farr
February 8, 2012
Jose Casanova Giving Ensign Lecture at Yale
February 7, 2012
Katherine Marshall at the UN for World Interfaith Harmony Week
February 6, 2012
Fitchburg State University Invites RFP Scholar Monica Duffy Toft for International Studies Speaker Series
February 3, 2012
Katherine Marshall Blogs: Women at Risk in an Unequal World
February 2, 2012
Research on Forgiveness Begins in Uganda for RFP Scholar Daniel Philpott
February 1, 2012
Call for Applications: Education and Social Justice International Summer Research Fellowships 2012
February 1, 2012
Catholic News Agency Quotes RFP Director Tom Farr on the Obama Administration's Stance Towards Religious Freedom
January 30, 2012
Taking Women and Religion Seriously: Intersecting Paths
January 27, 2012
Between Culture and Religion: The Case of Female Genital Cutting
January 23, 2012
RFP Scholar Will Inboden on the Obama Administration and Religious Freedom
January 10, 2012
Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide
The Church and Interreligious Dialogue
Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the Roman Catholic Church has been a key player in interreligious dialogue. The Center examines the Church’s interaction with other religious traditions as well as the challenges posed by increasing cultural and religious pluralism at the local, national, and international levels.
RELATED PROJECTS
The Berkley Center is a sponsor of the Evangelical-Catholic Dialogue on the Common Good/Public Policy, inaugurated at Georgetown in April 2008. Two of America's most prominent religious leaders, Pastor Rick Warren and Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, convened discussions focused on how Catholics and Evangelicals can more wisely bring faith to bear on public life, especially regarding issues relating to respect for life and ending poverty. Georgetown participants include President John J. DeGioia, John Borelli, special assistant to the president for interreligious dialogue, and the Center's Chester Gillis. Prominent evangelicals include Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals and Michael Gerson, Washington Post Columnist and former speech writer and advisor to President George W. Bush. The dialogue reconvened in March 2009 at Eastern University, a prominent Baptist institution.
How do religions interact with one another in the context of religious pluralism? What are the prospects and pitfalls of interreligious dialogue in the contemporary area. Over the course of the 2008-09 academic year, the Berkley Center's program on The Church and Interreligious Dialogue sponsored a series of presentations by Georgetown faculty addressing these questions. An ongoing theme was whether and how interreligious dialogue sheds new light on the category of religion, advances our understanding of it, makes it more complicated, or diminishes the claims of particular religions.
