This article probes some philosophical issues that pertain to interfaith environmental collaboration. I distinguish some forms of interfaith environmentalism, starting with a form that is relatively easy for religious communities to pursue and that appears straightforward and easy to understand. Then I propose that even this easily pursued type of collaboration has interesting components that may not be obvious at first glance, including various sorts of mutual recognition. In addition, this sort of collaboration beckons those who engage in it to take various additional steps, some of which have to do with mutual understanding and mutual enrichment. Next I turn to forms of interfaith collaboration that some religious communities and religious traditions will find challenging. In the final sections I consider the possibility that environmentally constructive religious perspectives might emerge from interfaith collaboration and I consider forms of interfaith collaboration that involve religious exploration. At the end I consider the implications of the fact that to date the religions have generally failed to undertake the robust large-scale interfaith collaboration that the environmental crisis requires.

On September 3, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson released a letter praising organizations that had provided services for soldiers, including the Young Men's Christian Association, the National Catholic War Council, and the Jewish Welfare Board. Through the work of these groups, the president declared, “the moral and spiritual resources of the nation have been mobilized.” Wilson then asked that, instead of the individual fundraising drives they were planning, the groups instead have single drive during the week of November 11, 1918, what he called a “united war work campaign.”

The United War Work Campaign provides a window into understanding how a more pluralistic United States emerged through a process that involved competition and sacrifice as well as cooperation. The YMCA leadership fought to have a separate campaign, but they were forced into accommodating the changing religious dynamics of the nation. The Catholic and Jewish groups confronted Protestant establishment assumptions as they offered their own takes on how to appeal to a diverse American public. All the religious groups found themselves in situations where they had to downplay their faith commitments to ensure the campaign's success, and this led to tensions within the organizations and struggles with their co-religionists. Overall, the United War Work revealed the challenges of church-state collaboration and the compromises that were necessary for the emergence of a tri-faith nation.

This study challenges present-day dualisms and divisions, which are reflected in socio-political and intercultural dialogue. The aim of this study is to connect the philosophical discourse of the ninth-century House of Wisdom to modern conceptions of Islam by extending the dialogical rhetoric of that discourse. This study revisits the House of Wisdom, first, to invoke an inclusive, intercultural Islamic tradition that negates the circumscription of Islam by radical views. Second, it reintroduces the liberal arts as pedagogical tools that are central to the Islamic wisdom tradition. Third, it explores the notions of Aql and Fitrah and how they prescribe Hikmah.

This article offers a distinctively Anglican evaluation of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning. It draws upon personal experience, and frames its discussion with two ‘case studies’ describing SR study in action. It engages closely with Peter Ochs's positive theorization of Anglican postliberalism from a Jewish perspective in his book Another Reformation. With Ochs, the article rejects the premise that a neutral ‘common ground’ of theoretical agreement is a prerequisite for fruitful encounter across religious traditions, and claims that the traditions in question have generated their own tradition-specific resources for dialogue. The central part of the argument looks for correlations between an Anglican trinitarianism that valorizes historical process and analogical reasoning (something that, with Ochs, might be described as a pneumatological emphasis on the ‘found’), and an Anglican legitimation of SR. The value of reading commentary from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions alongside scriptural texts is asserted.

The process of scriptural reasoning promises to facilitate dialogue and understanding across religious divides. In this paper, the author reflects on the experience of scriptural reasoning with Anglicans and Muslims; describing the phenomenon of ‘fellowship, not consensus’ with reference to key points of doctrinal difference between the two religious traditions.