Peter C. Phan

Peter Phan shows that being ?monoreligious? is going to become ever more rare. Instead, migration, globalization, and postmodern thought have created a situation where boundaries are porous and most people will be genuinely religious only if they live ?interreligiously.' Himself both Vietnamese and American, Peter Phan knows in his body the stresses of intercultural and interreligious living. In this splendid volume he asks questions about and reflects on such issues as whether cultural diversity is a blessing or a curse in the spiritual life. Whether there is an essential core identity that must be passed on in Catholic education. Whether there are true ?equivalents? in the search for interreligious understanding. How one is to preach about Jews and Judaism. What does the Holocaust mean from the perspective of Asian liberation theology. While it is understandable that gatekeepers and boundary watchers want to keep their various traditions pure, Phan reflects on the question, How much uniformity people in a postmodern world can and will tolerate in life, liturgy, and denominational self-definition? And he does so in ways that will cause both lazy pluralists and unreflective gatekeepers realize both how high are the stakes and how difficult finding answers will be… (mehr)