Theological Plurality in European Universities: Questions of Scale

The essays collected in this volume offer a rare opportunity to reflect on approaches to interreligious engagement taken in a sample of contrasting contexts with different histories in different languages. Geographically the spread is concentrated in Northern Europe and the participants reflect a mixture of long-term collegiality concentrated in the “Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies” project (ReDi) together with ad hoc contributions from those who were available at particular times for particular discussions. The geographical concentrations are in Amsterdam, Birmingham, Hamburg (the location of the ReDi project), Innsbruck, Markfield (a village near Leicester), Münster, Oslo, Potsdam, and Vienna. These represent five languages: English, Dutch, German, Norwegian, and Turkish. The contributions considered here are by one Jew, six Muslims, and seven Christians, five women and nine men, with white contributors roughly double the number of non-white, and with two of the contributors known to have changed religious affiliation.
In this it is a microcosm of the contingencies of academic work done under
pressure of time, displaying a desire for diversity and an outcome that reflects
relations between majorities and minorities. Central and Southern Europe, as well as Switzerland, are in this particular discussion under-represented, as are French, Italian and Spanish languages.