lnterreligious dialogue and the colonial legacy: A critical assessment of current models for interreligious dialogue as tools toward reconciliation in the South African context

Abstract

This chapter will start the debate by concentrating on the phenomenon or occurrence of religious pluralism. Thereafter, the reasons for its existence and its importance in providing a system of coexistence in mutuality will be examined. The contours of interreligious interaction will be outlined as briefly as possible, by assessing the processes of interreligious dialogue and the role this dialogue must play, from a Christian perspective. An attempt will be made to show how Christianity's view of the other shifted from viewing the other as posing a threat, to regarding the other as affording an opportunity to understand personal and individual reality within a context of diversity. A further attempt is made to show how by mutual effort evil and injustice can be eradicated through dialogue, within the interreligious context.