The Interfaith Alternative
Embracing Spiritual Diversity
Whatever your spiritual path, chances are that the primary tenets of your faith
include universal love, acceptance and compassion. Yet three thousand years after Moses, twenty-five
hundred years after the Buddha, two thousand years after Jesus and fifteen hundred after Muhammad,
we are still divided by our differences. Religious intolerance, discrimination, even persecution and
violence is the not-so-golden rule.
The Interfaith Alternative shows us how we can celebrate each other without fear of losing our own identity. It illuminates the path to creating a nurturing spiritual community that honors and includes all religious languages — an alternative to Jews worshiping only with Jews, Christians with Christians, and Muslims with Muslims. In doing so, it demonstrates that through coming together in a mutually supportive environment we can concentrate on our shared desire to remake the world into a compassionate, loving place. At its core, Interfaith is about community and justice. Once we truly embrace diversity, we embrace our common humanity. A powerful antidote to the current climate of fear and mistrust, The Interfaith Alternative argues that it is not how we encounter the sacred, but what we DO about it that counts – there are positive alternatives to religious lines in the sand.
Readers Are Saying...
…embracing the vision of The Interfaith Alternative could bring about a startling new paradigm which might at last nudge us towards our mutual goal of world harmony, beginning one community at a time…right here, right now. — Dilara Hafiz, co-author of The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook
“Our way or no way” is no longer an inviting principle. Steven Greenebaum offers an enlightening alternative which is about “inclusion” and not “exclusion.” — Wesley Yamaka, retired United Methodist clergy
This book … invites our spiritual traditions to reclaim the centrality of “orthopraxy” — acting with compassion to build a world of justice and peace. Steven Greenebaum is Karen Armstrong with a pastor’s heart. — John Heagle, Catholic priest, counselor, author of Justice Rising: The Emerging Biblical Vision
… a timely and useful challenge to all people of faith –– Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and The End of Nature
