Encounters for Change

Book excerpt: Weaving together insights from social psychology, theology, and experiences of interfaith religious leaders, Dagmar Grefe develops practical strategies that support interreligious contact at a grassroots level. She shows that by working together, religious communities can more effectively address global and local problems that all people face: poverty, environmental destruction, and armed conflict. Grefe describes interreligious cooperation at work in local communities. She develops tools that equip religious leaders with the interreligious competence needed for spiritual care and counseling with individual persons in crisis. Cooperation is not only effective in the care for communities and persons in crisis, it also heals distant and strained interreligious relationships. In the process of working together, perceptions of each other can transform.