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This chapter offers instructors in higher education some basic tools and elements of course design for interreligious encounter in the undergraduate classroom. Aiming at practice over theory, it provides practical suggestions for fostering interreligious understanding from the first day of class through the end of the semester. These suggestions include the use of guest speakers, interdisciplinary case studies, in-class reflections, and interreligious community engagement (i.e., “service learning”), among others. Further, it provides a concise bibliography of basic introductory texts for both students and instructors in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religions and religious pluralisms, and interreligious studies and dialogue.

This chapter explores the way hegemonic othering, patriarchy, and androcentrism impact Islamic feminist approaches to the Islamic tradition and to interreligious feminist engagement. To provide a concrete illustration, it surveys prominent positions adopted in the debate over the validity and referent of “Islamic feminism” and connects this to the main interpretative strategies Muslim women scholars in the United States use to negotiate and assert authority. Building on more recent critiques of the, the chapter then argues for the necessity of a new model of interreligious feminist engagement that goes beyond the story of “poisoned wells,” a new model that can address obstacles in interreligious feminist engagement; grapple with hegemony, patriarchy, and androcentrism; and respond to Islamic feminist calls for new approaches. The chapter concludes with an overview of the remaining parts of the book.

This concluding chapter to the collection of experiments with Karl Barth and comparative theology explores the two great moments in Barth’s relationship to religions: critique of all religion as idolatry and affirmation that God is free to act in and through religions without restraint. Heim leads with reflection on how his own theological work has been shaped both by interreligious engagement and Barth’s confessional theology. He points out the particular usefulness of Barth’s critique of religion in a time when much recent scholarship has highlighted the problems with the history and use of that term. In addition, Barth is a valuable conversation partner for other religions because of his fierce commitment to the particularity of divine revelation. Late in life, Barth affirmed that God may employ a variety of “parables of the kingdom of heaven,” which opens the possibility that other religious traditions may work in this way. Heim concludes with the suggestion that the “first act of Barth’s insistence on God’s free choice and promise to be present to us in Christ (coupled with recognition that the Christian religion deserves no presumption of that presence) could be balanced by a second act that affirmed God’s freedom to be present and active without restriction.”