This article examines the evaluations of Emoena participants in the secularised and pluralised context of Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands, and their implications for existing knowledge about (the evaluation of) interfaith learning. Using Kirkpatrick’s four-level evaluation model (reaction, learning, behaviour/transfer, and results/future) the findings are based on the thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with 14 Emoena participants. Findings suggest that experiential learning, through site visits and a diverse participant group, has a profound impact on participants. Furthermore, the study emphasises the need for interfaith programmes to stimulate participants’ leadership skills beyond the basic level and to address how participants’ interfaith learning outcomes can be transferred to their broader communities. Finally, interfaith initiatives should explore approaches that allow for friction and the critical analysis of societal dynamics, moving beyond harmony-focused learning, as participants described hoping for friction with other participants as a means of developing their leadership skills.
This review critically examines Ananya Sharma’s article “Reinterpreting the Rāmāyaṇa: Cultural Memory and Narrative Authority’’ (2024), which explores the enduring significance and evolving interpretations of the Rāmāyaṇa across historical, political, and cultural contexts. Sharma’s comparative analysis of various versions—from Vālmīki’s Sanskrit epic to regional retellings—highlights the dynamic nature of the text as a living cultural institution shaped by shifting ideological and social perspectives. The review acknowledges the article’s strengths in interdisciplinary methodology, clarity, and emphasis on pluralism, while also noting areas for further exploration such as deeper political analysis and ethnographic engagement. Overall, the review positions Sharma’s work as a valuable contribution to understanding the Rāmāyaṇa’s complex role in Indian cultural memory and identity.
This article critically examines the politics of interfaith dialogue in the Dutch context, focusing on how seemingly inclusive interfaith initiatives can reproduce structural exclusions. Drawing on the author’s experience as coordinator of a Dutch interfaith leadership program (2019–2022), it analyzes three vignettes that show how Muslim participants were subtly positioned as outsiders to dialogue: their ritual commitments were questioned, their concerns framed as threats, and their absences interpreted with suspicion. These moments reflect deeper normative assumptions about what counts as good and bad religion. To uncover these dynamics, the article introduces a theoretical framework for analyzing interfaith dialogue as a site where secularized Christian normativity is reproduced through processes of religionization. Secularized Christian normativity refers to how Protestant-inflected ideals of religion as personal, apolitical, and interior are embedded in ostensibly neutral secular norms. Religionization, in turn, denotes the historical process by which Christianity has defined legitimate religion while marking other traditions – especially Islam – as excessive, legalistic, or politically suspect. Combining conceptual analysis with critical reflection on situated experience, the article shows how interfaith dialogue can function as an uneven playing field governed by unmarked norms. It contributes to critical interfaith scholarship by revealing how power, history, and normative assumptions shape who can fully belong in interreligious spaces.
Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, by Gina Zurlo. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022. Pp. 352. Price ca. $25.00. ISBN 978-0310113614.
The religiously plural environment of Ghana has called for the active engagement of adherents of religious traditions for effective encounters and dialogue. The Fante people are organized along lineage (kin) structures according to blood relation, which generates cognate relationships of Christians and Muslims in many ways. This article examines the dynamics of the Fante lineage and its territoriality claim, which are significant for the appreciation of Christian-Muslim acceptability and encounters among the Fante people. It also examines the crucial role of the indigenous customary practices associated with lineage- cognate relations among the Fante people and argues that they contribute positively to the promotion of Christian-Muslim encounters. It is concluded that the claim to territorial space of Muslims and Christians of the same lineage also tend to negatively impact relations with ‘alien’ Muslims who are frequently treated as outsiders. There are also occasions when Christian and Muslim cognates disagree on issues bordering differences of religious beliefs and practices as well as relations at the personal level. The cognate filiation has been an obstacle to the promotion of intra-Muslim relations.
