by Alan Race

This edition of Interreligious Insight contains many significant reflections involving inter- religious interest and thereby illustrates the breadth of interreligious concerns that now crowds the fields of interreligious dialogue, theology and practice.

In effect, it demonstrates the close relatedness of seemingly different endeavours.

Let me offer a word about each.

We lead with the insightful account of the conflict in the Middle East – set out with wisdom, passion, and compassion – by Oliver McTernan, who is known to many of us as someone with a long-standing history of working tirelessly for reconciliation, peace with justice, and interreligious dialogue in many of the troubled parts of the globe.

Presented as the 2025 Younghusband lecture, Oliver is clear that the current Gaza/Palestine-Israel conflict has its beginnings in the mistrust between Arabs and Jews even prior to the founding of the state of Israel.

For Oliver, the con- flict and devastation will not be sufficiently addressed if a) all sides are not involved in negotiations for a peaceable future, and b) if neither side recognises not only the right of the other to exist but also the right actually to be different. And this is a profoundly theological question.

Religious identities cannot be left out of any resolution looking to the future. Oliver’s is a far-reaching challenge conceptually as well as politically. His lecture deserves careful reading and may be even repeated reading.

The second significant contribution is in fact a collection of scripts that were first presented at the 2025 European Academy of Religion conference, held in Vienna, under the overall theme ‘Religion and the Transformation of Society’.

This is a broad theme that allows for many perspectives. The five scripts from that conference were part of a panel of presentations, hence my curating them as a collection. Each writer approaches their topic from their specialist angle, thus providing the reader with a very stimulating resource of materials for continued exploration.

The third presentation is centred on the theme of religious experience and its fruits, especially whether or not such experience leads to increased altruism on the part of the one undergoing the experience.

Analysing the archive of religious experience collected by the Religious Experience Research Centre, Marianne carefully and clearly analyses different accounts of the impact that religious experience has had on people.

The article is based on the annual Alister Hardy Memorial Lecture which she gave in 2022. We are pleased to reproduce this material here as Marianne has recently joined the editorial team, adding a voice and perceptiveness that is set to enhance the overall quality of Interreligious Insight.

The fourth article comes from a celebrated member of the Bahá’í community.

Well-known for its concentration on universalist values this article is focussed on the role of women in that tradition.

Readers of Bahá’í literature will not be surprised to discover that values such equality between the genders, equal expectations between men and women in their potential for contributing to the global good – values we have come to take for granted in the modern world – were championed by the Bahá’í community from their beginning. This article introduces the reader to a fuller picture.

The fifth contribution is by an author well-known to journal readers, Michael Redman, who reflects on his experience as a Christian attending a Buddhist colloquium on Environmentalism.

Like most colloquia, not all papers were of equal merit.

Thich Nhat Hanh and Ambedkar receive favourable mentions, but the author was left wondering about how the distinction in Buddhism between the impermanent illusory nature of the world and the need for social action to tackle the world’s many problems in relation to the environment could be easily reconciled.

Finally, we are publishing a reflective retrospect by Marcus Braybrooke, well-known to members of WCF, having been the former Chair of the organisation, and whose involvement in interreligious relations is rightfully celebrated.

This article takes us on a tour of people and places that have inspired Marcus over many years. For those who know Marcus’s writings it will feel like classic vintage, full of spiritual interest and wide-ranging encounters.

There is a review of his latest book, A Faith-full Journey, by Warwick Hawkins, WCF’s Administrator and Projects Officer in our Reviews section.

For readers of our journal who have not yet caught up with the news that WCF has a new website, please search it out and be prepared to be delighted by it.

We are most grateful to Eleanor Dailey for her work on this. It is early days but we are pleased to have come into the 21st century!

In addition to news and comment the website will also in due course become the channel for renewing membership and varied transactions.

In the meantime, watch out for developing news of our 90th anniversary in 2026!