Freedom

Reviewed by: Anis Ahmad – Riphah International University, Pakistan

Published by: Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2021, 221pp. ISBN: 978-1647121280.

Freedom as reflected in the religious texts is a fascinating theme. A group of around thirty scholars from the Christian and Islamic traditions participated in a series of discussions hosted by Georgetown University in 2019. This Building Bridge seminar brought together Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and Muslim scholars in regular meetings since 2002. The group discussed carefully framed multi-layered themes such as prophethood, prayers, revelations, human destiny, forgiveness and power. The 2019 session addressed the theme of freedom.

The editor of the volume under review is Lucinda Mosher who is a senior editor of Journal of Interreligious Studies and emeritus fellow of the Center for Anglican Studies at Virginia Theological Society. She was also the editor of the previous eight volumes of the Building Bridges Seminar series.

The book is organised in four parts. Part one includes two overviews, A Christian Perspective on Who Gets to Decide What by C. Rosalee Velioso Ewell; God Given Freedom: An Islamic Point of View by Tuba Isik; and Freedom in Contemporary Context: Trends in Intersections of Religions, Development and Foreign Policy. Part Two includes three contributions: (1) Islamic texts on Freedom and Aspects of human freedom - Reflections on Selections of the Qur’ān and Ḥadīth by Abdullah Saeed; (2) Freedom as a Theme in Islamic thought: An Introduction to Selected pre-Modern Texts by Lejla Demri; and (3) Modern Muslim Elucidations and Contentions on Freedom: An introduction to Texts for Dialogue by Martin Nguyen. Part three includes four papers: (1) Presentations on Freedom in the Hebrew Bible from Exodus to Ezekiel by Christopher M. Hays; (2) The Motif of Freedom in New Testament Texts - An Introduction by Susan Eastman; (3) The Thematic Dimensions of Freedom: Christian Texts from the Classical Period by Jonathan Chaplin; and (4) Freedom in Modern Christian Thought: Introduction to Selected Texts by Penial Jesudasm Rufus Rajkumar. Part four includes a contribution by