THE MIP INTERFAITH BOOKSHELF
(An online resource for building a resilient and engaged interfaith community)
Why an Interfaith Bookshelf?
We in MIP deeply believe that spirituality is an essential component of our humanity. The wisdom and insights of diverse religions and philosophies contribute great depth and resilience to human societies.
MIP’s mission fosters interfaith community, understanding, and social justice from a position of deep respect and reverence for each other’s religious traditions, as well as for those whose spirituality is not specifically religious. Our Interfaith Bookshelf highlights books we have found to be consistent with MIP’s positive perspective on religious plurality and interfaith collaboration.
Not all books about religion, religious experience, or spiritually-motivated social action share our perspective. Google searches, online reviews, and the many shelves of books about religion in bookstores or libraries give readers little guidance for selecting from among the vast array. Each book listed here is one that a friend of MIP has personally loved and referred to our bookshelf curators for consideration (see our selection criteria and submission form below to suggest books to us).
Enjoy browsing our Interfaith Bookshelf as you grow in faith, hope, and love.
A Special Request
We hope to add books in our selected themes that are appropriate for children of all ages, and would love to receive your thoughtful suggestions.
What’s New on our Bookshelf?
Roughly monthly, or when whenever we have something exciting and new to share, we post on our ongoing bookshelf blog. Check back regularly to see what’s new.
We Need To Build
This month’s Interfaith Bookshelf featured title is We Need to Build by Eboo Patel, long-time interfaith activist and leader of the national organization Interfaith America. Patel weaves stories of social change with faith traditions in a practical vision for positive community organizing.
The goal of social change work is not a more ferocious revolution; it is a more beautiful social order… We Need to Build is a call to create those institutions and a guide for how to run them well. (book jacket)
“We will know we have achieved Interfaith America when…religious diversity is understood as a powerful and visible asset that ought to be engaged positively and proactively rather than a dynamic that is either invisible or a threat.”
Introducing the Interfaith Bookshelf Blog
To start off our blog, here is a book recommended by MIP Guiding Councilor, Ann Carlson: Huston Smith’s, The World’s Religions.
Originally published in1958 and for many years the standard college textbook on world religions. While it covers the world’s largest and most predominant religions, it does not cover the multiplicity of religious traditions considered representative in today’s more diverse and global society. Yet, whatever the book lacks as a modern textbook, it more than makes up for as a timeless approach to thinking about religion.
Writing primarily from his own experience, Smith’s delightful perspective is not that of the standard scholar, nor of a typical believer or adherent trying to explain their belief. In each case, his is the attitude and enthusiasm of someone who has fallen deeply in love with that tradition and is enraptured by it. Not naïve about the pitfalls of religion, nor of the devastation of religious strife, Smith nevertheless recalls to us the profound wonder, wisdom, and power of faiths that have guided and sustained communities for millennia. What might happen if we could each learn to see our own and each other’s religions through the eyes of new love?
Click on the links below to access each subject’s dedicated section of our online bookshelf
BOOKS ABOUT FAITHS (RELIGIOUS LITERACY)
BOOKS ABOUT SPIRITUALITY
AND THE
EXPERIENCE OF FAITH
BOOKS ON PEOPLE
OF FAITH
WORKING TOGETHER
BOOKS ABOUT
SOCIAL JUSTICE
(IN A FAITH CONTEXT)
BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
Noted as Child+ (ages 3 +),
Middle+ (ages 9 +) or
Young Adult+ (ages 13 +)
Guidelines for Submission
Please fill out THIS SUBMISSION FORM in as much detail as you can (but please try to limit your remarks to the suggested word limits). We are particularly interested in the following:
- Why you loved this book.
- What the book is about.
- How this book promotes interfaith understanding, community building, or collaboration for social justice.
Criteria for Submission
The Interfaith Bookshelf is a resource for books in five categories related to MIP’s mission.
- BOOKS ABOUT FAITHS (RELIGIOUS LITERACY): Books that introduce one religion (or multiple religions) to others who are not of that (or those) faiths. These books promote religious literacy: presenting the basic beliefs, practices, history and contexts of the faith without presenting any one faith as superior to others or attempting to prostelytize.
- BOOKS ABOUT SPIRITUALITY AND THE EXPERIENCE OF FAITH: Books appropriate for an interfaith context that present a religion or spirituality from the point of view of the faithful, often as a memoir: what is it like to be this relisious or spiritual person in a particular time and social context? (e.g. Threading My Prayer Rug: One Woman’s Journey from Pakistani Muslim to American Muslim.) Books might present difficulties or misgivings about aspects of a religion from the individual’s perspective, but should not be blanket criticisms of the whole faith.
- BOOKS ON PEOPLE OF FAITH WORKING TOGETHER: Books that are oriented towards the attitudes and interactions of religious persons or organizations working together in collaborative effort — for interfaith understanding, community building, and/or for social action.
- BOOKS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE (IN A FAITH CONTEXT): Books that deal with issues of working for social justice from a faith, or spiritual, perspective, either comprehensively (ways to collaboratively effect change) or relative to specific issues (hunger, homelessness, justice, etc.)
- BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS in any of the above categories, grouped as child+ (ages 3 and up), middle+ (ages 9 and up), of young adult+ (ages 13 and up).
If you have any misgivings about, or objections to, any of the books listed on our site, please let us know what concerns you via monadnockinterfaith@gmail.com. We’d like to talk to you about it.