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“The struggle for gender justice has become a cornerstone of liberative and transformative practice within and across religious communities,” writes interim editor Rev. Dr Simone Sinn in the editorial that opens the issue.
“It has empowered many people, but it has also been contested, as it challenges power structures and questions patriarchal assumptions around leadership,” Sinn writes. “This undermines the potential of all and particularly the potential of interreligious dialogue and cooperation.”
The eight articles in the issue deal with questions that include interreligious engagement as an enabler of gender justice; women's experiences in interreligious leadership; decolonizing and decoloniality in African women’s theology; assessing the role and identity of Indigenous women in northeast India; interreligious dialogue and gender justice in Brazil; and feminism and religion in the Balkans.
“Interreligious engagement aspires to be a transformative space where religious communities enter into constructive relationships with their religious neighbours and confront injustice and discrimination together to work for the well-being of all,” writes Sinn. “The interreligious engagement in the area of gender justice is not just one example among many; it is, I would argue, the most sensitive and the most powerful example.”
Sinn notes in her editorial how the WCC has pioneered enhancing women's roles in interfaith dialogue since a 1988 women's interfaith dialogue meeting in Toronto.
“Since the 1988 event, gender justice has become more visible as a theme in interreligious meetings, and the call for women's full participation has become much louder,” she adds.
This issue of Current Dialogue is also the last on which Sinn will have worked, after serving as managing editor of Current Dialogue since 2019 and interim editor for the 2024 issue. In March 2024, Sinn took up a teaching position in religious studies and intercultural theology at the University of Münster in Germany.
Current Dialogue is published by Wiley on behalf of the WCC.
Table of contents of the latest issue of Current Dialogue
Current Dialogue can be ordered as part of a subscription to The Ecumenical Review: Information about subscriptions.
