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Document Details :

Title: Secular Government and Interfaith Dialogue
Subtitle: A Regional Asia-Pacific Initiative
Author(s): PRATT, Douglas
Journal: Studies in Interreligious Dialogue
Volume: 20    Issue: 1   Date: 2010   
Pages: 42-57
DOI: 10.2143/SID.20.1.2050494

Abstract :
Beginning in 2004, and as a result of the initiative of the governments of Australia and Indonesia, a series of Southeast Asia and Pacific regional interfaith dialogue forums has taken place, involving government-level nominated representative teams of religious and community leaders. Following the initial gathering in Indonesia, further meetings have been held in Cebu, the Philippines (2006); Waitangi, New Zealand (2007), with the most recent in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2008). The governments of the initiating countries, together with the governments of New Zealand and the Philippines, have co-sponsored the series thus far. The region covered by the forums contains a great diversity of religions, including all the world’s major faiths, along with a host of minor but locally significant ones. The role of religion in the region is very important, and this importance is endorsed by government on behalf of a wider society. To be sure, there are many examples of community conflict in which religion is a factor, and many other instances of successful religious tolerance and pluralist co-existence. Governments are interested today in the amelioration of the one and the active promotion of the other. This paper investigates the wider context for the emergence and rationale of this recent phenomenon of regional interfaith dialogue and reviews the work of the meetings that have been held. A picture emerges of a radically changed and changing relationship between religion and politics: faith communities and the governments of the societies in which these communities are set are working at a new modus vivendi. Interreligious dialogue has a new champion.

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