Membership

Our Mission

Religion has emerged as a force which cannot be ignored in understanding the world and humanity’s place within it. Whether one’s perspective is that of a social observer, considering what shapes the behavior of people around us, or that of a participant, committed to a particular faith, the growing influence of systems of religious belief has become increasingly apparent since the end of the Cold War.

With this growth of religions there has come an historic challenge. Practitioners need to understand one another; observers need to be able to assess beliefs and practices they personally do not share. Those are the imperatives of living in a pluralistic environment. Religious systems (and many atheist surrogates for religious systems) claim to account for the world, to shape human emotions, and to guide our actions. What happens when many such systems occupy the same land, the same society?  The United States has been on the forefront of creating pluralism; how it should be practiced is another matter.

The Institute of Advanced Theology is designed to create the kind of genuine, critical understanding that will make real pluralism possible. We are not interested in general assertions of the necessity of religious tolerance. Well-meaning and useful though such imperatives are, they do not address the heart of the challenge of religious diversity. What is needed is not mere civility, but mutual understanding.

The Institute’s mission is to illuminate crucial points of intersection among the world’s religious traditions in order to promote a deeper understanding of both their commonality and diversity. The Institute’s special interest is the first hundred years of the Common Era, in which the seeds of mistrust and intolerance that have plagued Jewish-Christian relations through the centuries were planted. The Institute’s aims are to bring factual evidence and critical analysis to the fore, resulting in a better understanding of New Testament and biblical history; to foster a new spirit of tolerance and cooperation; to improve the quality of religious scholarship and practice through a historically based interdisciplinary program of research, education, and public outreach; to achieve a deeper understanding of the origins of Christianity, from its roots in Judaism; and to develop the potential for collaborative scholarship, bringing together religious leaders, believers, and those who are simply curious, in a shared enterprise of enlightened learning.