The present moment is a great historical opportunity for dialogue among religions in a way that has never happened at any previous time. Such dialogue is among religious people, not abstract systems. These different religions seem to say different and incompatible things about the nature of ultimate reality, about the modes of divine activity, and about the nature and destiny of the human race.
Religion is at the source and sustaining core of every culture.
The voices of history tell of times when religions were able to live in relative harmony with one another, but it also shouts loudly of a multitude of religious violence and bigotry and divisiveness. The present opportunity for interreligious dialogue is not only a way to learn about the other, but to learn about oneself and one's own worldview, and so to grow. But dialogue is not debate. In dialogue each partner must listen to the other as openly and sympathetically as he or she can in an attempt to understand the other's position as precisely and, as it were, as much from within, as possible. It is obvious that interreligious, interidwological dialogue is something new under the sun.