Too often, scholars present their insights by distancing themselves from them as though such insights arise from a neutral space of engagement. Mara Brecht chooses to go against this trend by embracing vulnerability in such a manner that it allows her to be both a prophetic voice and a recipient of the content of such a prophetic turn. As she astutely notes, “This book has been in large part an extended meditation on whiteness. In the minds of some this will be a serious drawback, perhaps even my project’s Achilles’ heel. This can be a ‘pitfall’ among white theologians. For even when theologies are developed specifically to address racism, whiteness seeps in, and once in, these theologies can unwittingly and ironically serve to uphold whiteness” (191).

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 explores the anthropological grounding of interreligious encounters. The chapters in this section attempt to address the bridge between the anthropological question and the praxes of interreligious encounters. Chapter 1 sheds light on the implications of “threshold crossing” and its implications for self-discovery (27). Moving from the domain of abstract discourse, the chapter offers concrete examples of scholars who embody the reality of threshold crossing and whose works inside and outside the academy expand the horizon of interreligious studies and comparative theology.

Using relatable epistolary strategies, chapters 2 and 3 situate the discourse on being human within the domain of virtue ethics. Grounding the discourse on Aristotelian and Deweyian insights, Brecht hopes to offer a pragmatic turn as the locus of a credible articulation on being human. The pragmatic turn insists on addressing the question, Why do we need good habits even though we are creatures of habits? In response to this question, Brecht locates habit within the domain of difference. By encountering difference, the human person, as a creature of habit, is graced with the gift of a new orientation that allows one to see in a new way (38). In this case, it is the vision of the religious and racial other who bears the gift of the content of a new hermeneutic.

Part 2 of the work offers a bold critique of whiteness and its hostage taking of social imaginations within Christianity, the sense of embodiment, and the theological project itself. In discussing whiteness, Brecht calls for three loci: “just as itself, as it changes in time, and in terms of a wider context” (69). As though the author anticipates the following critique of locating the discourse solely in the context of American Christianity, she argues that this is because “the United States has been especially hospitable to whiteness, even forcefully so” (81). Rather than reside in the domain of negativity, the author offers glimmers of hope on work being done by both Catholic and Protestant voices on racial justice in American Christianity and society as well (91–93).

Part 3 of the work serves three major purposes. First, it offers categories for grouping some works on interreligious encounters. In chapter 10, Brecht uses the framework of universalist theologies to show how such works, while arguing for radical hospitality toward the religious other, fail to account for the politics of race as it plays out in American Christianity. Next, Brecht sheds light on the flaws found in most liberation theologies that fail to account for the religious other, even though they tend to address the politics of race. These omissions are critiqued. Offering a constructive theological approach to interreligious encounters and theologies, Brecht concludes the work by calling attention to what she terms “soteriological privilege.” Demonstrating the link between whiteness and soteriological privilege in chapters 12 and 13, the author argues that authentic interreligious encounters must be grounded in a prophetic probing of white privilege and its production of soteriological privilege (190).

The essays in this volume offer historical and sociological challenges to Christians and to all involved in the theological discipline to rethink their own historicities in order to fully understand the epochal prejudices that prevent them from embodying the transformative power of interreligious encounters for our times. Brecht’s approach is bold, disruptive, provocative, and faithful to the pneumatological witness to the enduring truth of the God of encounters. I strongly recommend this work to all who want to see a more just world where religion can play its role as a source of instantiating abundant life.