Words to Live By is a collection of twenty-three essays discussing interreligious engagement from different religious or secular perspectives. Each essay reflects upon a scriptural text, devotional object or lyric, or speech from a modern leader of the author's tradition. These reflections always include how the author understands the use of the text for interreligious engagement. Then the reader is invited to continue the reflection with study questions at the end of each essay—hopefully alongside interreligious dialogue partners. The essays are divided into four sections: “Textual Reflections on Particularism and Universalism,” “Personal Virtues in Support of Interreligious Engagement,” “Sacred Practices and Interreligious Commitments,” and “Interreligious Engagement and the Public Square.”

Readers can appreciate the diversity of voices present in this collection. Contributions include a large range of religious perspectives, from the more “usual suspects” such as Hindu, Muslim, or Christian voices, but also more surprising appearances from secular humanist and Unitarian Universalist points of view. Even the different traditions represented are portrayed as multivalent, with more conservative and more progressive perspectives both given space. Additionally, some writers are exceptionally sensitive to this issue within interreligious encounter. For instance, Nancy Fuchs Kreimer in her “Wrestling with Chosenness: A Personal Reflection” recounts her growth in respecting other Jews who disagree with her own reconstructionist position regarding Jews as the chosen people of God (53–62). Although Kreimer struggles with an exclusive idea of chosenness, she acknowledges that her interest in interfaith encounters and the virtue of engaging “ideas that make [her] uncomfortable or with … views [that] differ from [her own]” also applies within her own Jewish tradition (57). Hussein Rashid portrays a similarly diverse image of Islam in his “Opening the Door: Imam Ali and New Conversations in Interreligious Dialogue,” discussing the use of the image of Muhammad's son-in-law Imam Ali “as a means for the remembrance of God and to contemplate the example that [he] sets for his murids (followers)” (160). Although the use of the image is particularly popular with Shi'a Muslims, the discussion of this image serves to complicate the “misperception that figural representation is forbidden by ‘Islam’” (166). Both Kreimer and Rashid draw attention to issues and differences within their own tradition that complicate and provoke questions for interreligious engagement.

The historical sensitivity and diversity of texts also allows for several nuances within traditions and for inspiring tales of modern leaders. In his “Are Religious Differences Only Semantic?”Anantanand Rambacham displays a historical sensitivity to the difference between Hinduism and Christianity (20). Christianity can often be portrayed as close-minded by its concept of the singularity of truth and Hinduism, in contrast, as more open-minded in its acceptance of many ways of expressing truth. However, Rambacham points to the colonial environment that encouraged this contra-distinction. The additional historical comments here allow for the narrative of Christianity as closed and Hinduism as open to be questioned and nuanced. Stories of modern leaders such as Rev. Dr. Forrest Church (Abigail Clauhs, 31–41), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Varun Soni, 112–20), Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (Andrew R. Davis, 129–38; and Or N. Rose, 200–08), Swami Vivekananda (Jeffery D. Long, 170–79), and Archbishop Oscar Romero (M. T. Dávila, 209–18) provide dynamism and realism to a continuing encounter between traditions and worldviews.

The one small criticism of this work is that its diversity and broad range can sometimes sacrifice depth. These are short essays that, at times, make jumps and generalizations of complicated questions without citing where these arguments have been made in greater depth. This shortcoming, however, can also provide a clue as to the proper use of this volume. With its diversity of voices and discussion questions, it could serve for an introductory survey course on interreligious engagement or an interreligious reading group, as is suggested in the afterword.