On the other hand we also believe that our child is very special, that she or he is different from every other child - unusual, talented, gifted. Proud parents really believe that their child is more exceptional, more blessed, or more extraordinary than any other child.

Think about it. Each of us wants our child to be very much like every other child, or we get worried. And each of us insists that our child is totally unique - maybe the smartest, or the most artistic, or the best.

Many of us have similar attitudes about our religious faith. On the one hand, we believe that all human beings have shared spiritual concerns. Faithful adherents of different religious traditions reach for one God, who is named and worshipped in hundreds of ways.

On the other hand, as persons of faith, we often insist that there is only one true way to God and that those who follow other paths are wrong. Over the centuries, believers have sought to convert and coerce people to believe their version of the truth. Wars have been won and lost when religious zealots have demanded religious uniformity in the face of religious pluralism.

Yet, if there are some religious truths which we share with others, and if, at the same time, we want to protect and promote our special view of the truth - there is a tension. How can we be tolerant and promote one religion as right? This is one of the most important religious questions of our time.

I'm a historian. In earlier eras people did not have to answer this question. Most people were born and lived and died in settings where one religious tradition dominated. Neighbors who did not believe what the majority believed were driven out, or quietly left. Sometimes they were threatened and killed. It was assumed that religious pluralism was impossible.

Modern societies, however, live with great diversity - leading to tolerance and relativistic attitudes about religious beliefs of all kinds. At the same time, modern Western societies have also promoted religious arrogance and prejudice. During the past two hundred years Christian missionaries have worked effectively to carry Christian truth to heathen pagans, believing that the salvation of the world depended on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, tolerance and intolerance, relativism and bigotry challenge religious peoples to find new ways to live together.

As a Christian I affirm that God has come into human history in a unique way - in Jesus of Nazareth, my crucified and risen Lord. There is a particularity about that revelation of God in Christ which I celebrate and which I naturally wish to share. Yet I also believe that it is possible for Christians to value the diversity of the human religious quest without compromising their truth claims, commitments and loyalties to Christianity.

In the Bible there is a story about the apostle Peter which is helpful. Peter is on the rooftop of a house where he is staying and he has a vision of unclean animals. He is invited to eat. When he protests that as a good Jew he cannot eat unclean animals, he hears a voice, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." As the story continues, Peter goes into the house of a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Peter confesses that he resisted the invitation to Cornelius' home because to him it was not lawful for a Jew to visit a Gentile. But he goes on, "God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean." Peter then proceeds to share his enthusiasm about the Gospel, and ends up converting Cornelius and his family to Christianity.

This story provides some interesting clues about religious tolerance. Peter is enthusiastic to share the good news of Jesus, but he is also careful to preface everything that he says with his new conviction of God's impartiality. He asserts that anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable.

Unfortunately many Christians have presumed that God's particularity in Jesus Christ is some kind of proof of Divine partiality for Christian faithfulness. We have assumed that our insights gained through God in Christ provide the only means of human salvation. We have sought to squeeze all religious truth through a Christian filter. We have equated the particularity of God in Christ with Divine partiality.

It is time, I believe, for Christians to realize that we do not control God, and that we cannot define the work of the Holy Spirit out of our limited human experience. In our confession that God was in Christ reconciling the world, we are called to engage and support faithfulness. God does not show partiality, and we dare not either - even as we witness that God's love in Christ is sufficient for salvation. In fact, radical openness to many forms of faithfulness may be the ultimate calling of a Christian.

This insight about God's inclusiveness is hard to remember in our human zeal to know the truth and in our desire to be right. However, the Christian confession that there is salvation through God in Christ may actually mean that our human definitions of what's acceptable and what is unacceptable have been overwhelmed by Divine impartiality. We need to remember that Jesus broke down barriers between Jews and Gentiles, between men and women, between slaves and free. Christianity, therefore, is not saying that Christ is the only way, if it means by that that one particular insight about God is true and all others are false. Christianity is saying that Christ is the only way, because in Christ we are called to a "new way" of thinking about the particular and the universal which is grounded in Divine grace and free from human arrogance. I agree with mission historian, David Bosch, when he writes that "Christ's work of reconciliation does not bring two parties into the same room that they may settle their differences; it leads to a new kind of body in which human religions are being transformed."

Understood this way, tolerance is not enough - because tolerance often implies that all religions are the same and it does not matter what you believe or do. It matters. God is inviting human creatures to participate in faithful living which may not settle differences, but which literally goes beyond our petty arguments. As Peter said to Cornelius, "God shows no partiality." Anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.

Such an openness to Divine inclusivity is found in other religious traditions too. For example, within Islam, a religious community often thought to be overconfident about its claims to truth, Muslims are reminded in their holy book, the Qur'an, "If God had so willed, God would have made all of you one community, God has not done so that God may test you in what God has given you; to compete with one another in good works. To God you shall return and God will tell you the truth about that which you have been disputing."

In today's world it is no longer possible to assume that we can or should convert anyone in the world to our particular faith tradition, and it certainly is unacceptable to presume that differences of religious conviction justify tactics to destroy religious peoples, or isolate and ignore those who are different. We are called to develop a workable theology for living with religious diversity which honors God's impartiality and protects the particularity of each religious tradition.

Some of the most troubled and difficult areas of global political unrest and war are driven by religious motivations - Bosnia, the Middle East, and Northern Ireland are obvious examples. It is time for those of us in regions of the world where religious pluralism flourishes, to get beyond our desire to be right, and even our commitment to tolerance, in order to find new ways to support faithful living in a multi-faith and pluralistic world. If we do not, as the evening news reminds us, armed conflicts fueled by religious differences will destroy the quality of life for all.

Lydia Talbot: Barbara, your message earlier is rooted in some very special history, personal history, that allows you to embrace the multi-cultural, multi-faith understanding that you have today, I suspect. Can you share some of that history with us?

Barbara Brown Zikmund: Well, I grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the 1950's and got very active in a young people's group in a church there because I was living in a neighborhood that was predominately Jewish. Very early on I had to figure out who Jesus was and how I was part of the faith story that my Jewish friends shared but also didn't share. And that prodded me very early on to think about a religious vocation and I ended up headed for seminary and have kept that experience very much central in my life.

Talbot: Seminary, seminary education, you are at the pinnacle perhaps of your career in religious education as President of Hartford Seminary and with voluminous credentials academically. What directed you to the academic side of religious faith teaching and preaching, but mostly in seminary?

Zikmund: Well, I certainly didn't set out to be a seminary president and if someone had told me that twenty years ago, I would have laughed, but I did set out to share my faith and to develop myself as a leader and to be very intentional about supporting other leaders. I came along in the mid-seventies when more and more women were becoming more visible leaders in religious communities and I was deeply enmeshed in the history of the church, being trained historically, and I began to see that this was a moment in history when some of the past patterns of leadership were going to change dramatically, and that I was at the right place at the right time. And so then I began to feel that working in theological education was a very special calling that I could respond to.

Talbot: Religious tolerance, which you discussed in your message earlier, appears to be part of a linkage between all kinds of issues that face us in our culture today that are centered in inclusiveness or the absence of inclusiveness. You mentioned the role of women. What kind of report card would you give the church today and the wider culture on some of those issues that demand inclusiveness and perhaps have not been met fully?

Zikmund: Well, it's a mixed report. In one sense people are, I think, more sensitive to religious issues and more open to the diversity of spiritual journeys and spiritual quests, and when you talk to the average person in a local church, or even a person who isn't very much involved in a religious community formally, there's an appreciation for things of the spirit. They may not even say they are religious, but they believe that there is a common spiritual quest. But then when you look at the organizational expressions of religious faith and some of the bigotry and zeal which drives people often to close down their appreciation of others, that can be very discouraging and some of the most violent interactions in the world today are driven by religious motivations. So I think in my work at Hartford Seminary, I'm particularly committed to enabling religious leaders to see the importance of the connections between religious communities and to see the role of the religious leader as helping people get beyond their narrowness to see how they share a great deal, even though they differ in particular quests.

Talbot: You mention religion as a defining component, if you will, in major conflicts around the world. One of the recent experiences that has informed you about your message you gave to us earlier was a visit to Israel.

Zikmund: Right. This area of the world, the Middle East, of course, is a volatile center of religious communities in history, and it is the Holy Land for the three historic faiths that look to Jerusalem as a center of pilgrimage. So to visit that area and to be there talking with people from the Jewish, the Christian and the Muslim faith traditions, is a very important part of my own growth as a leader, and it is not simple. We often read in the distant perspective of the press very simplistic solutions, but when you're there and you talk with people, you see the complexity of it but you also see the importance of it.

Talbot: Let me ask you, on a more personal note, who are those people, those heroines, heroes perhaps, or writers who have inspired you most as you have evolved in your own spiritual journey?

Zikmund: Oh, that's a good question. As a historian it's very hard for me to choose, but I've particularly focused upon the development of women's leadership in the churches and in religious communities. So people out of the American religious history who are women of action and courage, people like Lucretia Mott or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, very important spokeswomen in the nineteenth century, become persons I go back to from time to time who give me inspiration.

Talbot: Tell us a little bit more, in the future what you'll be writing on. We just have thirty seconds...

Zikmund: Well, I'm looking always at the role of women in religious leadership and the importance of community. I don't think we're ever religious in isolation. We are always in communities of faith and how we support each other in mutuality and how we live in charity with our neighbor is the most important challenge.