Building a Better Bridge is a record of the fourth "Building Bridges" seminar held in Sarajevo in 2005 as part of an annual symposium on Muslim-Christian relations cosponsored by Georgetown University and the Archbishop of Canterbury. This volume presents the texts of the public lectures with regional presentations on issues of citizenship, religious believing and belonging, and the relationship between government and religion—both from the immediate situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina and from three contexts further afield: Britain, Malaysia, and West Africa.

Both Christian and Muslim scholars propose key questions to be faced in addressing the issue of the common good. How do we approach the civic sphere as believers in particular faiths and as citizens of mixed societies? What makes us who we are, and how do our religious and secular allegiances relate to one another? How do we accommodate our commitment to religious values with acknowledgment of human disagreement, and how can this be expressed in models of governance and justice? How are we, mandated by scriptures to be caretakers, to respond to the current ecological and economic disorder of our world?

Michael Ipgrave and his contributors do not claim to provide definitive answers to these questions, but rather they further a necessary dialogue and show that, while Christian and Islamic understandings of God may differ sharply and perhaps irreducibly, the acknowledgment of one another as people of faith is the surest ground on which to build trust, friendship, and cooperation.

Communicating the Word is a record of the 2008 Building Bridges seminar, an annual dialogue between leading Christian and Muslim scholars convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Featuring the insights of internationally known Christian and Muslim scholars, the essays collected here focus attention on key scriptural texts but also engage with both classical and contemporary Islamic and Christian thought. Issues addressed include, among others, the different ways in which Christians and Muslims think of their scriptures as the “Word of God,” the possibilities and challenges of translating scripture, and the methods—and conflicts—involved in interpreting scripture in the past and today.

In his concluding reflections, Archbishop Rowan Williams draws attention to a fundamental point emerging from these fascinating contributions: “Islam and Christianity alike give a high valuation to the conviction that God speaks to us. Grasping what that does and does not mean . . . is challenging theological work.”