With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps and Mistakes

With any new human endeavor, errors and failures are inevitable. In With the Best of Intentions more than three dozen scholars and practitioners of many faiths explore cases of missteps and outright failures of interfaith encounters. Each case also provides critical discussion of what went wrong, and why.

Lucinda Mosher is faculty associate in chaplaincy and interreligious studies at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. She is also co-director of HIU’s Master of Arts in chaplaincy program, senior scholar for executive and professional education, and an affiliate of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Dr. Mosher has authored, edited, and coedited many books including Deep Understanding for Divisive Times.


Elinor (Ellie) Pierce is the research director for the Pluralism Project at Harvard University and author of Pluralism in Practice: Case Studies of Leadership in a Religiously Diverse America.


Or N. Rose is founding director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College. Rabbi Rose has taught for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, The Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Me’ah, and in many other academic, religious, and civic contexts throughout North America and Israel. He is coeditor of the award-winning anthology, My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (Orbis).