SimonMaryAsese A. AIHIOKHAI. Fostering Interreligious Encounters in Pluralist Societies Hospitality and Friendship. Cham, Switzerland: palgravemacmillan, 2019. Pp. 239. $54.99 hb. ISBN 978-3-030-17804-8. Reviewed by Francis BERNA, La Salle University, Philadelphia, PA 19141.

In the current climate of division marking so much of the culture in the United States, Aihiokhai’s book offers the reader a chance to imagine a much healthier social reality. The author opens the text by reflecting back on how supersessionst behaviors of fellow Catholics contrasted with his personal encounter with a native priestess in Nigeria. His “conversion” in 1995 eventually lead to the publication of this text and previous work on interreligious dialogue.

One of the larger chapters of Fostering Interreligious Encounters details an ethnographic study of Inhievbe town, an autonomous community in Nigeria. The ethnographic study analyzes the already established lived existential interreligious dialogue of daily life. The 50,000 or so people who make up Inhievbe town place a high emphasis on social harmony. This harmony rests on ancestral teachings regarding the virtues of hospitality and friendship.

The existential and ethnographic studies focus on Christianity (almost exclusively Roman Catholicism), Islam, and Inhievbe Traditional Religion. In several places the author notes how fundamentalist Christians and Muslims caused disruption in cultural harmony and were largely rejected by the local people.

Wanting to offer an argument for the embrace of the existential interreligious dialogue of Inhievbe town, Aihiokhai provides an in-depth analysis of the themes of hospitality and friendship in Western philosophy and theology.  He ventures into a consideration of the critical role of the Christian dogma of the hypostatic union as a foundation for interreligious dialogue. He attempts to review the work of Derrida, Buber, and other significant Western philosophers in his chapter on harmony, in which he also turns to the hypostatic union. It is the most challenging chapter of the text.

Two chapters later Aihiokhai takes up the philosophy of friendship. Here he offers a more modest and balanced approach. In addition to highlighting the theme of friendship in Christianity and Islam, this chapter offers an extensive treatment of the traditional Inhievbe Ugoghon Festival. While focused on the coming of age of young men, the celebration involves the entire community in collective friendship and harmony.  The bonds of friendship which the young men form, and that remain part of their personal identity, shape the cultural bond of harmony.  Though attached to Traditional Religion, participants in the festivities include both Christianity and Islam.

Despite the strong philosophical and theological foundations for a lived interreligious, or even intercultural harmony, much of Aihiokhai’s vision will remain but a dream in Western culture. The author notes the absence of a dichotomy between the sacred and profane in Inhievbe town culture. A shared overriding, though differently named reality of something more, of Someone More, can provide a cohesion that will repeatedly escape a fully secular culture.  Similarly a shared sense of self in community offers the possibility of harmony never to be achieved in a largely individualistic framework of understanding.

Several limitations mark this text; things that could easily have been addressed by the editors. It seems the chapters may have once been individual scholarly papers, or material for interreligious dialogue. This lends itself to some unnecessary repetition of topics. Secondly, though only small annoyances, the book has a greater than average number of typographical errors. Finally, and most significantly, the author does not seriously explore the topic of interreligious worship, even though proposed in the final chapter. He provides examples of inclusion of the “other” in one’s worship and suggests the possibility of group’s joining one another’s worship. The implications of any such regular practice, and the theological dimensions of such practice deserve more attention.

Despite the limitations this book is well worth a careful read for scholars, graduate students, and others holding a significant interest in interreligious dialogue as a theological practice and as a lived reality.  Perhaps the lived reality will inspire a greater dream for contemporary culture in the United States.