The International Summer School on Religion and Public Life provides a laboratory for the practical pedagogy of tolerance and living with difference in a global society. Its goals are to produce new practices and understandings for living together in a world populated by people with very different political ideas, moral beliefs and communal loyalties. Its focus is on religion, as our religious identities are our most exclusive and our religious communities are those to which we devote our greatest loyalties. In our diverse but increasingly interconnected world, we need to find ways to live together. The school takes these very real, critical and defining differences, especially communal and religious differences between people, as the starting point of a publically shared life.

The 2009 ISSRPL will be from 11-21 July, in Birmingham, United Kingdom. The theme for the 2009 school is "The Language of Neighborhood and Practices of Public Life" and our local hosts will be the University of Birmingham and the Birmingham Faith Leaders Group

The ISSRPL Occasional Paper Series has just been launched and can be found, along with the most recent issue of ISSRPL NEWS in "Our Vision".