SAIRD: Structured Arts-based Interreligious Dialogue - Christopher Evan Longhurst

This book focuses on Structured Arts-based Interreligious Dialogue (SAIRD), a project of the KAICIID Fellows Alumni Network. SAIRD uses pictorial art to enhance interreligious dialogue, proposing an arts-based, person-centered approach for our visually charged, globalized, and religiously diverse world. The book details how pictorial subject matter, contents, and form facilitate dialogue, contributing to personal and social transformation. It offers a unique method to undertake interreligious dialogue in a more enjoyable, creative, and effective way than standard formal interreligious dialogue practices.

SAIRD has two main goals: 1) To learn how pictorial artworks can serve interreligious dialogue; 2) to instruct on how to undertake an arts-based and person-centered interreligious dialogue. Amongst these goals are engagement, sharing, and connection on the practical side, and understanding and acceptance of diverse religious viewpoints around the same subject matter, contents, and forms present in an artwork. When these goals are achieved, transformative learning takes place leading to personal transformation and ultimately, peace in society.

This book is valuable for readers, teachers, students, and scholars interested in understanding the religious "other" through viewing art and dialoguing around the artwork's pictorial form, contents, and subject matter. It serves as an educational and practical resource for those keen on undertaking an enjoyable arts-based interreligious dialogue, and thereby contributing to world peace.