The year 2005 was the 40th anniversary of the landmark document "Nostra Aetate" establishing the relation of the Catholic Church towards other faiths.

The Declaration of Nostra Aetate promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church in 1965, has had a transforming effect on how the Church engages with believers of other religous traditions. Over the intervening decades it has set in motion a large number of Papal statements and grassroots action by Catholics around the world, to build unity and fellowship with people of diverse traditions.

The Interfaith Alliance UK is committed to supporting a coherent, scholarly and grounded development of a "theology of the other" within other Christian churches and other world religions, including Islam and Judaism. At this critical juncture in history, no more urgent need is there than that people of faith should learn to relate to each other, confident in the assurance that the building of unity, trust and friendship between women and men of diverse beliefs is supported and arises from the very heart of their own belief tradition.

An Islamic "Nostra Aetate" project, together with a clear and formally promulgated Anglican theology of other faiths is an essential pre-requisite for the honest and mutually respectful engagement between these two communities in Britain today.

The Interfaith Alliance UK has been the lead organisation in promoting a deepening understanding and respect for religious differences through our project, The Scriptural Reasoning Society.

The practice of Scriptural Reasoning undertaken by the Interfaith Alliance, with subsidiary collaborators from different faith communities and academic institutions around the UK, aims not to force consensus between Jews, Christians and Muslims, but rather generate and promote increased celebration of religious differences and respect for those differences.

We identify the problems of religious extremism as being located within particular readings of Scripture, being the books and documents which are most closely held to by fundamentalists. We therefore aim to bring the conversation between Jews, Christians and Muslims closely into approximation with the most precious and holy texts of these traditions, so that by the dialogue between different traditionsl ways of study and reading of holy texts and their commentaries, and also the friendships across faith boundaries generated by this shared activity, we may build greater religious harmony in this increased understanding and parity of esteem. For information on Scriptural Reasoning and the whole range of SR resources and texts please visit the Scriptural Reasoning website:

http://www.scripturalreasoning.org.uk/