Reason & Regensburg: Pope Benedict and the Dialogue of Cultures

Jean Bethke ElshtainUniversity of Chicago
To bridge the cultural rift between Islam and the West, there is an urgent need to reestablish the mutually reinforcing dialogue between faith and reason in the West, and to support moderate Muslim scholars attempting to retrieve a non-voluntarist interpretation of Islam, often at risk to their own lives.
Jean Bethke Elshtain (1941-2013) was the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the University of Chicago Divinity School, with appointments in Political Science and the Committee on International Relations and holder of the Leavey Chair in the Foundations of American Freedom, Georgetown University. Elshtain is the author of Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought and Augustine and the Limits of Politics.