ABSTRACT
Attention to religious virtues in the public forum of Western, pluralist countries raises important, but as yet largely unresolved, questions about how different faith traditions can responsibly interact for the common good. Some Christian theologians will strongly object to any such interaction, arguing that Christians should strive to create a society that is wholly Christian rather than seek to interact publicly with other faith or secular traditions. For them Christian faith alone offers 'truth'. The track record of medieval Christendom or Islamists today is hardly more encouraging than that of Soviet Union Stalinists in the mid twentieth century. Unchecked totalitarian ideologies whether religious or not as Mannheim was well aware, all too readily persecute those whom they consider to be 'deviants'. In a social context shaped in part by both aggressive secularity and fundamentalist resurgence, theologians working together for the common good might offer a radically different and decidedly more eirenic perspective.
